Back in July, I did a series of posts on “Life Management.” Life Management is a seven-part process for leading ourselves in the most important areas of life, what many would call the “Quadrant II” areas, those matters which are important, but not urgent. Recently, I was exposed to a different framework for talking about these same things by Michael Hyatt. Hyatt makes an incredibly insightful point: we cannot manage time, but we can manage our energy. Hyatt’s point is that time is fixed. Each of us has 168 per week. We can’t manage a fixed reality. Therefore, we must manage something that we can truly manage: our energy.
You may remember that the seven aspects of Life Management are: rest, prayer, physical care, relationships, study, work and finances. Hyatt states our energy can be managed through five “R’s,” which as you will see correlate closely with the seven aspects of Life Management. His five “R’s” are: Rest, Refreshment (physical care), Recreation (more physical care), Relationships, and Reflection (prayer, study). I like Hyatt’s framework for two reasons: 1) The ideas of managing energy makes a great deal of sense; and 2) the five “R’s” are easy to understand and remember.
When it comes to self leadership we must have some framework for managing ourselves, whether we think of Life Management, or what Hyatt calls Rejuvenation, having an actual framework makes it possible to examine whether we’re making progress. For example, both Hyatt and I emphasize rest first. My saying is, “If you don’t rest, you won’t be able to do the rest.” Hyatt points out that without rest, we won’t have energy and without energy we will use our time poorly. We’ve all experienced the afternoon swoon, when we feel like we just have to take a nap. Hyatt’s advice is to take the nap. He says he has taken a twenty-minute nap virtually every day of his adult life.
Hyatt recommends getting 7-10 hours of sleep each night and taking a nap of twenty to no more than thirty minutes every day. When we’re rested, we have more energy and our lives are much easier to manage. If you choked on the idea of getting 7-10 hours of sleep each night, because it doesn’t “fit” into your schedule, you aren’t alone. Many leaders have been taught that sleep is a luxury that leaders can’t afford. Books have even been written to advocate for sleeping only 4-5 hours per night. They contend that the extra time will produce extra productivity. Hyatt contends that such bursts of extra productivity are short-lived, and cannot be sustained over time.
My experience confirms Hyatt’s contention about rest, and he backs it up with statistical evidence. Having just come through a two-week period of working more than 80 hours each week, I know how my energy level has waned. Being on vacation this week has given me the opportunity to catch up on a little sleep and to relax a bit through the days as well. I encourage you to stop and consider how rest factors into your self leadership. If it’s at the proper level, and your energy is high that’s great. If you’re dragging yourself down, then what are you going to do to bring it into a proper proportion? Remember this: the only way to sleep 8 hours a night and get up at 5 am is to go to bed at ______. (That’s right: 9 pm.)
If you’re thinking that isn’t realistic, the truth is it is realistic. It’s a clear fact. You must decide whether you need 7, 8 or more hours of sleep and then it’s a simple math problem. When do you want to get up? Subtract and determine when you need to go to bed. Most of us don’t like the results of that equation, because we want to stay up late and get up early, but the math doesn’t work, and over time that’s why our self leadership suffers. We start from a point of depletion rather than a point of energy.
More about Self Leadership tomorrow. We’ll pick up on the second of Hyatt’s five “R’s”. In the mean time, get some rest!
Here’s to leading better by getting enough rest–tonight!