FIRST STEP: DISCOVER YOUR CYCLES

Dr. Richard Carlson wrote many self-help books, including the best-selling Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. He wrote only very early in the morning, when he was peaking in his creative energy. While he accomplished many tasks during the day as a psychologist, consultant, and speaker, Carlson learned that the crack of dawn was his best time to fulfill his destiny as a writer.

To maximize productivity, you must first pay attention to the rising and falling of your energy cycles. Does your energy soar in the morning? Does it take a skid after lunch? Do you have a second wind in the evening? Awareness of your energy is the first step to harnessing it.

To accomplish this task, develop a scale that rates your energy. Allow the number zero on the scale to signify a period when you have very little energy. Mark 100 on the scale to indicate when you are completely revved up with great energy. Mark your scale in 10-point increments, describing each incremental step with a simple sentence such as “moderate energy” or “good energy.”

Next, rate your energy levels in two-hour blocks for each day (See Table 1.1, Step 2). Do this for one week. For instance, you may find your energy peaks from 8:00 to 10:00 in the morning. You then take a bit of a slide in the mid-morning, and then peak after lunch only to discover another slide around 3 P.M. Or, you may find that you are revved up in the afternoon, but percolate with a bit of energy only in the morning hours.

While most individuals will have a few peaks and valleys throughout the day, everyone is unique. Knowing when your energy soars as well as when it droops is the first step in learning to harness it.

SECOND STEP: CREATE AN ENERGY LIST

Most successful individuals create a to-do list. They may create this list before they leave work, and these tasks relate to what will be accomplished the following day. Or, they may create their list as the day’s first task.

Try something new: create an energy to-do list. Quantify each activity on the list in terms of three different levels of energy: high, moderate, and low. (See Table 1.1) As an example, meeting an important client for the first time can require a vast amount of energy. Meeting with a disgruntled client and resolving a key issue can be very draining as well. On the other hand, making cold calls, or writing a proposal require moderate energy; simple analysis and warm calls can be low-energy tasks.

Table 1.1 Energy To-do List

THIRD STEP: MATCH YOUR TASKS

The third step of the plan is to schedule your tasks for the appropriate time of day. Based upon the previous two steps, place the most demanding energy tasks in the times when you have the most energy. Position moderate energy tasks for when you begin to slide in your energy. Do low energy tasks when your energy levels have bottomed out.

Your peak energy periods are precious. Safeguard them for the demanding activities that will be most profitable to you. Save the tasks that require very little mental and emotional energy for the times when you begin to slide. You can still be highly effective if you accomplish simple tasks during your low-energy periods.

Knowing when to sprint and when to slow your pace will help you finish the day with a quantity of accomplishments.

READJUSTING YOUR PEAK PERIODS

An important question I receive at many seminars is whether you can readjust the timing of your peak periods. The answer is yes!

Antonio Ravette, a concert violinist, would get up early in the morning, around 6:30 A.M. But after the analysis we discussed earlier, we discovered that he peaked at 9 A.M. and again at 3 P.M. Antonio had recently been hired by the Nashville Symphony, which usually starts their performances at 7 P.M. at the Shimmerhorn Concert Hall. To remedy this issue, we had Antionio sleep until 9:30 A.M. That pushed his cycles to peak three hours later—to a time when he needed to be surging in his energy cycles.

If you need to readjust your cycles, perhaps sleeping a little later may do your energy some good.

CHAPTER TWO

Vision Guides Destiny

Driving to spring training in Florida, the famous baseball player and New York Yankees manager, Yogi Berra, and his wife were terribly late. They were driving all night and Yogi’s wife fell fast asleep. To make up for lost time, Yogi took a short cut that eventually turned into a dirt road with more dirt than road. His wife suddenly awoke, very startled, and said to Yogi, “Honey, I think we’re lost.” Yogi, always ready with a quick quip, replied, “Yeah but we’re making great time.”

Without vision, you may get somewhere, but most likely it will be the somewhere you don’t want. Vision guides your destiny. It did for Gary Player. As a young lad growing up in South Africa, Gary had the vision of his greatness. Gary would stand in front of a mirror and say over and over “You are going to be one of the greatest players of all time.” Gary Player’s vision shined very brightly, and guided him to become one of the greatest golfers of the twentieth century.

Vision can create our end point even if one does not currently exist. When Tommy Burnett entered the University of Virginia in 1993, he declared to his professor that his vision was to be a special effects expert on a Star Wars movie. Unfortunately for him, the last Star Wars movie had been made 10 years earlier.

Given that predicament, most people would choose another direction. Not Tommy. He had a vision of bringing to life his favorite science fiction characters on the silver screen and making them appear real. He read everything he could get his hands on regarding how to create special effects and how to program these effects. He became an expert on a new computer programming language called Python.

Fortunately, Industrial Light & Magic, the company owned by George Lucas and creator of the Star Wars movies, needed someone who knew Python. Tommy was their man and was hired to develop special effects for the new Star Wars movies in 1999, 2002, and 2003. Tommy’s vision created his destiny.

Our vision is our light. We all need this light. In a sense, it is a survival mechanism. Psychologists discovered that when mice were placed in a tub with no way out, they would stop swimming after 45 minutes and drown. However, if the mice had a light shining upon them, they would continue to swim for 36 hours. The mice were motivated through the darkness by a vision of light.

Vision guided Christopher Reeve throughout his darkest hours—his vision was the light at the end of his tragic tunnel. Christopher Reeve’s rise to fame was fierce, propelling him to the top of the Hollywood game in the 1970s. Then tragedy struck. During an equestrian competition, his horse threw him and he landed on his neck. His injury was so severe that he was paralyzed from the neck down. But Reeve had a vision that would guide him through the next 10 years. At his forty-third birthday party he announced that he would stand up and make a toast at his fiftieth.

This vision propelled him across the globe, making countless speeches and pleads for money for spinal cord research. He was dedicated to finding a cure. Unfortunately, this vision did not come to fruition, and he did not stand to toast his friends on any birthday following the accident. Sadder was his death, at the age of 52, of a heart attack. His memory and his vision, however, still guide his foundation to find a cure in the future.

In his book The Power of Purpose, Dick Leider interviewed hundreds of people in their seventies and eighties. He asked them two simple questions: “If you could live your life over again, what would you change?” and “What is the wisdom that you would pass on?”

One of the most frequent answers given was that they would have had a better vision for their life’s direction and that this vision would have made a difference.

Those answers from our elders send a clear-cut message: Find a vision for your life that has meaning. According to the ancient philosopher Seneca, “When a man does not know what harbor he is sailing for, no wind is the right wind.” Zig Ziglar, a present-day motivational guru, has noted that the happiest people he knows are those who are working toward a vision, whereas the most bored and miserable people are drifting along with no worthwhile objectives in mind. They sail with any wind.

The issue with vision is twofold. First, many people do not know their true vision, and second, their career choices are not in line with their true vision. Becoming aware of your true vision and having that vision aligned with your career may be the most difficult task a person can accomplish, but it is essential. The following drills will help.

DON’T WAIT FOR YOUR MORTALITY SANDWICH

Deborah Winger called it “a mortality sandwich.” When she was young, she had planned to be a researcher for criminal investigations. As Winger describes it, she wanted to be an investigator just like in the show CSI. Then she had a terrible but fortuitous, and almost too close of an encounter with a truck. It was this crash that gave her a clear look at her mortality. This event inspired her to change direction and follow her true vision—to be an actress. And as we know, she has had an incredible career, starring in such mega-hits as An Officer and a Gentleman, Urban Cowboy, and Terms of Endearment.

Don’t wait for your mortality sandwich. Eat life up!

ALIGNING YOUR CAREER WITH YOUR VISION

Finding a better direction was easy for John Sculley. When Steve Jobs was looking for a man to hold the helm and steer his new company, Apple Computer, he approached Sculley. At the time, Sculley was president of Pepsico and was having a wonderful career. However, when Steve Jobs approached him and asked him if he wanted to make sugar water all his life or help change the world, the choice was easy for Sculley. He wanted to make a meaningful difference, so he left and joined Apple so that he could help change the world.

Are you struggling to align your career with your vision? The first step is to create a purpose statement. A purpose statement is a vision about what we believe will give meaning to our life.

Here are a few questions to guide you in developing an effective purpose statement.

• Who do you admire and why?

• What have been some of the greatest contributions to our world?

• What do you see as meaningful?

• What significant contributions would you like to make to the world?

The next step is to list your values. Martin Luther King Jr. once stated, “I do not want to have the finer things in life. All I want to leave behind is a committed life. King valued a committed life, a life dedicated to changing human rights.

What do you value most? These may include money, civil rights, creating a useful product, helping the homeless, or other values such as creating a better world or a better environment for our children. List 10 of your key values.

Now here is the kicker. Pick two or three careers (or different jobs within your current career path) that you think are in line with your true vision. Write a persuasive paragraph for each career, as if you were writing to a friend, and tell this friend how your purpose statement and values are aligned with this particular career.

The paragraphs that are difficult to write, that is, the careers that had to be bent and pushed to fit into your statement and values, are probably not a good choice. This career choice is out of sync with your true vision. On the other hand, the paragraph that was the easiest to write, the one that was the best fit for your purpose and values, will be the correct choice and a step toward following your vision.

Henry David Thoreau once stated, “In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.” I would add “We need to know where to aim.” This chapter will point you in the right direction.

CHAPTER THREE

Race into the Strength Zone

Miguel Cervantes once wrote that the man who is prepared has his battle half fought. Individuals who develop a plan are destined to be prepared for what lies ahead. More important, when the plan incorporates our strengths, we are preparing for our success. When Lance Armstrong developed a plan that involved using his strengths, he laid the foundation for his destiny as the greatest cyclist the world has ever seen.