At a recent keynote I was asked what were my top 5 tips for boosting work performance. I replied with:
YOU ARE A CORPORATE ATHELETE
1. Eliminate sugar & starchy carbs.
2. Don’t eat after the sun sets.
3. Sleep between 10pm and 6am.
4. Boost Vitamin D levels to over 70 nmol’s.
5. Exercise before the biggest meal each day.
Somebody then quizzed, ‘But these are health tips?’ to which I replied, “If you don’t have high energy you will never know top performance at work.”
My ‘work’ tip for top performance is to only check emails twice a day at 10am and 3pm.
I know what you’re thinking: how can my family possibly boost my wellness at work? They don’t work with me; they don’t know the first thing about my job, how can they help me be more productive, enthusiastic, engaging and energetic at work? The truth is, they can. When you are successful with your family first, their support, love and energy help you become a happier person and this becomes reflected in the work you do. In the 70s and 80s business people like you and I could neglect our family and still succeed at work. It came at a price, but we could do it. However, in the 21st Century, the new entrepreneurs are actually more successful with their family first and ironically these same people outperform everyone else in their work life.
Give Family Your Time
Here are 4 tips I would like to share with you when it comes to family:
1. NEVER PUT WORK AHEAD OF YOUR FAMILY – especially your children. This reminds me of a friend of mine who confided in me because he was very upset that his daughter was moving out of home. He told me that she’s going to university and she’s moving into a flat with some friends and she’s really excited about it. And I said, you should be very happy for her; it’s an exciting time in her life, think back when you were starting uni? He said, yeh, I know Sam, but when she loaded up the suitcase in the back of her car, I just felt that she wasn’t just excited about going to her new apartment, she was more thrilled to be leaving our soul-less home. My friend was heartbroken because he had no bond with her to keep her coming back because she had no connection with him. Her permanent impression of him was the father who never arrived home in time to read her a story, or tuck her into bed. Or was too busy to go bike riding with her. He is a very successful person with lots of money in the bank. But let me tell you, he would give it back just to have that connection with his daughter. And you can’t buy that.
Which leads me to the next tip:
2. GIVE FAMILY YOUR TIME – not just your money. Going shopping or watching TV does not count as quality time. Talking and really listening is how you develop a bond. If you have kids, have one-on-one time with each child. Spending one-on-one time with each of your kids lets them know you value them as a person and builds a bond. So if my friend was doing that over the years, do you think his daughter wouldn’t come back and visit him?
I spend Saturday afternoons with my daughter: it’s Daddy-Daughter time. Do you think that when she’s older she’s not going to remember, Saturday afternoon: Daddy-Daughter time? It’s wired in her: I need to see my father.
One very simple thing you can do to really connect with your family is:
3. TURN OFF THE TV. One thing we do in our family is instead of turning on the TV on a Sunday night and instead of watching a movie, we take turns to stand up in front of each other, in the lounge room and talk about something that happened to us in the week or something we are excited about that’s coming up. It’s a chance for each of our kids to stand up, boost their confidence and engage.
4. TURN YOUR PHONE OFF WHEN YOU GET HOME.
A lot of people in sales fall into this trap. They feel that they have to be on call 24 hours. They don’t want to miss a call. But customers do not expect that. They expect to deal with someone real.
A sincere voice mail fixes that! Something along the lines of:
“You’ve called, Sam Makhoul. If my phone is off, it means I am spending time with my family or serving another customer. But rest assured when I do get your message I will call you back and give you my upmost attention.”
I guarantee that the person will leave a message because they will see ‘Hey, this person is real and he cares for his family. I respect that.’
A lot of relationships break down because we start to see things that irritate us about the person, when in reality those things were always there. But why have they now started irritating you? It’s not because they’re now irritating you, it’s because you’re now focusing on them. If you have a negative mindset you start focusing on what you don’t have instead of what you do have. So if your partner is a procrastinator, not very good at cooking or whatever it is, you start to dwell on those things. But no one’s perfect, you’re not perfect, right? So focus instead on their positives: my partner’s really fit, my partner’s great at their job, my partner’s very generous, very kind, my partner’s very loving, he or she is a great reader, or my partner is a great painter.
The same applies for your colleagues and staff at work. When they do something well, praise them. Focus on their abilities rather than their weaknesses and give them work that best suits their talents. For example if someone is a great communicator and enjoys developing client relationships, make sure they are on the phones instead of doing administrative work! This means that they will be happier in their role and not only feel better, but become more productive, enthusiastic and engaging. Their work performance will improve and they will become a better team member, employee and face of the company.
Are you distracted, stressed or worried about your to-do list at work? Does your energy wane in and out as you progress throughout the day and leave important tasks half-done or undone? Are you making errors that could be avoided?
