At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor

by Carey Nieuwhof

Everybody gets three primary assets every day: time, energy, and priorities.

Days off, vacations, and even sabbaticals aren’t a complete solution for an unsustainable pace. A sustainable pace is the solution for an unsustainable pace.

Time off won’t heal you when the problem is how you spend your time on.

Whenever I decide to embrace something and allow it into my calendar and life, I’m inspired by these words, which some attribute to John Wesley: “Set yourself on fire with passion, and people will come from miles to watch you burn.”

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

Claire Diaz-Ortiz, who worked at Twitter in the start-up years, made a similar observation: even the most brilliant Silicon Valley engineers have about three creative and highly productive hours in them daily.

Malcolm Gladwell explained how world-class performers develop their gifts in Outliers, the book in which he popularized what’s become widely known as “the ten-thousand-hour rule.” Gladwell argued that becoming world class at something—truly mastering a craft—is a combination of raw gifting and putting in ten thousand hours working on that craft.4