Life is patterns. If you can see the patterns of success in one area, you can apply them to other areas.
For me, the gym is one of my main laboratories where I explore the patterns of my success. In over a decade of working out every day, I have discovered many principles that I’ve taken into my work and productivity.
I recently had a big improvement in doing the CrossFit “DT” workout — improving my time by almost a full 6 minutes in just 7 weeks. That’s the kind of win that’s ripe for exploration.
In Part 1 of this series, I dove deep into the top 3 factors that led to my vastly-improved performance.
In Part 2, I distilled my success into 5 key lessons and principles I learned from this review.
In this essay, I’ll turn those sport-specific lessons into principles to guide you in planning your day, and share how I already apply some of these lessons to other parts of life beyond physical workouts.
5 Strategies to Create More Time, Energy, and Efficiency in Your Day
(1) Go In With a Strategy
Just like with a workout, it helps to have a strategy for how you’re going to approach your day.
You might already know the importance of having a strategy that guides your actions. Action without a strategy is just busy work.
Before you take action, you want to first get clear on what you’re trying to accomplish, then create a the strategy for the best actions to get you there.
Identifying the actions you need to take is a crucial first step. The next step — and the strategy that fewer people think about — is the strategy for implementing your actions.
A good strategy is especially important when it comes to doing tasks where you’re not as “strong.”
How to Implement This:
On my most efficient days, I plan my days like I plan a workout, considering the actions I will take, the sequence, where and when I will perform them, when I will take breaks, and how I will build in recovery.
For tasks where you’re not as strong, consider what support and structures you need to help you implement them.
(2) Plan Your Interruptions
As I shared in Part 1, the strategy of when to rest the bar in the DT workout was a crucial factor to improving my efficiency.
Little things add up: just two extra reps per round in the DT workout snowballed into 18 extra reps.
Each extra break increases fatigue makes it harder to restart.
The same principle applies to your work.
It might not seem like a big deal when one person pops into your office for 5 minutes with a “quick question,” but increase that number to 5 throughout the day and you’ll find it adds up to a lot more than 25 minutes.
Replace “person who pops into your office” with email, social media, surfing the web, unscheduled calls, or whatever other regular diversions you encounter that “only take 5 minutes.”
The interruption is not just the 5 minutes for the diversion but also the time it takes you to get back on track after the person leaves your office.
Beyond the time factor is the energy drain from having your workflow constantly interrupted. Especially when it comes to deep thought work or creative work, each time you disrupt your flow it takes longer to get back into the zone.
If you have days where you wonder where the time went, take note of how many times you were interrupted (or disrupted yourself) and how long it took you to get back on track.
How to Implement This:
The best way to avoid interruptions that disrupt your flow is to plan them into your schedule.
I time block my days to allow for focused deep work in the mornings. I try to keep all calls or meetings to the afternoons. Where possible, I like to have calls pre-scheduled so I can map out my day in advance.
If you regularly have people popping into your office for “quick questions,” consider blocking off an hour each day for “office hours.” For that hour, plan tasks that can be interrupted with less energetic drain, such as checking email.
(3) Prime Your Challenging Tasks
As I shared in Part 2, the strategy of resting the bar after 11 deadlifts and 8 hang power cleans allowed me to ride the momentum of an easier lift into a more challenging lift.
In the same way, prime yourself for a challenging task by building from an easier and/or confidence-boosting task, in a way that minimizes any interruption between them.
For example, I rely on my morning workout to help me generate flow before I start writing. When I get a good dopamine and confidence boost from my workout, I write with greater ease and efficiency.
To leverage the momentum, I do my writing in the gym — or wherever I completed my workout. This minimizes interruptions that might otherwise drain my energy and kill my flow.
How to Implement This:
A big part of leveraging momentum is getting clear on what helps you ease your way into challenging tasks. It’s likely different for different tasks, so you might need to experiment.
For example, maybe 5 minutes of free writing helps you find your flow for writing a marketing piece or web copy. Maybe calling a friend helps prime you for more challenging outreach calls.
(4) Plan Your Rest
The first time I did the DT workout, did all 12 deadlifts without breaking them up. In my second time doing the workout, I paused to rest after 11. Leaving the last rep helped me avoid extra reps and gave me momentum to get into the hang power cleans.
This strategy also gave me a moment to rest before I needed it. This helped me conserve energy and strength, which allowed me to get through the later rounds unbroken.
In our culture, we are often conditioned to be like the Energizer Bunny — to keep going until the battery depletes. This is a recipe for burnout. When we fully deplete ourselves, it wreaks havoc on the nervous system and takes longer to recover.
My days are like endurance marathons: I typically wake up at 4:20 am and don’t finish my day until 9:30 or 10 pm. To sustain myself for such a long day and keep my energy high for teaching my evening yoga classes, I must be strategic about rest and recovery.
This includes planning enough time to transition between activities and appointments, creating space for mindless activities and turning my brain off, nourishing well, and sometimes even a nap.
How to Implement This:
Don’t wait until you’re exhausted and burned out to rest. When you’re looking at your day, make sure you’re including pockets of unstructured time or time when you can go “offline” to recover and restore your energy.
(5) Give Yourself an Entry Point For Return
Another way to leverage momentum is to give yourself an entry point for when you do return from a break.
As mentioned above, in the DT workout, I could have done 12 deadlifts without breaking them up. But pausing with one left gave me an entry point to resume that kickstarted my momentum again.
I try to take a similar approach with my writing. I can’t say I always follow this, but when I’m at my best, I will write extra so that I can have a place to return to in my next session. When I edit something out of a draft, I rarely delete it. Instead, I save it in a different place so I can have it available to use for a future piece.
When an idea strikes during the day, I don’t just make a note of it; I actually write a few sentences about it. This way, I have a nugget to work with when I come back to write it.
When I cook a meal, I will make enough to have leftovers, or simultaneously do meal prep for future meals. This makes it easier to put meals together when I don’t have as much time.
How to Implement This:
When ideas are flowing, capture them in a way that lets you return to them and pick up the thread, rather than wondering what you were thinking.
When cooking, cook enough to have leftovers for a future meal. Or do meal prep simultaneously. Leverage the momentum of having the oven on and the cooking gear out to batch prep for the coming week.
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