Your calendar is filling up, your inbox is filling up, your to do list is growing and so is your heart rate.
When the pressure builds at work, the default response for many of us is to think, “I’ll just have to take some of this home with me.”
We take that pressure and put it on ourselves. We make life harder, we stay up later, and we work longer. Not just occasionally but very often.
If we took our recovery seriously, after a long day at work, we would go home, chill out, then go to bed and get the rest we need. But so often, life gets in the way, we don’t do that and we don’t recover properly.
Peak performers understand that they can’t be peak performers without prioritising their recovery. They have a ruthless relationship with time so that they can get the rest they need. Perhaps we all need to get a bit more ruthless in defending our rest.
What if instead…
When that calendar and inbox are filling, when the to do list is growing and the overwhelm is brewing, we create a new default behaviour. Instead of thinking, “I’ll just have to take some of this home with me,” we could think, “I will just have to pause and make some ruthless decisions.”
What if you decided that your rest and recovery was not negotiable, and so you would make some tough calls about everything else?
What if you looked at all the things that you thought HAD to be done today, and asked ‘do they really’?
What if you gave yourself ruthless time frames and gave that important document 30 minutes and not a second more?
What if you were willing to have tough conversations and even risk disappointing someone, so that you could rest properly?
What if you were ruthless for the sake of your recovery?
That’s often what it takes to defend it.
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Want more? Check out the webpage on Developing Leadership Capability for info on related sessions like The Antifragility Advantage; Bouncing Back, Bouncing Forward; Becoming a Corporate Athlete; and many others.
