| Hi Friend!
I was recently chatting with Ed, the groom of one of our members, and he asked if I could write about how to peak for your day, and I thought that was a good idea, so here's a quick rundown on what to consider, when planning to peak for your day.
How to Peak for Your Day? - Sleep
- Wind down routine
- Move
- Eat
- Avoid
- Schedule
- Time It
- Buffers
- Close it Out
- Do it again!
Sleep Everyone knows sleep is important, but if you're under slept, you're always going to be borrowing energy from tomorrow to pay for today's efforts. And most people not only borrow energy from tomorrow, they compound it by using caffeine to make up for the energy they don't have, which if used too often or too much can lead to adrenal fatigue and dependence.
How much sleep do you need to jump out of bed in the morning? Answer that and that's the number you need. It could be 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... hours or 5.25, 6.5, 7.75, 8.33hrs. You're unique and so are your needs.
Next.
What time do you need to wake up? Subtract the number of hours from that time and that's your lights out time.
E.G. I need, but don't regularly get, 8 hours to jump out of bed and feel ferocious (I made the ferocious part up). I wake up at 4am. That means lights out for me needs to be 8pm. Sometimes, I can pass right out at 8 or before 8, but sometimes I'm not even home at 8 or I'm too energized to fall asleep. Which leads to needing a Wind Down Routine.
Wind Down Routine Babies and children have bed time routines and so should we. Almost every time, we put Vivi through her bedtime routine, I'm ready to pass out during story time. Here's a sample of her routine:
- Dinner @ 5:30p
- Bath, teeth, hair, lotion and pj's @ 6:00p
- Book(s), stories from daddy's head, talk about the days' and good night kisses.
- Lights out @ 7pm. (6:7=1)
It's not always perfect, but that's her routine.
And, we get ready for bed with her, so if she's down at 7p, we've got roughly an hour to lay out our clothes, if we haven't already, pack our food if we haven't already and get our bags ready for tomorrow if we haven't already. Then we read / have pillow talk.
Of course, I coach 3 nights a week, so that means everyone is already in bed when I get home, so my wind down starts at 8:15p, with a goal of lights out at 9p. It's not ideal, but I can sleep in to 5am on T to get my 8hrs if I don't want to get my day started right away.
Move. Tony Robbins, says motion causes emotion, and he's right. Most everyone is their best self if they've moved and taking some physical self-care action in their day. I used to be a night person, but changed to a morning person because of opportunity. Now I prefer to start my day by moving. What better way to prime your day than by getting in a sweat first thing in the morning.
Now that statement is what morning people say because that's what they do.
I regularly train at 10:30am on M / W / F so this sets me up for bright eyed and bushy tailed admin, call time and afternoon training.
And when I used to train in the afternoon, after work, that absolutely complimented my work hard / play hard mantra on the weekends, but it also helped me decompress from the day and set me up for feeling energized in the morning because as you may or may not know, there's an "Afterburn" effect from high intensity interval training, known as Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) that has your resting metabolism elevated for 12-72 hours afterwards, which means you're burning more body fat at a higher rate post exercise and why you have good energy highs after exercise that's intense and intermittent.
So if you want to present your best self to your day, and who says, nah, I'd like to present my worst self to my day, you've gotta move and you've gotta move EVERYDAY, to be your best self.
Eat. If I had a business (I do) and I was responsible for a team of people who needed to be high performing and kicking butt, I would totally make sure they had access to the best high performing foods because wouldn't you want your team to have access to high performance nutrition so they could be their best selves and dominate their days? I came from pro sports, and in the minor leagues we had no budget for food, so we ate a lot of pbj's and chips before games, but during spring training, at the Red Sox Minor League and Major League Complexes, breakfast and lunch were provided for us and it was pre-planned with a chef and an RD (Newton's own, Nancy Clark), so the players AND staff could kick butt. And we did.
How many meals per day do you need to eat to feel and be your best?
How soon do you need to eat your 1st meal, so you can be sharp and have energy to think and perform?
How much time do you schedule between your meals? (do you eat every 3-4 hours, every 1-2 hours, every 5 hours...)?
Either you already know what's best for you and you only need to create and follow a schedule or you don't know and a little guidance would be helpful.
Avoid Gosh, it took me until I met Vanessa to realize the importance of boundaries, bumpers, guardrails, whatever you want to call it, to set limits.
If I know exactly what I'd feed myself and my team so they could kick a**, then I also know what I'd avoid so they don't suck.
- foods that cause GI distress
- foods that cause food coma
- screens 1-2 hours before bed (I'm not yet perfect on this), but I intentionally don't have a tv to help prevent this.
- breaking your routine on the weekend. Vivi needs to be on the same schedule 7 days a week, otherwise her sleep routine gets f'd up the rest of the days. So if somebody special visits, then they best get to our house early if they want to see her b/c we're done dealing with disrupted sleep. If we visit somebody, most times we'll intentionally start or suggest and early start time, so we can leave & keep / start our wind down routine.
- the news as much as possible. It's too negative and puts you onto someone else's agenda. choose media that fertilizes your garden aka nourishes your brain.
- borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today. I used to and still retain the skill of doing "whatever it takes to get the job done", but there's a big cost with that practice and it's never been more magnified since I've been blessed with a family. Good luck trying to sleep in all day on a family day. This means, even when you're on a roll and in the zone, you have to stop and keep to your schedule, so you leave enough time to commute, eat and stick to your wind down routine.
