At the end of a long hard day, you have been running full tilt.
Are you still energized, running on top of the world?
Or do you need to crawl into bed – done, spent, and nothing left to give?
Leadership Tools to Unlock Your Potential
These three tools can Unlock Your Potential. Use the links to kick off your growth.
These are the tools you need to lead in the digital world!
Full Episode 6 Transcript
Busy or exhausted.
At the end of a long, hard day, you have been cranking and running full tilt.
- Are you still energized and feel like you’re floating in the clouds, running on high and on the top of the world?
- Or you exhausted? You need to crawl into bed at the end of the day. You are done, you are spent and you have nothing left to give busy or exhausted.
Welcome to the New Generation Leader. We’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world. Ready to reach your true potential? Let’s get started. Welcome to the New Generation Leader podcast.
This is a big question, a big question to ask and reflect on, and in today’s quick tools this week on the New Generation Leader, we want to give you three tools, three filters lenses to look at, give clarity as you look at yourself in the mirror and say,
where am I am I busy or am I exhausted and how can I fix this?
If you think about being busy or being exhausted, those are two very different places, two very different realities that shape ultimately the productivity of the outcomes that you are bringing. If you are busy, your outcomes are going to reflect high capacity, high growth opportunities.
But if you are exhausted, you are going to feel like you’re spinning your wheels, you are running full tilt and yet you don’t feel like you’re moving anywhere.
That’s a hard reality to find yourself in. But it’s an important one for us to think about to reflect on and make sure we are bringing our best each and every day that we are healthy and in balance so that when we get started, when we shift into high gear, we are making things happen and getting things done.
So I want to give you three tools, three filters, three lenses to look at to understand our and give yourself a solid answer. Are you busy or you exhausted? And it will help you to understand not only are you, but what can you do about it if you are in fact exhausted?
The first one is the 70:30 and we’ll link these three tools in the show notes. But the 70:30 is vitally important because it’s a quick snapshot and it helps us to know are we in balance at our optimal setting? We are working out of our gifts, out of our strengths 70% of the time. And we’re working out of our growing edges, our conscious competencies, the things that we recognize we’re good at, but we have to think about. We have to expend a little energy in these areas. Were working in those areas 30% of the time.
We can’t be 100%-0%. It’s kind of like weight training or resistance training. You’ve got to put in a little effort sometimes. And so we shift back and forth from the things that we are naturally gifted at, to the things that we have to work a little bit at.
We are energized by the things we’re gifted at so that we have the energy to sustain the things where we are not gifted and when our tank is empty, we shift back into our 70%, our giftedness and keep running full tilt. If we get out of alignment, it’s a quick snapshot to help us understand: are we out of balance? Are we at a 50%-50%? Maybe a 30%-70%?
The second question is key. Which way are you trending? Do you see the light at the end of the tunnel? Is this potentially getting better or is it not?
The second tool complements this perfectly. These two go together like hand and glove. And it is the Peace Index. The Peace Index helps us look at five key areas to understand is one of these areas out of alignment.
- The people in relationships around you. How’s your piece rank that 1-100.
- Your purpose? Do you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it? Rank it 1-100.
- The place where you are, the physical location where you live, where you work, where you play, How would you rank that? How is your sense of peace about this area then?
- Your provisions? Do you have what you need to put a roof over your head to provide uh dinner every night, to have lunch breakfast. What you feel like you need to live life the way you want to live. It is your provisions, caring for you, your family, those closest around you.
- Last but not least: personal health. How is your health? Is there something going on that’s affecting trickling over into every other area of your life?
So put these two together, the Peace Pndex and the 70-30 and it’s a quick snapshot to help you understand, to diagnose and my busy or am I exhausted? And if you are exhausted to identify and understand where is this coming from? Where is the challenge that I am experiencing and how can I fix this?
Well, the one other tool that I want to introduce for you here helps us to know our balance between being productive and being present. When we get to that place of being exhausted, chances are we’re spending too much time trying to be productive and we aren’t spending enough time being present with those around us or recharging our batteries.
The 5 Gears looks like this:
5th gear shut the door, high productivity, we are going to crank out a project that is focused energy.
It’s different from 4th Gear, which is where some of our business and sometimes our exhaustion can come in because we go through these motions in 4th gear, we’re checking the boxes, were checking things off, we are answering emails, answering phone calls, slack messages, somebody’s popping in our office. If we are working in an office with people around, it’s kind of that whack a mole. Sometimes there’s just tasks and things that we have to do.
3rd Gear is what I call the great pivot, the pivot between productivity and presence. And sometimes in 3rd gear we are spending some relational time checking in with our team before we shift up into being productive and having a productive, beneficial meeting or if we are with family or friends, those in our inner circle. Our 3rd gear time is preparing to shift into a more intentional focused relationship and conversation. It can go both ways and 3rd gear is that space where we can shift out of some relational catch-up into productive work.
Or we can shift down into more intentional focus relationships with those who are closest to us who mean the most to us, then that is B, that 1-to-1 focused, deeper relationship time where we are spending time undistracted. This is the great marker where we can say, we can flash up the deuce peace, sign to our, our family, our friends, our young adult kids, teenagers that are in your house and say, hey, this is too time, let’s let’s put the devices away be undistracted. And I do. I have a conversation connect relations with those who mean the most to you.
1st Gear is when you unplug, you unwind. However it is that you do this, the driving range, maybe it’s a walk around the neighborhood, a bike ride, a run a visit to the gym, Maybe you go and have a particular activity. Maybe you unplug. As Jonathan, one of my business partners mentioned yesterday on his show that he’s heard it recommended that you should take once a quarter and have a weekend where you have a day that’s just you to unplug unwind and recharge your batteries.
Even for an extrovert, it’s important for us to have individual time to recharge our batteries. There is one more gear and that is reverse to clean up our messes, to ask for forgiveness to apologize when we’ve misstepped whether it’s in relation to time and space and productivity and presence or if it’s something else that we’ve said or done.
Put these three tools together — the 70:30, the Peace Index and the 5 Gears and it can help you understand am I busy or am I exhausted? And if I am exhausted, how do I get back to a place of business that’s productive and in getting back to being productive?
How do I use the five gears to safeguard my time to put those constructs and guidelines in place so that I can continue being productive, increasing my performance and unlocking my true potential. That’s what the new generation Leader is all about is giving you the tools that you need to become the kind of leader. The digital world needs you to be to unlock your potential and unlock the potential of those around you.
For more information on these three tools, go to our show notes at NewGenerationLeader.com/6. This is Episode 6 of the New Generation Leader podcast. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you back next time.