Hi Friend
My friend Bruce Waller has a saying I love – “Some days are bigger than others.” That’s how I feel about this past week. It was a big one. Saturday morning, I got to participate in LoveOKC. It was a drive-thru distribution of food and stuff. Sunday I ran the OKC Memorial Half Marathon. My pace was 9:59. Since I crashed my bike a few weeks ago, I haven’t run. I felt great about getting in under 10.
I spoke at a platform conference about “Day Designing” hybrid and virtual experiences. First time I got to do that. I was on the road Wednesday through Friday. I spoke in Texas and in Georgia. Live audiences are so fun! Two out of my three flights I flew standby. I had booked later flights because I just wasn’t sure how my travels would go. Both events I rented a car and drove 1.5 hours from the airport.
I’m grateful that option is offered. One got me to the clients dinner that I wasn’t going to make and the other got me home earlier, so I went to see the Bond movie.
Standby’s are like an act of grace. I committed to one plan, but I made better time then expected, so standby invites us to gain access to a time and place we weren’t going to get to, till later. I like efficiency. I like maximizing my use of time. I like the option to keep benefitting from the previous good use of time.
It’s like the airline (Delta, whom I love) is in partnership with me and what I’m trying to accomplish. When things go better-than-expected they’ve created a mechanism to accommodate continuing the momentum I have going in my day. How sweet is that?
Daily momentum exhilarates the soul!
In all the well-being writings about good sleep, consistent exercise, healthy food intake and the like, I don’t really see much said about mindfully building momentum into our days. I have read about knowing when we’re at our peak. A few years ago at one of my clients events there was a neuroscientist who said every day there are something like eight minutes we’re at our very best and we should know when that is and take full advantage.
So much for a four hour work week, let’s go with an eight minute work day. 😝
Given that most of our existence doesn’t occur in our “prime state,” thinking about how to layer our activities in a way that builds on one another seems like a worthy consideration. You and I don’t do that. We structure our daily calendar and life, whether proactively or reactively, in isolated chunks. Do you ever say “I don’t want to have that meeting then, because the next thing I’m going into I’ll need different energy.”
The “Morning routine” is meant to be a lift-off for each day that sets momentum in motion. Intentionally addressing the four-core of our being at dawn initiates good energy.
Spiritual
Mental
Physical
Relational
I wonder if we incorporated addressing those same individual components briefly throughout the day, how that would impact us? There are religions where the people pray multiple times a day at specific times. Just stop what they’re doing and start praying. Most of us think “I don’t have time for that.” Yet what if that very act, made all of their other time substantially more productive and fulfilling?
Both Sarah and Monica go to the gym frequently. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes at lunch and sometimes in the evening. I’m regularly impressed by them, because they’ve committed to get that boost of physical goodness in their life at some point most days. Whereas I’m like, if it doesn’t happen the first thing in the morning, it’s probably not going to happen.
Relational is both with others and ourselves. As an extrovert I’m energized by people. However, I also put reflection and gratitude in this same category because it’s how I relate to the world around me.
Instigating Ideas…
1. What if we built into our calendar Momentum Boosters? Five minutes every other hour inserting one of the four core?
2. What if we looked at our weekly schedule and labeled it “Energy Giving” or “Energy Taking”?
3. Who do you need to be around more that creates good juju in your life?
John Maxwell wrote a book decades ago about momentum. I recall him saying with it we look better than we truly are and without it, worse than we truly are. Momentum facilitates grace and flow.
In our aspirations to do and be excellent, make a difference, fulfill purpose, love well and live fully alive, it seems consciously embedding Momentum Boosters into our day would be one of the more thoughtful things we could do! It’s one of those things that feels like we’re adding more to the calendar but by doing them, it actually causes our use of time to be more potently effective, creating a sense of “more time.”