How should people best manage their time and energy

Your only two resources in this life are time and energy.

Both are finite. What you do with your two key resources will determine your life’s outcome.

TIME
If you waste your time doing unproductive activities, you will have results comparative to your input. Here are six things that you can do every day that will yield tremendous results

1. Wake up for business every day. Whether you have work or not, get up and get going as early as you can, ideally at 5am.
2. