We’ve all heard, for a long time, that we must become more productive. To live worthy lives.
I deeply believe that optimizing your productivity so you can produce your mastery, feel the great feeling that progress brings and get closer to your highest hopes is important. On this we agree.
Yet all this pressure to be productive, all the time, no matter what the season, has made many among us see ourselves as unsuccessful. It’s made too many good souls exhausted.
And left a ton of our brothers and sisters in the world fearing they are somehow of less value.
There are a few remedies. The first is to make sure that where you’re productive you’re really productive. And when the time for work is over, you make the time to recover.
It’s really really really important to remember that working hard and stress are not evils (at all!).
It’s the failure of so many of us to recover and retreat from stress so that we refuel and enjoy life fully that’s the real and pressing problem.
This model from The 5AM Club [thank you to all of my readers who are sharing and gifting the book to those they love, worldwide] has been so very helpful to the financial titans I mentor and the leadership teams I coach. It’s called The Twin Cycles of Elite Performance (T2CEP) and it represents the science that confirms the most productive people on the planet don’t work all the time.
No, they understand that “hustle and grind” is a bad strategy and that less is actually more.
When they work, they work with fantastic focus and splendid dedication. And then, they pause. They renew. They walk and travel and read and play. They recover and rest and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Here’s the model so you can study it:
