12
BALANCE
Sustain Your Physical and Mental Health

In this last chapter, it all comes down to you and what you personally contribute to team productivity. In order to be an effective, efficient leader, you have to take care of yourself at least as well as you take care of your team, by maintaining balance in your life.

You might think that the need for a decent work/life balance would be obvious to anyone, but white-collar workers tend to be more ambitious and driven than most. We forget that brainwork can be just as tiring as physical labor. We believe we can push ourselves longer than our blue-collar brethren, who are more likely to appreciate the need to decompress and recharge. Sometimes, this results in overwhelm, which can lead to a workflow breakdown you have to rebuild from. Such a recovery can take a while.

It’s better not to go there in the first place! Don’t work yourself to death; what’s the point? Maintaining your health must be a priority if you want to sustain true, long-term productivity. Diet, exercise, sleep, taking enough rest breaks, and going on vacation when you should will keep you at the top of your game.

You especially have an obligation to take care of your mind, because mental acuity will help you achieve more than anything else. Some of this acuity will arise naturally from physical health, but, like even the best-forged blade, it can always use sharpening. Hone your neurons, keep up your spirits, and apply a mental whetstone to your wits to maximize your talents and therefore your productivity.

YOUR OWN SELF-CARE

These days, many in the white-collar world are just plain exhausted, stumbling along from one crisis to another and never getting the R&R they need. Let’s suppose you’ve joined that trend, and your personal productivity has taken a nosedive. Maybe you’ve lost track of your planning process and your todo lists have grown out of control. Perhaps you went on vacation and haven’t been able to get on top of your inbox since. Could be you have a looming deadline you haven’t even been able to think about. Or maybe unexpected changes in your industry have presented new challenges that have blown you off course.

Now what?

Every second you’re out of the race, you and those depending on you fall further behind. So leap into action, resolved to restore your vitality in record time. But how do you revive your productivity? Do what you do when your computer crashes: a hard reboot.

Accept that you’re stuck, stop wallowing in frustration, and hit Restart. But be warned—you may have to act harshly. When everything’s ready, flip the proverbial switch and put your head down for a few hours to cut through the clutter and get back on track. Get mad. Get decisive. Get fast.

For me, a productivity hard reboot is a personal retreat. I check into a hotel a mile up the road and check out forty-eight hours later, refreshed, reenergized, and reorganized. I think, write, plan, strategize, and get caught up. I don’t leave the room (it has a microwave and refrigerator, so I bring my meals with me). The process is so exciting, I can hardly sleep.

We can’t control everything in our environment, but we can accept that things can and do fall apart. When they do, how you react will test your strength and character—and how quickly you bounce back. When you take it on the chin, bop life back and move on. Learn from experience, pull whatever’s useful from the wreckage, and rebuild something stronger. Remember: you never really fail until you give up.

PRIORITIZING YOUR HEALTH

We certainly know we do better, more productive work when we feel well. And yet many of us get stuck in a vicious cycle. When we work long hours and run short on time, we cut into our precious free time—the time when we would do the things that keep us healthy: exercise, sleep, eat and drink properly, and have fun. Soon we find ourselves in an unproductive, unhealthy rut.

Clearly, productivity alone doesn’t keep us healthy. In fact, the exact opposite is true. As psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden points out, “Productive achievement is a consequence and an expression of health and self-esteem, not its cause.”

The Big Five

Good health doesn’t automatically produce productivity, but it prepares you for it. You can’t do your best work when you feel bad. You’ve noticed how sluggishly your brain works after a poor night’s sleep or a missed meal, how distracting a growly stomach can be, and how low self-esteem can create nagging anxiety. Now compare all that to workdays when you felt in tip-top condition, bursting with energy and good health. I’ll bet you performed extremely well on those days.

