Articles

These tweaks made ALL the difference to sticking with a new habit or behaviour.

October 1, 2020

I realised recently that the smallest tweaks can make all the difference to being able to stick with a new habit or behaviour. This has helped me make some big behaviour shifts in my life recently.

The big question is, how do you find those tweaks?

I used to struggle to drink enough water. Some days I managed hardly anything. Other days I managed a litre or so – but it felt like such a huge effort. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been drinking over 3 litres of water everyday – effortlessly.

How did I do that?

A couple of weeks ago, I pushed myself to drink 1.5 litres within the first hour of waking. I did this by drinking two 500ml bottles back to back as soon as I woke. I then filled up the third bottle and drank it over a handful of gulps.

That small tweak made all the difference.

Firstly, it gave me a quick, and huge head start on my 3 litre goal for the day. By building the momentum so quickly, I felt compelled to build on it throughout the day. Secondly, instead of taking sips, I now found myself drinking 500ml bottles in one go. I just got used to doing that. Why drink it over 10+ gulps, when I can just get it done in one go?

I’ve been trying to get my alcohol consumption in the right place for a long time. I’ve tried thirty day resets before – with mixed success. I’ve also tried to put in place some rules to help me moderate alcohol, but they always break down after a while.

Recently I had another go at a 30 day reset. This time, I put up a chart on the wall, and crossed off every day I didn’t drink.

Seeing that chain grow made all the difference. I found it pretty easy to do the 30 days. I really did not want to break the chain, or the momentum I was building.

So much so that I’ve kept doing it. I’m not trying to do another 30 days. I just want to drink infrequently, mostly on special occasions. I like to see one or two weeks of an unbroken chain building up. It’s so simple, and it’s enough to push back the urges to have a glass or two of wine between Thursday and the weekend. It’s not worth breaking the chain for a minor reason.

I’ve always struggled to consistently take my vitamins. I take a multivitamin, Vitamin C, D and fish oil daily. That amounts to thirteen capsules each day (seven at lunch, and six early evening). Most of the time I just end up forgetting to take them at all, or just remember to take half of them at one point in the day. I’ve tried a few different strategies (leaving the vitamin tubs in obvious places, taking them with certain meals etc.) – but nothing worked.

I placed an order a few weeks ago for some more Vitamins, and I noticed they also sold a pill box. It’s a green box with 6 different compartments in it. I added it to my order, because it seemed a convenient way to bring vitamins with me when I travelled. Then one morning, I put my thirteen capsules into two separate sections in the pill box and left it on the kitchen island. I took them at lunch, and before my dinner.

The process of putting them in the pill box in the morning, and seeing it in front of me alot made all the difference. I am now taking my vitamins everyday – and it’s effortless.

It was the same story with the improvements to my daily planning process. Switching from the morning to the previous evening didn’t feel like a big change to me at the time. But, it’s what helped me pushed my consistency through the roof. It also led to me making other improvements that I wouldn’t have made otherwise.

See what I mean? I’ve been able to be consistent with habits I’ve been trying to build for years – and all it took was some small tweaks.

It made me realise that you have to be patient and curious. You have to be open minded and try lots of different approaches. And often it’s something small, that you may only realise in hindsight that can make all the difference to being able to stick with a new habit or behaviour.

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below:

Some big improvements to my daily planning process

September 22, 2020

Getting things, and getting the right things done. That’s what it all comes down to.

Thinking about the future is super useful. But, at some point you have to organise yourself on a daily basis, and actually get things done.

I have a very specific process for planning my days, and getting things done. It hasn’t changed much over the last few years, and had settled down – or at least I thought it had.

Over the last few months, I’ve made a few changes. They’ve helped take my daily planning and execution to the next level. I wanted to share them.

Here are the four things I’ve changed recently:

1. When I plan my days

I planned my days in the morning for as long as I can remember. It’s been the foundation of my morning routine.

But, what I’ve realised recently is that morning routines need to be more flexible (more on that in another post). Increasingly, I found myself not managing to get my daily plan done in the morning. And this led me to becoming unfocused for the day.

