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I realised that Isen’s insight was quite profound. It suggested that feeling good doesn’t just end with feeling good. It actually changes our patterns of thought and behaviour.
Seriousness is overrated. If you want to achieve more without ruining your life, the first step is to approach your work with a sense of play. There are three ways you can incorporate the spirit of play into your life. First, approach things with a sense of adventure. When you step into the right ‘play personality’, every day abounds with opportunities to see life as a game, filled with surprises and side quests. Second, find the fun. Remember Mary Poppins: there’s an element of fun in every task, even if it isn’t always obvious. Try asking yourself what this would look like if it were fun, and then build your projects around the answer. Third, lower the stakes. Failures are only failures when you think they are – and not every problem need be approached with such a straight face. So what would it mean to approach your work with less seriousness and more sincerity?
‘Power’ is a scary word, but it doesn’t have to be. When we say the second energiser is power, we don’t mean exerting control over others. Here, we simply mean feeling empowered to take your job, life and future into your own hands. There are three ways you can increase your sense of power, starting now. Begin with confidence. We think our confidence is fixed, but actually it’s extremely malleable. So why not try ‘flipping the confidence switch’ – and playing the role of someone who’s already filled with self-belief? Next, level up your skills. Ask yourself: if I were completely new to this task, what would this look like? And how can I start teaching others even though I’m not an expert yet? Finally, see what you can do to take ownership, even in moments when you don’t have as much control as you’d like. Remember, if you can’t choose what you work on, you can still choose how you work on it. The outcome isn’t always in your hands. But the process, and certainly your mindset, often is.
Life is more fun with friends around. That’s why our third energiser is people. There are some people who naturally uplift our energy – the trick is finding them. That starts with becoming a team player. Try treating the people you’re working with as comrades rather than competitors. Building connections with people is also about lending them a hand. This cuts both ways; not only do we too rarely help others, we also too rarely ask for help. So try asking: what can I do to brighten someone else’s day? Finally, remember the most oft-forgotten truth about human interaction: when you think you’ve communicated too much, you probably haven’t communicated enough. Is there a piece of information you’re hoarding that might just make someone else’s week?
If you don’t know when you’re doing something, chances are you won’t do it.
We get procrastination wrong. All too often, we approach procrastination by treating the symptoms rather than the underlying causes. And all too often, those causes relate to our mood: when we feel bad, we achieve less. So the unblock method is about establishing what’s really blocking your good mood – and finding a way to eliminate it. The first emotional barrier is the simplest: uncertainty. The solution? To gain clarity about what you’re actually doing. That involves asking ‘why?’ and then using this to figure out your ‘how’. Next, ask ‘what?’. That means an alternative approach to goal-setting. Forget SMART goals. What you need are goals that feel NICE (near-term, input-based, controllable and energising). Last, ask ‘when?’. If you don’t know when you’re going to do something, chances are you won’t do it. One solution is to use implementation intentions – where your common daily habits become triggers for the things you intend to work on: for example, if I brush my teeth, then I’ll stretch my hamstring.
Our second emotional blocker is even thornier: fear. If you’ve ever put off applying for a daunting job or asking someone you like on a date, you’ve encountered this particular monster. The solution isn’t to get rid of fear, though – instead, it’s to develop the courage to face up to it. That courage comes from three sources. The first is to understand your fear. Ask yourself: why have I not started on that task or project yet? What am I afraid of? Where does this fear come from? The second is to reduce your fear. Our fears are often blown out of proportion. Ask yourself these questions to prevent yourself from catastrophising: will this matter in 10 minutes? Will this matter in 10 weeks? Will this matter in 10 years? The third is to overcome your fear. If you’re scared of what other people think, remind yourself that most people are not, in fact, thinking about you. We’re a self-conscious species, but we’re not usually a judgemental one.
If you’re procrastinating from studying for an exam, your next action step is to get your textbook out and open it to the page you’re going to start from. If you’re procrastinating from going to the gym, your next action step is to change into your gym kit. And if you’re procrastinating from writing a book, your next action step is to turn on your laptop and open Google Docs.
Whenever they failed to study, they would spend days telling themselves they were bad students. And this shame made them even less likely to study in the future.
Our third emotional blocker is the commonest of all: inertia. When you’re doing nothing, it’s easy to carry on doing nothing. And when you’re working, it’s much easier to carry on working. But there are some simple ways to battle through. Look for the frictions in your life: what obstacles are preventing you making a start? And how can you get rid of them? The best antidote to doing nothing is simply to do something. You can take action by first defining your next step and then tracking your progress, so you’re surrounded by tangible evidence that you’re moving towards your goals. The final step is the kindest: creating systems that can help you support yourself long-term. Above all, cut yourself some slack and celebrate the small wins.
I listened as my mum (a psychiatrist) explained that burnout isn’t just a thing that happens to overworked people in stressful jobs. It can happen to anyone when work stops feeling meaningful, enjoyable or manageable. When you’re burned out, you feel overwhelmed and undermotivated. You feel like you can’t keep up the pace, no matter how hard you try.
The solution? Follow LeBron’s lead. Conserve your energy. Do less, so that you can unlock more.
This is risky; if you’re doing a house renovation while working on a huge project at work, while also trying to learn Japanese, while also trying to get your blog off the ground, while also trying to coach your kids’ football team, everything is going to feel a lot more stressful.
The greatest cause of burnout isn’t exhaustion. It’s low mood. If you can make yourself feel better, you won’t just achieve more – you’ll last longer, too. Our first kind of burnout arises from overexertion. The solution: do less. There are three ways to do less in practice. The first is to stop yourself from overcommitting. Limit the list of projects you’re working on and get comfortable with saying ‘no’. Ask yourself: if I had to pick only one project to put all my energy into, what would that be? The second way is to resist distraction. Ask yourself: can I uninstall social media apps on my phone so that I can access them only through my web browser? How can I correct course and restart if (or, more realistically, when) I get distracted? The third way is to find moments in your working day to do nothing. Ask yourself: am I treating breaks as a special event rather than a necessity? And what could I do to take more of them?
Try this simple experiment. Set a timer for five minutes and make two lists. The first is a list of things you tend to do when you’re feeling drained of energy. The second is a list of things that tend to actually recharge that energy. If you’re anything like me, you might find that the two lists look very different.
Our second kind of burnout relates to rest time. Depletion burnouts result from not giving yourself enough time or space to truly recharge. The solution: understand how to rest in a way that energises you. The best way to rest is all about feeling calm. Or rather, CALM. Find an activity or project that makes you feel Competent, Autonomous, Liberated and Mellow. A second solution is to spend time in and with nature. Even a tiny amount of greenery can have a transformative impact. So take a walk, even if it’s a short one. And try bringing nature indoors – whether that’s a new house plant or just the soundtrack of some birds chirping. Not all rest needs to be so strategic, however. Sometimes, the most energising thing you can do is to do nothing at all. By doing less today, you’ll feel better tomorrow.
He invites you to reflect on:
- Your Current Path: Write out, in detail, what your life would look like five years from now if you continued down your current path.
- Your Alternative Path: Write out, in detail, what your life would look like five years from now if you took a completely different path.
- Your Radical Path: Write out, in detail, what your life would look like five years from now if you took a completely different path, where money, social obligations and what people would think, were irrelevant.
We’ve got three for Health (Body, Mind and Soul); three for Work (Mission, Money, Growth) and three for Relationships (Family, Romance, Friends).
But it still remains distant: we’re talking about abstract values rather than specific steps. That’s where our next method comes in: the ‘12-month celebration’. This is my favourite method to convert dreams into actions. The idea is simple. Imagine it’s twelve months from now and you’re having dinner with your best friend. You’re celebrating how much progress you’ve made in the areas of life that are important to you over the last year.
Or imagine a college student who chose a degree based on external expectations, like pressure from family, rather than his own genuine interests. He might find himself struggling to feel engaged in classes and worrying that he’s not on the right path for his future career. In this case, an alignment experiment might involve examining alternative educational pathways.
Misalignment burnouts arise when we spend time on goals that don’t match up with our sense of self. Overcoming misalignment is a lifelong task; one that requires us to continually work out what really matters to us, and change our behaviour accordingly. There are some surprisingly simple ways you can work out what matters to you today. First of all, look to your long-term future. Try envisioning yourself on your deathbed. Morbid as it sounds, this is the best way to give you a clearer view of what you want from your life right now. Next, think about your medium-term future. Reflect on what accomplishments you’d want to be celebrating in a year’s time. Then ask yourself: what does that 12-month celebration mean for my actions this week? Last, you should be ready to think about your short-term future. Because the good news is, you can take a step to alignment right now. What are three actions today that might take you a little step closer to the life you want in a year?