- excessive caffeine. I love me some espresso, but I live in such a way, that I present a high energy self to most days, so consuming it makes me too high. Some people aren't big responders to caffeine (you can test this with your DNA), so a little bit is no big deal. Too much has a big cost. Ever had a red bull or monster drink and felt tired the next day. No, no, no. You don't want that.
Schedule Man, you can learn so much about life, by being a parent. Kids need to have a schedule and routines, and so do parents. When I worked in pro sports, someone made the schedule everyday and posted it.
Sample Road Schedule 11am, Team Lift 12pm, Lunch 1pm, 1st Bus 2pm, 2nd Bus 3pm, Team Stretch 3:30pm, Batting Practice 4:30pm, Pre-game Meal 5:30pm, Infield / Outfield 7pm, Game 10:30pm, 1st Bus 11:00pm, 2nd Bus
Basic Variables to Schedule - Wake
- Exercise
- Get Ready
- Breakfast
- Commute
- Work
- Lunch
- Work
- Commute
- Dinner
- Wind Down Routine
- Lights Out
Other Variables to Schedule - Grocery Shopping
- Cooking
- School drop off / pick up
- Extracurricular drop offs / pick ups
- Mail
- Budgeting
- Reconciling
- Check Ins
- Date Night
- Chores
- Laundry
- Friends & Family
- Goal Setting / Progress
- Events
- Email
- Calls
- Appointments
- Buffers
- Scheduling
Scheduling can give you peace of mind, because you don't have to think too much and you can show up and do your best. What time is it? Where am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to be doing? Done. Got it. I'm doing it!
Time It! This goes along with boundaries, bumpers and guardrails and is similar to interval training. Use a timer. Set your timer for how much time you want to do something. Hit start, and keep tabs. When the timer goes off, you move on to the next thing. It can be fun and energizing if you let it.
Most tasks can be broken down into 10, 15, 20, 30 or hour long pieces, so schedule those pieces, set your timer, do it and move on to the next one.
Buffers You gotta also schedule buffers into your day for the random FaceTime call from your daughter or the sweet checkin for no reason from your wife, or the random talk about the Celtics phone call from your Best friend, as well as the disturbing text you get because you had your phone their or the email you shouldn't have opened or checked, or the phone call you got that you shouldn't have taken, etc...
Right now I'm experimenting with a 1hour buffer in my day and I gotta tell you it makes me feel so much more relaxed when something happens that takes me away from my work, and then I look at my schedule and see I've already accounted for something miscellaneous to come up. I get this feeling that I still have time to follow my plan and that's very uplifting. It's also kick ass if you don't have to use the buffer and you either finish early or get something extra done.
Close It Out Chris Correnti, my mentor with the Red Sox, used to write out his "To Do's" for the next day before he left and he'd leave them right on top of his desk. I thought this was brilliant.
Every where you look, if you're looking for personal development, the leaders say to finish your day, by planning your tomorrow. Close out your day. Reflect on how it went and then schedule the next.
I certainly don't want to lose, and I imagine neither do you, so what's 5-15min to plan out your tomorrow by stopping 5-15min early or better yet, scheduling your last 15min to plan your tomorrow. You know the saying, "you can prepare to fail or prepare to win". Why not set up your tomorrow to kick butt!
Do it again! This has been the most challenging thing I've ever done. Being consistent. I've always had the sprint / burst / hare / semester / season mentality. I was Work Hard / Play hard, way before I was Work Hard / Rest Hard. To really win long term, you've gotta be consistent daily, that means 7 days a week. It doesn't mean you're boring and you don't have any fun. You absolutely have fun, but you do it on your terms with minimal costs. Who wants wasted days being hung over. Who wants to spend a gorgeous day sleeping in because you borrowed energy and skipped sleep to get more done in 1 day or stayed up all night. People take Vitamin D because they don't get enough sunlight. Get the sunlight. It's more fun. Save the Vitamin D for the gray days.
Consider this. Nora Roberts, is a romance novelist, who's written 225 books since 1979, for an average of 5.77 books per year or roughly 1 book every 63.25 days. She's got a net worth of $370 million according to forbes.
You can't get good if you're not consistent. You can however get really awesome if you do the same things, the same right things, over and over, most every day.
I hired a coach in August. He told me to pull back the curtain on all the thoughtfulness I put into Change Your Body Boot Camps and the programming. He told me to write EVERYDAY. "Every day", I asked? "EVERYDAY!", he said. Well, you know I'm not writing everyday and I'm not pulling back the curtain everyday, but since August, you also know I've been writing a lot more.
To write more, you have to be consistent with all the other things, so you can keep your commitment and you've gotta do it 7 days a week. I don't work 7 days a week, but I have a rough schedule for 7 days a week, that includes sleep and wake times, wind down times, meal times and training times as constants. Plus all or most of the other important things are scheduled and the one's that aren't are in the process of.
If you want to prime yourself for your day, get enough sleep to jump out of bed, exercise enough to make you sweat and feel energized, and eat the right foods for you, in the right amount at the right time. If you want to prime your life, bookmark this newsletter, take notes, re-read it and put it into practice.
If you want help making sure you're doing the right things for your body exercise and nutrition wise and you want to surround yourself with high energy, awesome people who also are making a commitment to live best case lives, reply and let me know.
Shutting down to keep my routine,
Coach Mike
p.s. Saturday is M&O for Phase 6 which begins Monday.
p.p.s. If you're interested in joining CYBBC, private training or a consult, reply and let me know.
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