So, I started experimenting with doing it the night before. I’ll sit down at about 9PM, briefly reflect on the day, and then do my plan for the next day. It’s been a bit of a game changer. I’m much more consistent in my daily planning, which was the main problem I was trying to solve. But, there are other benefits. I now go to bed knowing what tomorrow looks like – which is a great feeling. I’ve drifted towards taking a few moments to reflect how the day went. My mornings also no longer have a planning component to them. It’s made them simpler, and more enjoyable.

2. Tracking daily habits better

I have a handful of habits that I pretty much want to do every day. Right now they are:

eat paleo
Intermittent fasting (8 hour eating window, 16 hour fasting window)
consume approx 2K calories
drink 3 litres of water
reach out to at least one person (friend, colleague, or a new person)

I’ve always found it difficult to incorporate these into a daily plan. They are more behaviours and habits I want to do every day – than they are action items.

I started to jot these habits in short hand at the top right of my daily plan. It helps make a clearer distinction between them and the other action items. That helped me keep them front of mind throughout the day – which is helping me be much more consistent with them. It ‘s also encouraged me to reflect on how well I stuck to these behaviours, as part of my daily planning.

3. Keeping it on paper

I always start my daily planning in my moleskine notebook. And from there, I would use todoist to organise the time blocks and action items for the day. But, I was finding I lost sight of them throughout the day because they were tucked away in my phone. This started to cause me to drift away from my plan throughout the day.

So, I started experimenting with ripping out the daily plan page from my notepad, and keeping it in front of me. When I’m at my desk, it’s right in front of me, When I’m on the move, it’s folded up in my pocket. This has helped keep the plan in front of me throughout the day. I’m now more aware of my plan, and stick to it more often.

4. Combining work and life

I’ve always kept the capture and time blocking part of my daily planning for work and the rest of my life separate. I had a different process for both the capture and time blocking for each.

Over the last few months, I’ve started to combine them a bit. I still start by capturing only life things. But, when I time block out the day, I combine both high level work stuff (meetings, focus blocks etc.) and life stuff. This helps me think about the day holistically, and forces me to think about the balance. I still have some separate process for capture and smaller item planning at work. But, now most of my thinking about the day is combined.

COVID-19 / lockdown pushed me to think this way. Before lockdown came in, I had a big separation between work and life – mostly in the form of leaving the house and going to the office. When this disappeared, I really struggled. But, over time, I found myself thinking more holistically about the day, and this changed how I planned it.

The above four things aren’t massive in themselves. But combined, they add up to a pretty decent step forward in my daily planning, and how I get things done.

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below:

Be where your feet are

September 8, 2020

Try this. Take a breath, and say to yourself – ‘Be where your feet are‘

You’ll find your awareness goes straight to your feet. You should then feel a connection with the ground. And from there, a self awareness and connection with your body.

This will snap you straight into the present moment. A feeling of calm should come over you.

If you were worrying about something, it will probably fall into perspective (most of us spend an enormous amount of mental energy worrying about things we don’t need to, or that will never happen). What’s really important will become a bit clearer.

It should help you spring into the rest of the day with a calmer, clearer, more present mind. At the very least, you’ll shift some worry in that moment, and become more present.

I stumbled across this phrase recently (thanks to this great podcast between Luka Hocevar and Nate Green). I immediately said it to myself and I went through the motions above. I know it feels a bit woo, woo – but it was super effective.

Now I’m on the search for a poster for my home!

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below:

A simple trick that will give you an unfair advantage over 99% of people at work

August 23, 2020

Here’s a simple trick that will give you an unfair advantage over 99% of people at work.

1. Spend time thinking deeply about the results you want to have over a 6 month period. Think about where you must focus, and what you will need to do to achieve them. Organise your ideas into a concise document.

2. Book a meeting with your manager. Tell them that it’s important for you to make the biggest impact as possible over the next 6 months. Talk them through your plan, and get their feedback and ideas.

3. Send your manager a finalised version of your 6 month plan, incorporating their feedback, and any feedback from your peers. Let them know you are super excited to create the results the company needs, and to have as much impact as possible over the next 6 months.

4. At the beginning of each week, take some quiet time to look at this plan, and plan your week. You have 26 weeks to achieve it. Think of each one as a step forward.

Hardly ANYONE does this.

If you do it, your manager will probably fall off their chair. Firstly, because it shows such a high level of self awareness and intention. And secondly, because it will probably be the first time they’ve seen someone do this.