You can’t control all the factors contributing to good health, but you can control most of them. I find these factors most important to me:

• Sleep. The typical adult requires seven to nine hours of restful sleep per night, though research supported by the National Sleep Foundation suggests, as of 2015, that some adults can get by on six under certain circumstances.⁴⁴ Among other things, sleep helps you fend off infection and illness, because your body does most of its cellular repairs while sleeping. Besides knitting up “the ravell’d sleave of care,” as Shakespeare put it, sleep also forces you to stay in one spot while your muscles rest and recover. It lets your mind clear the slate and process what you’ve learned or experienced during the day. REM sleep helps you absorb new motor skills and gives your body the time to manufacture a steroid, DHEA, which keeps the wakefulness steroid, cortisol, in check. Good sleep may even help you maintain a desired weight. Sleep deprivation produces a natural appetite stimulant called ghrelin, while depressing the production of leptin, an appetite suppressant.⁴⁵ Therefore, the less you sleep, the hungrier you will be.

• Eat well. Maintaining a good diet is all about ensuring you get the nutrients needed to keep your personal productivity machine working without adding weight that will slow you down and drain your energy. Don’t just count calories; balance protein, fats, and carbs, and be sure you get all the vitamins and minerals you need. How you eat is as important as what you eat. While you don’t have to limit your diet to lettuce leaves and carrots at every meal, exercise portion control to keep your weight down, especially as you age and your metabolism slows.

• Hydrate. The human body consists mostly of water, so be sure to drink liquids throughout the day. But take care. Coffee, tea, and soda, while fine in moderation, contain caffeine—a diuretic that can pull water out of your system. To avoid calories, steer clear of sugary drinks as well. Keep a bottle of water on hand and take an occasional swallow throughout the day to make sure you’re getting the water you need. While the “8 × 8” rule—eight eight-ounce glasses of water a day—may be a lot for you, drink at least a quart daily.

• Exercise. Ironically, the more active you are, the more energy you have. That’s because exercise helps you keep your weight down and gets your blood pumping. Set an exercise routine you can stick to, whether it involves ten laps in the pool each morning, a brisk walk twice a day, or visiting the gym three times a week. Otherwise, sneak in subversive exercise: walk up stairs to the next floor to go to the restroom, do squats or leg lunges while talking on your hands-free phone, walk on your treadmill while you watch TV, park at the far end of the parking lot, and so on.

Microsoft’s Mike Howard told me, “I invest the first hour of my day in exercise. I think that’s important, because a healthy body equates also to a healthy mind. It gives you the endurance to deal with stress better and to manage the day better.” I couldn’t agree more.

• Take care of your mental health. Though some researchers argue you’re more likely to succeed if your self-esteem isn’t too high (thereby forcing you to constantly prove yourself), life is always easier when you’re happy. Add pleasant things to your environment: an ego wall, pictures of family and pets, optimistic sayings, funny cartoons, plants, whatever it takes to keep your spirits high. Be sure to take your breaks—including vacations—and get serious about having fun.

It’s All Connected

The Big Five are inextricably interrelated: sleep impacts weight as well as mental health, as do exercise and good diet; too much weight from poor diet and lack of exercise can contribute to self-esteem issues; happiness can convince you to take better care of yourself … you get the picture. Strive to get each of these factors under control, and your productivity will scale upward.

SHARPENING YOUR MENTAL ACUITY

Did you know that smart people actually think faster than “regular” people do? That’s the conclusion of a 2009 twin study at UCLA that scanned specific parts of the brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The smarter the person, the faster the mental speed.⁴⁶

For me, this begs the question: does being smart make you think faster, or does thinking faster make you smarter? The jury’s still out on that, but I suspect it’s a bit of both.

Either way, here are some suggestions that may help you boost your thinking speed:

1 FOCUS. By now, you know you can be more productive when you focus tightly on one issue to the exclusion of everything else. You can’t keep it up indefinitely, but for an hour or so at a time, you can certainly hone in like a laser on what matters most. When you fall into a focus trance, you boost your thinking speed. I use a regular kitchen timer and set it for forty-five-minute focus sessions, which helps me get “in the zone.”

2 TAKE ACTING CLASSES. I’ll bet you didn’t expect this one, but acting classes help you maintain your mental footing. I learned to think faster on my feet through improvisational exercises. They’ve helped my speaking ability in many ways: projecting confidence, maintaining poise when faced with a difficult audience member, and responding more quickly to questions. I’ve encouraged all three of my children to take drama classes and get used to performing in front of groups of people. Being fast on your feet will be especially helpful during challenging situations, such as in a sales presentation when the client is asking tough questions. If nothing else, the classes teach you how to respond to questions in ways that give you more time to answer.

