“Every day do something that makes you uncomfortable.” – David Goggins
“The most important conversation you have is with yourself.” – David Goggins
We all need power to get things done. Our electronic devices have to be plugged in or have a charged battery. The same rule holds true for people.
Our power comes in the form of three levers. They are energy, money and talent. If we want to get something done, we will use one or more of these levers.
I can use my personal energy and talent to mow my yard. Or I can pay someone else to use their talent and energy to do it. If I choose to pay someone to do it, I bought back some energy that I can use to do something else.
Thanks to the power of specialization, the person I hire to mow my yard can do it with a lot less energy because he has more talent and better tools. It is usually a bargain to pay someone to do something that you don’t enjoy and do not plan to become great at.
The more energy, time and talent we have, the more we can get done.
What got me thinking about power is the Peloton bike we recently purchased.
The bike tracks the watts you produce during each workout. Watts are a measurement of the energy or power your body was able to produce during the workout. The more watts my body is capable of producing the more I can get done in less time.
If the bike wasn’t stationary, the ability to produce more watts would allow me to go further in less time.
This translates into the work world. The more energy we can focus on a task, the more we will accomplish in less time. So, how do we build our energy stores? Here are ways to build up your production capacity for bike riding and how a similar approach can create more energy you can bring to life.
1. Grind: In biking, you increase the gear to make the effort harder and push for as long and hard as you can. In work life, you take on a long, hard project and practice perseverance. When you want to quit you keep going. Your mind and body will adapt and get stronger.
2. Rest: Recovery is required in athletics and life. Thankfully, we can still get a lot accomplished during recovery. Recovery does not mean sitting still, it means different and less strenuous activity. Don’t sit on the couch binging on NetFlix by yourself. Your muscles would recover, but you would have also wasted a lot of time/energy.
Instead, do an active recovery with your family. Go for a slow bike ride or a walk. Play a sport with friends or family, but don’t go too hard. Do enjoyable reading you’ve been wanting to do. Catch up on real sleep.3. Go Fast: On the bike, these are called sprints. Shorter efforts at a higher speed and increased intensity. At work or elsewhere in life, these are micro-projects where you put all your attention and energy into them for short periods, followed by rest. If your projects all look too big for this, break them down into chunks. Take the next best action on the project, turn it into a chunk and go after it with a sprint mentality, then take a break.It is a lot easier to motivate yourself for a sprint than for a grind, so use this technique often.4. Go Long: Longer than you think you can, but slower. This builds your base fitness. Navy Seals call this the 40% rule. When your body and mind say you are totally, 100% done you have only used 40% of your capacity. There is a lot more in your tank. Pushing past your perceived boundaries will completely change your perspective on your capacity.Next time you think you are done (athletically, at the office or at home), tell yourself you are only at 40%. Push further. You’ll expand your limits and surprise yourself.5. Know Your Limits. Bonking, or hitting the wall, at a race is no fun. I know from many personal experiences. Hitting the wall happens because you bit off more than you could chew. This is fine in training because it helps you understand your limits, but don’t do it on race day.The same goes for work. Your mind and body have limits. Your performance will degrade when you are at the end of those limits. Know when to say enough and go home. Rest and rejuvenate with loved ones and you will be much more productive when you come back.Plan ahead so you have the option to rest and you will get to your destination with much less carnage to your mind, body and family.Push hard and rest. Do that consistently and over time the results will come. Trust the process.It is the way to build capacity on the bike and in life. We’ve got a lot more in us than we think we do. If we will keep pushing (and resting), we will continue to surprise ourselves with what we can do.We love helping leaders build great businesses. If you’d like to learn more you can check out our free resources at
www.valuesdrivenresults.com/resource-library/ or give us a call at (229) 244-1559. We’d love to help you in any way we can.
Curt Fowler is president of Fowler & Company and director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey. He is dedicated to helping leaders build great organizations and better lives for themselves and the people they lead.Curt is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker, and business advisor. He has an MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and four children.