But, not only that, this will help you be much more focused and effective. I like to think I know how to make an impact at work. I largely put this down to the process of being clear on my priorities (the plan), and then being very focused on them every week (the weekly planning process).

If you’re not doing this, you’re missing a huge opportunity to stand out, and be more effective.

If you need any help in how to approach something like this, get in touch. I’d be happy to help.

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below:

The weeks and days are just a problem to be solved

July 9, 2020

Sometimes the things that are best for you, aren’t the most enjoyable. That’s exactly how I’m feeling about my weekly and daily planning at the moment.

I spend a couple of hours on a Sunday, planning the week ahead. And then I spend about 15 – 20 mins each evening, planning the following day. It’s a lot of time, and isn’t easy. I don’t tend to look forward to it – or particularly enjoy doing it. So, why would I spend 4-5 hours a week doing something that I don’t enjoy?

Well, the value is indisputable. When I do it, I am intentional and focused. I spend more time on important things, and get far more done (easily 2 or 3 x more). And there’s no doubt about it, I am way happier. Even when you factor in the difficulty and enjoyment of doing it – it’s a gigantic net positive.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I feel like this about my planning? Surely if it’s so good for me, I would feel like I want to do it? I came to the conclusion that it’s because it’s actually some very intense problem solving.

There are a lot of decisions to make. Firstly, where will I spend my time? (and therefore not spend my time) Even when I’ve decided this, I have to decide what specific actions to do. And again, if I choose to do something, it’s at the expense of something else. Everything feels like a constant trade off.

Once I’ve made those decisions, I start to piece the week together. This involves a lot of moving things around to fit. I have to juggle my existing commitments with the extra things I want to do. Some things need to be done on set dates, and others have dependencies.

And then about half way in, I will realise it’s not possible to fit everything in. I then have to go back and strip some things out – which is even more decisions. It’s like working on a difficult jigsaw puzzle.

Daily planning is a similar effort. Luckily, some of those decisions are already made for me from the weekly planning. But, it still involves having to work out some priorities, decide how I will use my early mornings, time boxing the day, and figuring out the balance between work and everything else.

And lastly, I’m constantly wrestling with my expectations, and the temptation to drift into goal setting. Even though I know these get me into trouble, they still creep in. I’ve built up a good level of self awareness for when these things creep in, but it’s still something I have to notice and not get sucked into.

As you can see, planning weeks and days is difficult, problem solving work. Planning a week will often leave me feeling exhausted afterwards. But this level of discipline actually gives me freedom. It’s a huge relief to know everything is well thought out, and that I’m in control. The right things are in front of me, I just have to get on with it.

P.S. Here’s a guide to how I plan my week – How to plan a killer week.

P.P.S Here’s a guide to how I plan my work week – How to be focused and effective at work

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below:

The counter-intuitive way to get freedom

July 2, 2020

It’s rare that I read an article and think – I wish I had written that. That’s exactly how I felt after reading Wise People Have Rules For Themselves by David Cain.

I agree with every single word.

It sounds odd to say ‘discipline equals freedom’ – but it does. It’s counter-intuitive. When you set rules for yourself that you know are good for you, it’s actually liberating. It’s a huge relief. You no longer have to flip flop between things that work, somewhat work and don’t work. You lean in towards what works for you. You live a life on your terms.

I’d even go as far to say, if you don’t have many rules for yourself, it’s because you haven’t experimented enough with different ways to live your life. I think this is why people tend to enjoy life more when they get older. When you’re younger, life is a range of options and you haven’t had enough time to figure out what works for you. As you get older, you tend to settle into what works for you.

How do you find out what works for you? Well, for a start you have to develop a philosophy and mindset to be the best version of yourself. You have to try different things – and for a long enough period (usually 30 days does the trick). Sometimes it involves stopping something. Sometimes doing something new, or simply just something different.

You then have to notice how these changes impact your life, and make a decision on how that becomes a part of your life. Or, not.

