Powered Up
You’re operating in the
Powered Up Zone most days.
This means that you’re working with, rather than against your Human Operating System (hOS). You should be impressed with your results, as there aren’t many people consistently operating in their Powered Up Zone.
Your results suggest that you’ve mastered some consistent protocols and practices that are aligned with your Human Operating System ( hOS) optimally functions.
However, as a high-performer you’re probably always refining your habits and behaviours and looking for other ways to optimise your performance.
Here are some additional micro-habits that you may want to consider that will further power-up your performance in the digitally-demanding world we now live and work in.
Air navigation experts use a rule of thumb called the ‘1 in 60 rule’. It suggests that for every 1 degree a plane veers off its course, it misses its planned destination by 1 mile for every 60 miles that you fly. What I think this rule also shows is that even small adjustments (1-degree turns are miniscule) can yield big differences further down the track. The same is true with your digital habits: making small, seemingly insignificant changes can have huge implications over time.
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Three Micro-Habits to Power-Up Your Performance
Deliberate cold exposure
An inevitable part of living in our modern world is that we’ll experience stress. We have to build our stress tolerance to deal with our daily demands. One of the best ways we can train ourselves to deal with psychological stress, is to experience physical stress. This is where cold exposure can play a role. Now before you panic (and skip to the next micro-habit), please know that this doesn’t necessarily have to be an ice bath, despite the social media posts that prescribe that this is the most effective form of deliberate cold exposure.
Cold exposure helps our body to release epinephrine, norepinephrine and dopamine. These chemicals can improve our cognitive attention, energy and mood, and this explains why our mental state shifts after cold exposure. Studies have shown that there’s a 250 to 500 per cent increase in baseline level of these chemicals in our brains after cold exposure. Having a cold shower is an effective micro-habit that you could include as part of your power-up routine at the start of the day. There’s science confirming that deliberate exposure to cold can help us manage stress and elevate our focus. We can do this via cold showers, ice baths, ocean swimming in cooler months and even going outside without a jumper in winter. The temperature needs to be uncomfortably cold, and exposure should ideally occur at the beginning of the day. The general recommendation is for 11 minutes per week, so that could be three or four three-minute periods each week.
Protect your power-up zone
What time/s of the day (or night) are you naturally most alert and focused? This window of time is likely to be determined by your chronotype which is biologically determined. To optimise our productivity, we need to work in concert with our chronotype, as best we can and build a fortress around our focus during our unique peak-performance window (your power-up zone).
Your chronotype is your unique biological rhythm that determines at what time of the day or night you’re most alert and focused. It governs when you naturally want to fall asleep and when you’re most energetic. Related to your circadian rhythm, your chronotype controls your sleep-wake cycle and production of the sleep hormone melatonin. Unlike your circadian rhythm, which is governed by your exposure to light, your chronotype isn’t shaped by any external forces: it’s genetically determined by your PER3 gene and, as such, it can’t be easily shifted, although it does often change throughout your lifespan.
Dr Michael Breus suggests in his book The Power of When that there are four distinct chronotypes:
Lions are morning-oriented people with a medium sleep drive.
Bears have a solar-based schedule and a high sleep drive.
Wolves are night-oriented people with a medium sleep drive.
Dolphins have a low sleep drive and tend to be insomniacs.
Historically, the traditional workday that was based on a nine-to-five work schedule really only suited bears, who account for around 50 per cent of the population. We now have an opportunity to align our chronotype with our work demands and find rhythms that work for lions (15 to 20 per cent of the population) and wolves (15 to 20 per cent of the population).
Mind-wandering mode
I’ve never had a great idea germinate while I was in my inbox, nor have I ever solved a complex problem while in an Excel spreadsheet. Never. What about you?
Where do you do your best thinking? My best ideas, and solutions to problems I’ve spent months agonising over, come to me in the shower, while I’m running, when I’m on holidays, when I first wake up in the morning or – in the good old days – when I would go on a plane with no wi-fi. Great ideas often come to us when we’re ‘off’, and often when we’re bored: when we allow time for our minds to meander.
Why is this the case?
When we’re ‘off’, our brains enter what neuroscientists call the ‘default mode network’ (DMN). This is where we daydream. The DMN is a network of brain regions that interact when a person is not focused on the outside world. We turn off our prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that does our conscious thinking, and enter a mind-wandering mode. It is at this time that we often solve problems or come up with creative ideas.
We’ve become so accustomed to self-soothing with our screens that we’d rather be electrically shocked than left alone with our thoughts. In a 2016 study, participants were left alone in a lab for 15 minutes. They had the option of self-administering an electric shock to counter their boredom. The results were staggering: even though all participants had previously stated that they would pay money to avoid being shocked with electricity, 67% of males and 25% of females chose to self-administer a small electric shock in lieu of being bored. One data outlier gave themselves 108 shocks during the 15 minutes!
How can you allow time for your mind to meander?
Block out time in your calendar, just like one leader did by blocking time in his calendar as ‘activation of the default mode network’ as it looked more sophisticated than simply writing ‘boredom’. Leave margin room in your calendar and look for incidental moments to let your mind wander (for example, when ordering your coffee, getting in the elevator, waiting for the printer to spit out your job or watching your kids swim laps).
