Do What Works For You

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction. So let's dive straight in to this week's episode.

If your energy levels and motivation right now aren't where you'd like them to be, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is for you. And if you are looking around and you're being bombarded with advice around what you should be doing to get yourself energised and motivated and you find that you're beating yourself up even more because you are not doing some of that stuff, then today's episode is even more relevant. If you want to get really good or even just to get back on an even keel when it comes to managing your own energy and levels of motivation, what I really encourage you to do is do what works for you. We can easily get lured into doing all sorts of things that this guru or that guru tells us we should be doing. And that is a real problem because as soon as we start saying to ourselves out loud or even in our head, I really should be doing this, actually it starts to put us into a fight or flight frame of mind. It makes us start thinking about failure and that itself becomes really draining and demotivating. Okay, so yes, you can listen to the advice that people might be sharing around what to do to manage your energy levels and motivation, but at the end of the day, you know you better than anybody else. So really try and do the stuff that you know works for you. And deep down we all know what that stuff is. It's just about committing to doing it and having the courage to be true to who we are and do the things that we know work for us. And I'm no different. Right? For many, many years I was a massive fan of the Canadian personal development guru, Robin Sharma. Some of you, I'm sure, have heard from him. And after resisting it for a long time, it eventually I started to try his 5am club strategy and protocol and I would get up at 5am and I would do my 10 to 15 minutes of exercise and then try and do some mindfulness meditation and then do my journaling. And parts of it worked, parts of it didn't work for me, and I stuck at it for at least six months. But gradually I found that I was actually getting more and more fatigued. So instead of it energizing me, it actually made me more tired. Because the reality was, at my stage in life, wanting to run my business, but more importantly, wanting to be the sort of dad and husband I wanted to be, I simply could not get to bed early enough to give myself sufficient sleep to get up at 5am and run his 5am protocol. And eventually I said, you know what? This doesn't work for me. I'm going to ditch the bits that don't work for me and I'm going to take the bits that do and create my own routines and protocols. So my big challenge, my big encouragement, my big wish for you as a result of this particular episode of the Leaders Kickback is to know yourself and do the stuff that works for you. And part of that can be around really understanding and accepting your personality type. This will surprise many people. And despite what I do for a living, I am quite a big introvert and I'm now comfortable with that. And I know what that means. It means I am energised by some time alone and spending time in smaller with smaller groups of people in slightly more intimate settings. So what does that mean in practice? Well, when I know I'm having really busy periods at work or I'm in the middle of a really busy period and my wife, hey, we've been invited to this party or this event. Sometimes if I know I really need to manage my energy to deliver at work, I might say, do you know what, if it's okay with you, I'm going to skip that. And I might just stay at home, hang at home by myself, or I might be very intentional about scheduling in a long bike ride by myself because that works for me. And interestingly, my wife is the complete opposite. As a massive extrovert, her energy really comes from other people and she is very conscious and intentional when she is busy making sure that her calendar is filled up with lots of time with other people and lots of interactions. So as I say, my main plea, I guess, for you as a result of today's episode is to know yourself, do the stuff that you know works for you, and be okay with taking different ideas from different people and creating something that is going to keep you energized and motivated because we are all wonderfully different and unique. And that's what makes life and business so interesting. Hope it's been useful. As always, look after yourself. Look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, lead on.