Here are some rules I have for myself, which make my life better:

I eat during an 8-hour window, and then fast for the remaining 16 hours. So, I skip breakfast, and eat between 12.00PM and 8.00PM
I drink a maximum of 3 cups of caffeine a day, and they must be before noon.
I eat paleo 80% of the time (this is my most challenging rule to stick to) I drink 2 litres of water each day
I wake up early (usually for 05.00)
My mornings also follow the same structure – Breathe, Think and Do.
I spend about 2 hours each weekend, planning the following week
I spend about 15-20 mins every evening, planning the following day
I finish every shower with 30 secs of cold water
Ella and I spend 10-15 mins every Sunday, syncing our diaries for the next couple of months.

I’ve settled on the above rules through a lot of experimentation. And from there, realising that there is a significant net positive to my life by sticking to these rules.

I wish I could say I have 100% consistency with these rules, but that’s not realistic. Some are easier than others to stick to. For example, I don’t have to think about skipping breakfast, or limiting my caffeine to 3 cups before noon. But, sticking to paleo, and drinking 2 litres of water every day – that’s a bit more hit and miss.

I’m experimenting with alcohol at the moment. As of today, I haven’t had a drink for 25 days. My life is SO much better without it. I’m leaning towards giving up forever. Perhaps I will only have a drink on very special occasions, and limit it to three drinks. I’m still thinking about that.

Now, you may still be thinking, that’s a very rigid way to live your life. Loosen up, have some fun. And that’s a valid point.

A good friend sent me a great article the other day – Let Yourself Be Unproductive. At Least for a Little While. I agree with alot of it.

I do think it’s important to have periods where you let go of some, or even all rules. In fact, just to let go of trying to be productive. There’s absolutely a place for building in periods of no structure – where you let go of calendars, tasks lists and rules. And actually, this is often necessary to keep a good balance. It also can be critical to break through key phases of life, or to recharge from intense periods.

Balance is the key word there. Most people are much happier when they have their life well organised as the baseline. More often than not, it’s better to have rules, and a system for how to live your life. That’s your foundation. And from there, you can build in periods of rest and downtime where you see fit.

As I said at the beginning, I wish I had written Wise People Have Rules For Themselves. But, I’ll settle for being able to share it with you, and share some of my rules 🙂

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below:

Five things that have helped me be effective at work in lockdown

June 25, 2020

Lockdown has been very challenging for me. It’s taken me much longer to adapt to working from home than I would have expected.

I’ve struggled with a lot of things – video call fatigue, work / life balance, focus and motivation – to name a few. If I’m honest, I lost my edge at times. I feel like I’ve had the least impact I’ve had over a three month period for a long time.

That said, over the last few weeks I’m getting into a much better place with it. I’ve been reflecting on what’s helped the most, and five things came to mind:

Lowering my expectations

I got very frustrated in the first half of lockdown. I wasn’t able to operate at the level I was used to – perhaps, about half as effective. I felt detached from what was going on.

It’s really important for me to feel like I’m being effective. I have to be able to see how I’m having a significant and obvious impact. And this kinda slipped away from me.

I got frustrated and was very hard on myself. It took one of my colleagues to remind me that it was unrealistic to perform at the same level. Our whole world had been turned upside down after all, and it was going to take some time to settle into it.

Immediately, something clicked into place for me. From that moment on, I lowered my expectations and was kinder to myself. That helped me see things more clearly, and I was able to more calmly re-organise myself.

The balance between meeting, doing and thinking

Before lockdown started, my week was beautifully organised. There was an almost perfect balance between meetings, doing and thinking – which I think is essential for any manager to operate at peak. This was no fluke, I designed it that way.

As soon as we went into lockdown, it went out the window. Meetings expanded to fill most of the space in the week. I found myself on back to back video calls, with hardly any time to do anything – let alone space to think.

I fell behind on things and made some rushed, poor decisions. Urgent topics dominated my day. I found it harder to spot problems heading our way, and felt super overwhelmed.

Only recently have I been able to get this balance back – and WHAT a difference it’s made. I’m back to feeling in control, and on top of things. I’m spending more time on important things, and less on urgent things. I’m still in alot of meetings – but, I now have time to get stuff done, and also some space to think. How did I get that balance back? That leads me onto the next thing…

Re-organising my calendar, and my time

When I was at my most overwhelmed, I decided to take a step back and make some ruthless changes to my calendar. I’ve always been very good at managing my time, but my old system wasn’t dealing with lockdown very well.