3 EXERCISE YOUR MEMORY. Although your brain isn’t a muscle, giving it a workout will help develop it. Your brain cells will forge new connections between each other, increasing speed of access to both information and reasoning ability. You’ll find plenty of websites online to help you stretch your mental muscles, and there are logic puzzles galore that will keep your neurons active. New research suggests that crossword puzzles increase language fluency, but, contrary to popular belief, they don’t develop your mind. If you like crosswords, try the tough British-style puzzles. With those, you have to figure out the clues before you can even guess the words.

4 LEARN SOMETHING NEW … AND DO IT REPEATEDLY. When you learn a new task, your brain rewires itself, often with interesting consequences. Not only do you learn more, but you may also develop shortcuts between neurons containing different information. When you repeat the task, it helps burn those new pathways into your neural network.⁴⁷ If necessary, start small and work your way up. Interestingly, exercise seems to help previously inactive Alzheimer’s patients regain cognitive function;⁴⁸ maybe a new exercise routine can help you think faster when giving a business presentation.

5 LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE. This exposes you to a new way of thinking. Some linguists and neurologists believe our native languages establish our thought patterns for life.⁴⁹ If that’s so, then studying a new language—especially one radically different from your own—can shake things up.

The Human Touch

The tips for improving mental acuity outlined here present a challenge: they take a lot of time and effort. Many people don’t want to be bothered, because time’s already in such short supply. But even the slightest increase in mental acuity will serve you well. If you must pick and choose, at the very least, develop and maintain plenty of meaningful relationships in your life.

Spending time with family and friends can improve your mood and clear clogged mental pathways. Talking things out with others can help you frame your thoughts and process data, as extroverts can attest to. It can also help you relax—and that’s when your subconscious mind takes over, grinding through problems and presenting solutions when you least expect them.

Lifting Your Spirits

While there are jobs that take place in harsh environments, if you’re reading this book, I doubt yours is one of them. However, your environment may be sterile or uncomfortable. Poor working conditions can lead to decreased productivity and inferior performance. In particular, poor ergonomics can cause repetitive motion injuries. Addressing these issues costs less than paying worker’s comp and losing productivity. Nowadays, desks have to be at the right height, computer screens at the right distance to avoid eyestrain, and keyboards easier to use.

How else can you make your office a better place to work? Here are six ways:

1 BRING A LITTLE OF THE OUTDOOR WORLD INSIDE. Did you know that the air inside a building is often much more polluted than the outside air? As building materials age, they release gasses and particulates into the air. Limited air circulation may fail to remove these pollutants, as well as the dust, beverage and food odors, and other contaminants brought in. So what’s one solution? Houseplants. In addition to thriving on the carbon dioxide we exhale, many filter pollutants out of the air.⁵⁰ Some species, including mother-in-law’s tongue, don’t even need much light to survive. Besides all that, plants brighten up the place.

2 THROW LIGHT ON THE SUBJECT. Rather than close yourself off from the outside world, open the blinds to let the sunshine in. Your building probably already has window films to cut down on harmful UV radiation, so it can’t hurt to be able to see outdoors. If you worry about the motion or scenery distracting you, don’t. It can actually inspire you, and your plants can use the light. If it bothers others, they can turn their back to it.

3 SURROUND YOURSELF WITH THINGS THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY. A sterile cubicle does nothing to stimulate productivity or maintain your sanity. Surround yourself with things that make you happy. If your daughter’s latest art project brings you joy, hang it on your wall. Fond of your cat? Bring her picture to work. Encourage your people to follow your lead and decorate as they will—as long as it doesn’t get in the way of their work—and provide the means to do so: pushpins, tacks, magnets, etc. Content people do far better work than overstressed worriers who wish they were anywhere except where they are.

4 MAKE THE WORKPLACE MORE ATTRACTIVE. A little paint, prominently displayed team trophies, a Keurig and plenty of K-cups in the break room, framed photos and art, and serene decorative colors can make a huge difference in how you and your team feel about your work. Soft curves and rich woods liberally used in the office design and, to quote Hemingway, “a clean, well-lighted place” in general will also make your working environment more pleasant.

5 FIND/PROVIDE A PLACE TO BLOW OFF STEAM. Google, one of the world’s most innovative companies, provides places for stressed employees to go and have a little fun during their breaks. You too can provide interesting, well-equipped break rooms, attractively decorated courtyards, pleasant bathrooms, and well-maintained grounds for everyone’s enjoyment.

6 REMEMBER THAT “HAPPY IS AS HAPPY DOES.” If work were always tons of fun, we wouldn’t call it work. But it doesn’t have to be torture, either. If you do everything possible to tweak the enjoyment quotient a bit higher in the workplace, both you and your team members will be more willing to spend more time at work—and that will show in increased productivity and a better bottom line.

Less May Be More

No doubt about it: you have to keep your wits sharp to effectively lead a team. Fortunately, most of us get plenty of mental stimulation from the challenges of running that team and doing our job on a daily basis.

Think about it. In addition to juggling umpteen projects, you’re constantly busy planning how to delegate them to your team members, trying to balance the summer’s vacation schedule, digging up more work when times get lean, clearing workflow blockages, jump-starting new projects, mediating disputes between coworkers, introducing people to others in your network, and handling a hundred other tasks—while trying to do a little work on the side. That provides enough mental activity for any ten sudoku volumes, with a Martin Gardner book of math puzzles on the side.

So I’ll buck the trend here and say that instead of doing more to hone your mental alertness, maybe you should do less.

The Inactivity Angle

My specialty as a productivity expert is showing people how to do more in less time. I practice what I preach and get a tremendous amount done. The most important part of my life revolves around my loved ones, so I want to spend as much time with them as possible.

But in a world where agility, flexibility, speed, and innovation have become watchwords, you can easily get overworked and overwhelmed. I believe doing too much causes you to lose your mental edge, not hone it.

You aren’t a robot. You can’t work nonstop. You must take a little time to back up, breathe—and give yourself a break. Literally. Then you can put your head down and get to work anew.

Try these tips to get you there:

1 GET ON TOP OF YOUR TO-DO LISTS. While you need to-do lists to structure your productivity, they can get out of hand. Triage mercilessly, then prioritize what remains by importance and due date. Practice purposeful abandonment of the least important tasks and delegate like crazy.

2 REVIEW YOUR GOALS. Stop, look around, and reevaluate where you are—and where you should be. Does your current path align with the organization’s? What about your team and personal goals? If things seem hopelessly snarled, take a weekend off and check into a hotel for a forty-eight-hour strategic thinking retreat as I do. You’ll emerge organized and excited.

3 TAKE YOUR BREAKS. You have a lunch break and weekends off for a reason: to recharge your mental batteries, regaining your edge before you return to the front. You may occasionally need to skip a break or work through a weekend during crunch time, but don’t make a habit of it. And take your full vacations! Escape the hassles of the office, if only for a week or two a year.

4 DISCONNECT. Stop checking work email during the evening. Be present with the people you care about most. Even if you stay busy physically, you still need a change that lets your brain bounce back to its normal elasticity and sharpness.

5 HAVE FUN AT WORK. Work doesn’t have to mean drudgery. Don’t be frivolous, but do give your team reasons to look forward to work every day. Do things to promote solidarity, celebrate important life events, and publically reward team members who’ve done exceptionally well.

Walking That Fine Line

Working hard and doing your job well are important; no one disputes that. That said, you shouldn’t live to work.

Instead, you need to regain control of your productivity so you can get out of the office on time—not only to recharge and recapture your mental edge, but also to devote time to the people you care about and who care about you.

Sometimes work has to wait while you live the rest of your life. Once you’ve taken your time off, for whatever reason, jump back into the fray when you’re at your best. You’ll end up doing a much better job than if you’d just trudged straight through.

Darren Smith of John Hancock Investments has struggled with this himself in the past. When asked how he’s avoided burnout or workaholism, he replied,

First, by clearly prioritizing the elements of my life that are most important and seeking to balance them on an overall basis. Also by realizing that business, and life, are not marathons, but instead are a series of sprints. With this realization, I find it much easier to summon the physical, emotional, and intellectual energy necessary to sprint with full energy and exertion when necessary, since I know that pace is temporary, and the effort necessary for this level of execution will not always be required.

Darren’s advice is spot on. All it takes to do your job well without killing yourself is a few epiphanies like his. Keep them in mind and close to your heart.