We only have so much energy in our lives, so how do we protect ourselves so we can give our best to the projects we have?

This episode explores various ways that I’ve found to protect my time while also serving my team members.

If you’ve found yourself being pulled in many directions throughout the day, this episode will be incredibly valuable.

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Discover how to work with me: https://www.adamliette.com/work-with-me

Transcript

I'm going to talk today about protecting our your energy, and different things that I've used over the years and an optimize to help me do that. And when I talk about our energy, so I recorded an episode a couple weeks ago about batching my content. And interestingly enough, this episode is from that same batch. So fun little piece of the puzzle here. Our energy is so important. We are energy driven human beings. We are visionary creatives. We all have a bit of the, what I call the squirrel mentality. And us and I do that if you if you have a dog, I'm a dog person. What does the dog do when they see a squirrel? They drop every squirrel, you know, how do we protect ourselves from squirrels. So there's number of different things that I've used. And let's just explore those.

The first thing is when you need your energy when you need to focus in on a project, especially if you have a team. Communicate that you'll be focusing on a project. Be open about that, block it off on your calendar, and let the team know that hey, I will be unreachable during this time period, because I'm going to be working on this one project that does a couple of different things for you. First off, your your kind of met, you're making a micro commitment to yourself that you're not going to be reachable. Those are very important, those little commitments we make. You're also giving the team context in what you're doing, giving them the appropriate time to reach out to you either before or after you're done with your focus time. If they need an answer to a question, When are they going to ask it beforehand? Or they're going to wait till afterwards knowing they're not going to get an answer, or they'll solve their own dang problems because you're not available. So if you use a tool like Slack or WhatsApp or I don't care what you're using to stay in touch with your team. Do not be reachable during this time period, stick to your commitment to yourself, the commitment you made to yourself to be unreachable because you're protecting your energy because your energy is more important right now than what they have going on.

There are other people that can reach out to maybe set up an Emergency SOS way of contacting you, just in case. But the biggest thing is just be unreachable. Turn off email, turn off slack turn off Facebook. Everyone says turn off social media. Yeah, it's kind of given at this point. I didn't think I had to say it. But protect your energy during that time period. The other thing, another thing you can do is preposition your energy. So I'm a believer in rituals. I'm a believer in routines and habits. Find any super successful person you will find a master of habits and routines. So I do a pre focus routine. It's the same every time. This allows me to channel my energy to do the right things to be prepared for that. So yes, it will include things like checking my email, turning off out of office notifications, you know, turning my phone on silent or hiding it across the room, whatever.

Whatever you do includes things like that. It also includes things like making a cup of coffee, eating something sitting in silence for five to 10 minutes to allow myself to shed what I've been carrying around all day to go into focus mode. These are all tricks we can play to ourselves. And if you do them for long enough, you find you don't need a checklist but you also find that your brain begins going into that place on its own. You don't have to force it. You don't have to will yourself into Focus Mode, you're doing a routine which gets you into focus mode. We all know various practices that we do to get ready for something. So if you're a runner, like you might put on your shoes, you know, we'll get dressed first and put on your shoes and put on your headphones, then stretch that maybe drink water, you're doing all these things that are mentally telling brain, get ready to run, brains now Talking Body Body get ready to run. When you're working from that same place every time you're setting yourself up for success. I notice I'm huge baseball fan.

And if you watch pitchers and you watch batters, the batter will do the same thing. Before every pitch.

The pitcher will do the same thing before every pitch. You know, Drew Brees once during COVID said, yeah, it's kind of gross. We're licking our fingers all the time.

I should stop doing that he didn't stop doing that. He can't. He can't. It's part of his pre play ritual. It's part of what he does. He can't stop that. Not without impacting his performance. So have those rituals in place? Have those things that you're doing? I was talking with the gentleman in an interview the other day who was talking about having a soundtrack to focus. What is your if you need if you're like me, I cannot do silence for long. I recorded an episode about silence and the power of silence. That being said, I need white noise. When I'm in focus mode. What's your soundtrack to focus? There's some great ways of doing this. Now, like we have entire Spotify channels on focusing. There are certain ambient sound things that will make sound but it's all designed to get you to focus better. There's some really cool YouTube videos of like crackling fireplaces or rain storms. Or there's one particularly awesome one where it's just like being on a jet. And so you just get the sound of jet noise. And this video is like 10 hours long. I couldn't imagine doing that for 10 hours. But I see the intention well done. So it's the soundtrack to your focus. And how does it manage your energy?

Does it give you energy? Now it's you know, it's talking about like soothing things.

I know a dude that can't write copy. Unless he's listening to punk rock. Like, that's crazy to me, I cannot do that. But it helps him manage his energy. There's no right answer to these things. There's only your answer.

And what sets you up for success. What allows you to focus in I was like to like before I do this part of my routine is I clear my desk. I'll keep everything off my desk, when I'm in focus mode, because I don't want to be distracted in any way, shape or form. I just want to focus. The final little trick I'll give you is to actually shift your surroundings. So I do the vast majority of my work on a big iMac with lots of screens. I have 327 inch monitors, if you count the iMac. Because I like the real estate, I like to be able to see everything. This is your enemy during focus, unless you need it. Like certain projects, like if you're building funnels or something like that, you gotta have one window, you know, you got to have candled and you got to do this, you need to copy over here that you're putting, I got it. But what is going to best suit you during Focus time, certain focus activities. If I'm doing like a heavy writing day, or I have to write copy, or have to think strategically. I actually work best on my iPad. Because I can only have one app open at one time I did it up the new iPad OS has. I forget what they call it centerstage or something I don't I'm not doing that. Because it betrays the way I use my iPad, I use my iPad for focus, because I can only open one thing at a time. But that removes distractions. And it's now part of my workflow so much that if I do it on any other device, I feel a bit loss. I need that focus. I need to be able to do that.

So find ways to protect your energy work from that place of intention. respect and honor your ways of protecting your energy and you will find this becomes routine, it becomes something that you don't need to teach yourself to do anymore. Don't need to remind yourself. It's something that you just do. We just do. That's when we're going to be best set up for success. All right, hope this helps hope you enjoyed the episode.