I went back to basics, and re-thought everything. I stopped some 121’s, and reduced others in frequency and length. I stepped out of some recurring group meetings, and decided others were now optional. I went back to an old system of reserved time blocks for interviews.

The above gave me a LOT more space straight away. At the beginning of each week I’m now much more disciplined about getting my calendar exactly how I want it. It has to be the right ratio of meetings, doing and thinking. I start by getting my meetings how they need to be. I then time box two or three blocks which I reserve for focused work. After that, I need to see enough free space around the meetings and focus blocks. This gets used for spontaneous things, or as space to think.

This week was a perfect example. Monday morning was full of meetings, with the afternoon mostly free. Tues was back to back meetings (rare, but I had a lot going on). I had the entire morning Weds for focused work, and the afternoon for meetings. Thurs is off (I work four days a week). And Friday is about 2 or 3 hours of meetings, and the rest would have been a mix of focus work, and free space, but is now a holiday (more on this below). I’ve felt great the whole week, and already feel confident the week will end well.

Shutting down

Over the last few years I’ve gotten very good at being on when I’m on, and off when I’m off. I leave the house, commute to work, and then double down on work. When I’m done, I commute home, walk in the house, and then my laptop rarely comes back out. I have no work emails, messengers or calendars on my phone. This structure helped create a separation between the work and my own life.

Lockdown disrupted that pattern. I found myself working later, and also into the evenings. Part of it was because I no longer had a clear separation between work and the rest of my life. The other part was, I was feeling overwhelmed and my expectations were running away with me. So, I compensated by trying to work more (never sustainable, and usually always a bad idea).

It took awhile for me to lower my expectations, and re-organise my calendar and time to get into a better place. I also took some of Cal Newport’s advice about having a shut down ritual. I am trying to be more conscious about setting the time at which I will stop working when I plan my day out. At the end of the day I try and clear any unread emails, and then I shut my laptop.

This is still a work in progress. I completely failed at that last night. I opened my emails to check on something about 8PM, and from there got sucked into some other email topics. I ended up doing that until about 9.30PM. I wish I hadn’t because some of the frustration of those topics stuck with me and I found it much harder to sleep. I knew when I was doing it, it was stupid. But, I did it anyway and and then felt stupid afterwards 🙂

That said, I’m much better than I was a few weeks ago, and it’s helped me get most of my evenings back.

Walking calls

This seems to be something a lot of people I’ve spoken to have found useful. There’s something about being on video calls that is draining. It also tends to keep you in the same spot for a long time.

I started to take some of my meetings on my phone, and whilst I walked outside. This broke up the day. It got me moving, some fresh air, and away from video for a bit. The days I do this and far less exhausting.

Don’t try and multi-task looking after a five year old, and doing work

If you’re on the ball today, you’ll notice this is the sixth thing 😉 I couldn’t resist.

When you try to multitask parenting and work, all that happens is you do both badly. My heart goes out to people that are forced into this because of their situation. Ella and I feel very grateful and lucky. We’re both continuing to work and have income. Ella works part-time, so has been able to handle the bulk of the home schooling. She’s also a teacher, so she has a leg up on most people. I really do appreciate how lucky we are.

But, there have been times when Ella has had to go to work, and I tried to juggle both. It left me super frustrated at doing neither well. I rushed my work, and neglected Fearne (my daughter).

Fearne’s school shuts down at midday on a Friday, so they can deep clean in the afternoon. Ella works Friday, so I have been on childcare for the last two Friday afternoons. I’m also on the hook for the next 4 weeks.

I tried to juggle both in the first week, and it was a car crash. I’ve since booked my Friday afternoons off as holiday for the next four weeks. That way, I can just focus on having a nice time with Fearne. A far better way of going about it!

I hope you find these useful. If you’ve found something particularly useful, feel free to drop me a line and let me know.

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below:

The thing about hard things

June 18, 2020

It started off easy, but it was about to get much harder.

I jumped on the assault airbike and got my first twenty calories done. I held a fast (ish pace, which took about a minute.

Next up was Ella. She had fifteen calories to do, which also took about a minute. Whilst one of us worked, the other rested. So, we both worked for roughly a minute, followed by a minute of rest.

Before we started, I wrote ‘500 calories’ on the chalkboard. Next to it, I also put ‘1000 calories?’. We had to hit at least 500 total calories to complete the workout – 1000 calories as a stretch goal.

I was anxious before we started. But, I figured I can do most things for a minute. I mean, it’s just a minute – followed by a minute’s rest. It’s going to take a while, but it won’t be that hard.

My 20 calories slowly got harder and harder. They went from easy, and not thinking too much about them – to actually needing to have a strategy for them. Jump on, and push hard for a few seconds to start with (gets the revolutions per minute up quickly). Hold the first 10 calories at a set pace. Then, another short burst for a few calories, followed by seeing the rest of the calories out at the set pace. Towards the end of the workout, I had to put my head down for the last few calories, giving it my last effort to complete them. VERY different to the first set.

It was the same for my rest periods. They started off with me standing around and slowly getting my breath back. I quickly had to come up with a strategy to recover and get my head in the right place for my next go on the bike. 15 secs of leaning against the wall, letting my breath come down. A quick sip of water, and then 30 secs of walking around. Then, about 15 secs of getting my mind ready for another minute.

We hit 1,000 calories in 73 mins, 21 seconds. It’s one of the hardest workouts I’ve done – second only to a 2K row.

I tried to convince myself it was OK to stop when we hit 500 calories. I did that about twenty more times on the path to finally hitting 1,000 calories. Each time the thought popped into my head, I reminded myself of how great I would feel when finished.

And that’s exactly what happened. I felt really good about myself immediately after finishing. It lasted for the rest of the day. I did something hard, which by the way – I tried to talk myself out of a lot of times. I was as proud of my mental toughness, as I was the physical accomplishment. I proved I could push through something very hard and finish it.

I go through some of the same process at work. I’m often involved in things that are ambitious and hard. I help teams and people change direction, and do things differently. It takes a lot of convincing, and over-communicating key messages. Plenty of difficult conversations. It’s super fast paced. And it takes an enormous effort to build momentum, after which holding onto it can be fragile and difficult.

Why do I bother doing it? I could find easier work. Money hasn’t been a key motivating driver for quite a while.

I do it for much the same reasons as why I pushed through the air bike workout. It’s rewarding to do difficult things.

It might feel like a slog at times when you’re in it. But, that’s often the path you have to go through to achieve something meaningful. That’s where the growth and learning happens. That’s where you continue to build mental toughness, confidence and resilience. And that’s how you get results you’re proud of.

So, the question is – how often are you doing physically and mentally hard things that make you feel uncomfortable? Is it enough?

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below:

Whoop

May 30, 2020

It’s been a long time since I’ve loved a product as much as Whoop. It’s helped opened my eyes to the fine balance between pushing myself hard, resting and recovering.

It’s also helped me be far more self aware of where my body is at, and what I can do to influence things.

Let’s rewind back a bit (I’ve been wearing a whoop band for about 45 days now).

It all started because I wanted to better understand how I was sleeping. As usual, I spent a lot of time looking at what products were on the market. I started to get a feeling that Whoop was one of the leaders in this space.

It did everything I wanted. It tracks how long you sleep, and your sleep quality. It’s also been benchmarked against the gold standard of sleep tracking – so I felt confident in the accuracy of it.

As I dug deeper, I realised that it was far more powerful than just a sleep tracking tool. It’s actually a much broader health device.

What seems to give it the edge on its competitors, is the way it uses and visualises the data. This helps you actually understand how to change your behaviours to improve things.

The product is build around three pillars:

Sleep

Whoop auto detects when you fall asleep and wake up (I was blown away with how well it does this). Shortly after you wake, it gives you a detailed summary of your sleep. Here’s mine from last night:

I mostly look at two things. How much sleep I got, and how much REM and deep sleep I managed. I like to see my total sleep over 7 hours, and my REM and deep sleep to be above 40%. Last night’s sleep was really good – 7.31 and 42%.

Recovery

Every day, you’re given a recovery score out of 100, and it’s banded green, orange and red:

Your recovery score is generated using three things:

Heart Rate variability (HRV)
Resting heart rate (RHR)
Sleep quality

Strain

My recovery score today is super good (91%). A combination of fairly good sleep, a good HRV and a low RHR:

Strain measures the cardiovascular load your body takes on over the course of a day. Throughout the day, you get a real time strain score of between 0 and 21.