Managing our energy levels at work is just as important as managing the energy levels of our mind and body. I’d love to share with you 5 personal tips that have helped me manage my energy at work.
DON’T CHECK YOUR EMAIL FIRST THING IN THE MORNING. Emails are time vampires. You will get reeled into reading or doing stuff that is not important. Before you know it you will have wasted an hour of your day before you even get started. And you would have wasted your most valuable energy on the least important stuff.
TURN OFF ALL TECHNOLOGY for the first 60 minutes of the day and focus on doing your most important work.
TURN ELECTRONIC NOTIFICATIONS OFF. You know what I am talking about here: rings, vibrations telling you that you have an email or SMS. You could be assessing something or talking to a customer and suddenly you get a message. Now you’re focusing not on what you are doing or on what the customer is saying. But on who could that message be from? That break in concentration will lead to poor service or mistakes. The other dangerous thing about notifications is that they constantly train our mind to focus on what else can we be doing next? Instead of what is happening now. It takes us out of the moment. Turn them off and check emails and SMS when you want to.
BRAIN DUMP in your diary at the end of each day. Write your ‘to do’ for the next day. It gets things out of your mind so you can switch off and focus on your family.
FOCUS ON A PURPOSE AND A MISSION. Don’t make your job just about making money. You will not be inspired. I know you think that people are motivated by money, but all the research suggests otherwise. The psychology of working has changed since the GFC. We want to be motivated by the mission more than anything. Put purpose before profit. I know what you are thinking. This is fanciful. Work and business is all about making money. Wharton Business School recently published a book that shows that companies that are focused on purpose before profit made the most money. They outperformed the S & P 500 by a ratio of 9 to 1.
Is there something you do to manage your energy levels and focus at work? Please share your strategies; I’d love to hear them.
With so many diets out there like the Atkins diet, food combining, south beach, low carb, high carb, which is the right one for you? The thing is you don’t know. The best diet for you, is the one you design for yourself! Write your own book. I have my own diet; it’s the Sam Makhoul diet!
So how do you design a diet? You hit the reset button: you eliminate all foods except raw fruits and veges for two weeks. Then you start adding foods like grains, fish, chicken, meat and condiments and you see how you feel after each one. If you feel bad, if you feel bloated or your energy plummets, put a cross next to that one. Introduce it slowly so you have a few days between each one to see how you feel. Bring your self-awareness to it and slowly you’ll design a diet.
But there are some universal principles that will help you maintain your energy levels once you do design your own diet. They are:
EAT LIVE FOODS. What do I mean by that? An apple is a live food. Apple pie is a dead food. When we eat, our body has to sift through the dead part of the food to find the living part with the most enzymes. It’s simple arithmetic. The more live food you eat the more energy you will earn. The more processed or ‘dead’ it is, the more energy you will burn.
EAT LESS – EAT OFTEN. We are corporate athletes. We don’t have time to nap throughout the day, under a tree in the savanna after we’ve hunted. So we need constant energy throughout the day. It’s about avoiding peaks and troughs. Eating less is important because there comes a tipping point where the energy you earn is cancelled out by the energy you have to burn to process the food. Eating less ensures you get enough energy without going over that tipping point where you start crashing again. Eating often is important because we tend to eat more if we don’t eat often enough. So by eating often you keep your energy levels sustainable. Lance Armstrong once said in an interview: “When you get hungry it’s too late. When you’re thirsty it’s too late. Your energy has already dipped. It’s about avoiding peaks and troughs and maintaining that steady flow of energy.” It doesn’t have to be much: bananas, nuts, or a packed sandwich. It’s all about preparedness.
DON’T EAT AFTER 8PM. I will not go into the science behind this tip only to say that our body needs to shut down at night for it to recharge and detox. Two things can either happen when you eat too late. One: your digestion will kick in and keep you up till late. OR Two: you will sleep – your digestion will shut down with a stomach full of food that literally sits there unprocessed. In both cases it is toxic for your body and you WILL wake up lethargic.
ENGAGE THE SENSES. Why is this important? Because I know people who get the whole process of nutrition right and fall over at the finish line. You can buy excellent quality food, you can prepare it very well, you can eat less of it but often of it but if the conditions in which you’re eating are not within a relaxed environment, your body, when you do induce this food, is not going to absorb its goodness. It’s an amazing phenomenon. Our body produces and releases the right enzymes when we engage with the food we eat by smelling, looking, feeling, tasting it. Why is this one of my big tips? Because a lot of people sit in front of the TV when they eat. Or worse still they may engage in a heated discussion. They’re not engaging with their food. And that last piece of the nutrition process falls over because you’re eating, but your body isn’t absorbing what it should be. So it’s like your sales process. You do everything right. You get the lead, it’s qualified, you get the application and it’s successful but then it falls over right at the end, at settlement. It’s the same thing. So don’t waste your money. Engage with your food.
