Transcription
[Music] I want to make sure I get through this. The twin cycles of Elite Performance, it's it's pretty simple. There are five assets of genius. There's your mental focus, your physical energy. I'm just deconstructing genius for you. Your mental focus. She or he with the highest bandwidth wins. If you deplete your bandwidth, you're not going to bring your focus to the problems that you're solving. You're actually going to bring fragmented attention to your problems. That explains why you're not doing world-class work. If you're not doing world-class work, focus is more valuable than intelligence. So the first asset to to fortify, I love that word, fortify, is your mental focus. How do you do that? I've shared it with you. TBTF. How do you do that? I've shared with you zero device days. How do you do that? You you run the weekly design system that gives you time to work. How do you do that? The 1991 rule.
Second asset of genius, it's your energy. If if you're on fire, you can change the world and have a great time doing it. How do you build your energy? I've spent a lot of this weekend talking about that. Two 2MP, second win workout, 2020 20 formula.
Third asset to protect is your personal willpower. The fourth is your talent, and the fifth is your time. Well, what I suggest you do is each day, each week, each month, each year, you operate like an artist and you work in a series of seasons or cycles. You've got your HC, which is your high excellence cycle. That is your sprint. Now, this could be your 90 minutes at the beginning of the day and the 60-minute sprint. It could be a season. So I have these three, four, five-month stretches where meticulously I am up at 4 o'clock and I'm scripted and I'm on fire and I am hyperproductive. And then I will retreat.
And when do you retreat? You might be wondering. Let your muse guide you. Get to know your own creative cycles. If you get intimacy with who you truly are, then you're going to find out. Like for for me, now, I'm not really that creative in this cycle right now. I finished the book, I submitted it in last September. I've been on promotional tours, etc., for many months. And at some level, I just know my creative well is fairly empty. Does that make sense? Is that fair? And so I know it's a time after this event, actually. I'm shutting down. Person, I should say shutting down. I am I am on refueling break until the first week in of September. I'm not going to do it. And I think I'm going to do things like read the classics. I've got vacation planned. I'm going to watch sunsets, hang with my family, do mountain, spend a lot of time with art, write, walk in the woods, sleep. And I'm just going to refuel. And then I'm going to come back in September really strong. And next year, I've already built out January, February, and March. I know where I'm going to be. And so literally, I structure my years around these two seasons.
So you've got your high excellence cycle. And this is where I think it's so important because I don't believe creative artists and epic performers are on 24/7. I am encouraging you to work for a period of time and then slow down for a period of time. Elite Performance with deep recovery. Elite Performance without deep recovery leads to asset depletion. Elite Performance without deep refueling leads to the the depletion of your five assets of genius. If all you do is high excellence output, creativity, running all of these 10 routines I shared, if that's all you do, over time, your focus is like a well, it'll become empty. Your physical energy, you need recovery and rest to replenish your physical energy. Willpower is like a muscle. If all you use is your willpower, then you wonder why people like, I shouldn't me, I'm not going to mention names, but have you seen politicians who do the most silly things that you'd never imagine a leader doing? Someone once said to me at one of my events, we're we're one decision away from stupid. Why do such iconic people make such foolish mistakes? You know what it's called? Ego depletion. That's what the habit researchers call it. Ego depletion. They are making such heavy decisions, like you in this room, you're making such decisions. You're up at 5:00 AM, you're running your family, you're running a team, you're R you're caring for your customers, you might be a philanthropist. You're making such heavy decisions that you will suffer from ego depletion if you do not run the deep recovery cycle. Is everyone with me so far? Because you're making such, it's like a muscle, you're making, you're flexing your willpower, you're making all of these heavyweight choices. And if you don't take the time to rest and have fun and go to art galleries and take vacations and schedule a month at a time wherever it is that fuels your fire, then you're going to wear down your self-regulation muscle. It's called ego deple, ego depletion or decision fatigue. And that's why at 11 o'clock at night, most people reach for the potato chips. That's why most crime happens after 11:00. That's why most of us watch the most toxic TV shows or movies late at night. We've made choices all day. We've been using our willpower muscles, and the willpower muscle is exhausted. That's a good, good reason to go to sleep at 10:00.
So then you get into the deep refueling cycle, which is, it's like, here's this, the the metaphor for you, it's like the fallow season in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year. If you're like a, it's the farmer metaphor. The farmer, she plants, and then she has a fallow season where she doesn't do anything. She rests. She watches Netflix with her family and just hangs out. And she allows. And it's very easy to think because the plants are not growing that the seeds are not blooming, but the fallow season is necessary for the autumn harvest. So each day, give yourself a fallow season. Each week, take Fridays off. Do less work and get more done. Take Fridays off. Is that cool? From today onwards, take, take Fridays off. And then when I, when I teach this to my high-level clients, it's like, well, what would people think? Your job is to lead, not to follow. You are paid for performance. Take Fridays off. And then take Saturdays and Sundays off. And then when you work, is this shocking to you? You look sort of shocked or no, you're embracing it. You're going through your schedule. Yeah, but you know, it's, it's, you know, I listen to an, remember Zig Ziggler? Remember Zig Ziggler? Like one of the great motivators. And he talked about the day before vacation, right? He said, if someone was going to, you know, he talked in his Texan accent, it's like, if someone was going to give you a holiday to Mexico tomorrow, would you get a lot more done today? And he, you know, he's just, just this and just an amazing, amazing motivator. And so I would say to you, if you're going through your schedule, then imagine if you had to get everything that you usually get done in seven days done in four days. You'd get it done. So get it done. And then hire a team around you. So get, they'll take 50% off of your workload. Because investing in a team of Picassos is not a cost, it's a. So build a great team. So all you do is what you love to do. And then the other people around you are doing what they love to do. Everyone's happy. You're doing 50% less. And then guess what else? Figure out what's the trivial work and the fake work and just start doing the real work. And guess what else? Do the TUM protocol, and the second win workout, and the 202020 rule. And you're going to multiply the performance, creativity, and productivity in the few hours that you work. There's your solution.