Your score is generated by your heart rate throughout the day. So, things like activity, but also other factors such as stress will affect your strain score.

Specific activities also get a strain score. Whoop auto detects when you’re active, and will also try and classify the type of activity. It’s surprisingly accurate at this. For example, it will auto detect when I go for a cycle (within a few minutes of starting and finishing) and auto detects it as a cycling activity.

Here’s how strain is visualised:

OK, so that all sounds well and good, but here is why I find Whoop particularly powerful.

I am much more self aware of how my body is doing on a day to day basis now. The equation of strain vs. recovery is always in the back of my mind. And this often changes how I approach my day.

For example, if I wake up to a low recovery score, I will tend to map out a gentler day. I also make a concerted effort to get to bed earlier. If I’m at crossfit, I will approach my workout entirely differently. I will keep at a moderate pace, and focus more on technique. It’s not the right time to go all out. On the flip side, if I see a green recovery score, I know I can let loose a bit.

The other thing I’ve noticed, is I’m more in tune with how my behaviours affect my HRV and sleep. I’m starting to see some patterns and this allows me to tweak my behaviours to improve things. Drinking alcohol too close to bed is a big one.

Lastly, they just get the basics right. The strap looks good and is comfortable. It’s water proof. The battery lasts 5 days, and it’s easy to charge without taking it off (no data loss). You can create and join community groups, so you can compare yourself against others. Oh, and they have a really great podcast.

Whoop does WAY more than I’ve outlined here. It’s worth checking out the product features for yourself.

As with most things that are good and work well, it’s on the pricier side of things. The strap is free, but you have to sign up for a $30 a month subscription. You can get it a touch cheaper if you sign up for a longer commitment.

If you click this link, you’ll get your first month free (and I’ll get a free month too!)

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below:

It’s OK to throw a plan away

May 6, 2020

Don’t worry, it really is me writing this. No one has hacked my account! 😉

I got quite a few replies to yesterdays My love / hate relationship with weekly planning post. I realised after I hit the send button, that I should have included a few caveats.

Most of the replies were themed around those caveats. Here is part of one of the replies, which pretty much sums up most of them:

but maybe there is room to sway off the path every now and then, see what happens

I absolutely agree with that. I think having a plan, and then being flexible is the most effective way to go about things. But, that’s not an excuse to not do the plan in the first place. That’s the baseline.

Before I cover how I deal with being flexible, a couple of things.

If you don’t have clarity on what’s important to you in your life, you’re hosed from the start. You will find yourself being pulled towards things that aren’t important – or important to other people. If you don’t have a detailed plan for the week and the day, the same type of thing will happen (even if you have clarity). The awareness for what’s important will help limit the damage, but it will continue to be an uphill struggle.

With that said, a plan is something to hold onto. And there are two types of flexibility I afford myself:

It’s OK to deviate from the plan

Life happens. People cancel meetings. Important, urgent issues come up. You make a plan to wake up early and get a bunch of stuff done. But, instead your daughter decides to keep you up half the night (literally me today).

When stuff like this happens, you have to go back to the plan you made and adjust it. And then you get going again. And then adjust again if you need to. This happens to me most days, and it doesn’t take much time to do it. What’s important is that it’s all intentional.

It’s OK to drop the plan entirely.

I do this super rarely. But, sometimes there’s an opportunity to get lost in something completely different.

This happens to me at work from time to time. I’ll map out a whole day and feel good about it. Do this thing, speak to that person, go to that meeting etc. And then I’ll smell a problem somewhere.

Whilst it’s rare, sometimes I will decide to wipe the day out, and start exploring it. When I do that, I usually find that it was absolutely necessary to invest a large amount of time in that one thing.

When I come to the end of the day, I recalibrate the weekly plan and get back on track. Again, the key here is that this is an intentional decision.

So, I guess what I’m saying is you should start with detailed plans. You have to be intentional about what you are going to do. But, then you have to be flexible and adjust – either in small ways (frequently) or big ways (less frequently).

The key is to do this intentionally, and recalibrate after. This gives you the best of both worlds.

Get my ideas straight to your inbox. Sign up for my newsletter below: