Being a More Effective Leader – Activities for Your Mind, Body, and Doing (Part III)
There are endless possibilities of things you can do to be more effective in your leadership quest. Hopefully, several of the items shared within this series will be ones that will work for you. Here are a few more to try in the coming days and weeks.
1. Complete a quarterly Be Your BEST activity
Pausing and evaluating where you are several times a year is an excellent way to remain productive, ensure you are on track for your most important goals, and reflect on what is going well. I wrote in Planning for the Year Ahead about using the BEST method to review the year. This process can apply to setting up a personal quarterly review.
The quadrants for planning may sound familiar, but ensure you are looking at all aspects: Begin, End, Sustain, and Transform.
Begin – is something missing that I should be doing that I am not doing today?
End – what activities are non-value added, and I should stop doing?
Sustain – what activities make sense as it and I need to continue to do them?
Transform – what am I doing today, that needs to be done, but could be done more efficiently or effectively?
This does not have to be complicated to set up. Take a blank piece of paper and divide it into quadrants and label each with the items above. Then just write in your thoughts and notes. You can do this with old-fashioned pen and paper or set up a basic Word doc with each of the categories as headers for a section.
Schedule time for yourself each quarter to work through what you should BEGIN to do, what you should END, items you can SUSTAIN, and anything that needs to be TRANSFORMED to work better for your situation. Once complete, review, and build a plan for how you will implement it in your life. Repeat that process quarterly. The last one each year helps you plan for the year ahead so that one serves double duty, schedule accordingly.
2. Get enough sleep
Sleep continues to gain traction as a real subject for health and productivity. The adage of you need to get eight hours of sleep (mostly) holds true today. However, it does vary for each individual. Eight hours for many people can also seem unattainable, so gaining additional information about yourself and your sleep needs is critical to maximizing your potential output. There are plenty of articles, applications, and programs that you can now research to learn what you need to ensure you are getting the quality sleep you need.
Many smartwatches and fitness trackers now include sleep tracking options. There are many apps for Apple and Android devices that can provide a level of sleep tracking without additional devices. This can be a great way to start gathering data about your sleep patterns. The main point is, you need to ensure you are getting enough sleep each night. Countless studies now show that sleep deprivation is equivalent to alcohol impairment. That can have a significant impact on your sharpness and agility throughout the course of your busy days.
3. Show gratitude
Gratitude is another area that has recently surged in interest. Many new studies, books, and articles have been published on the positive effects of gratitude on givers and receivers. Showing gratitude has benefits for both sides of the equation. Any time you can find those actions or activities as a leader, they should be prioritized as the output become exponential.
Coming out of the holiday season is when most people think about what they are grateful for. It is certainly an excellent time to do that. However, it doesn’t have to be limited to just a couple of months each year. It would be like saying, I only thank people on Thursdays. Having a gratitude practice throughout the year will be far more effective.
Having a good practice around gratitude involves taking time each day to record what you are personally thankful for. Recognizing that and what it means to you provides energy, removes frustrations, and even relaxes tension in your body. That is why many experts recommend doing this type of exercise each night before going to bed. The second piece of a good practice is sharing your gratitude with others. It is another form of recognition and praise. It just becomes a little more personal and creates a deeper connection between individuals. This benefits multiple people at this point.
4. Take time to learn something new every week
Here is another challenge you can take to expand your knowledge base and engage your mind in new ways. First, take some time in the next week and number the page from one through fifty-two. For each number, write down something you would like to learn. It can be big or small – and I would recommend a mix of both. You can see where I am going here. This is now your learning list for the next year.
You’re not going to learn everything about those subjects in one week if you select big items. For example, if learning Spanish is one of your items, that will not happen in a week. However, your item for one week could be to learn 10 new words in Spanish. Break your big learning areas into smaller ones. If cooking is on your list of things to do, maybe you write down ‘watch a YouTube video on searing a perfect steak’ for the week. Keep it simple, keep realistic, and make it fun for yourself. It should be something you look forward to each week.
5. Challenge your habits and routines – try something new
How long have you been doing the same things in the same way? At least once a year, it can be a good idea to look at each of those habits and routines. Which ones still make a lot of sense, which might fit better somewhere else? Many of our routines are…well….routine, so we barely see them. Take a couple of days to be very intentional and conscious of what steps you are taking in those ‘automatic’ times of the day. What do you do in the first ninety minutes of each day? What do you do in the last two hours of each night? Could you use that time more efficiently, more effectively?
What would it take to introduce something new? Time does not expand, we all still have the same one hundred and sixty hours each week, so if we add something new, something else must change. You could wake up a little earlier if you said you wanted to add ten minutes of meditation in the morning (or at the end of the night and delay going to bed by ten minutes). Or, if there is something you are already doing that could be reduced or eliminated, perhaps your new idea fits into that space. There is likely some time that is unaccounted for, a time when we are not being purposeful. (Which is OK and necessary. However, if you don’t know how much of your time is spent on that, it may be an opportunity to add something more meaningful into your day.)
Any idea that you try ultimately has to become your own. The purpose of sharing some of these ideas is more for inspiration versus instruction. If one of these or any others I share throughout the series sounds interesting but not quite to your style – change them. Adjust to fit your specific circumstances and make it your own.
What areas of your leadership journey are you looking to improve or enhance? Why?
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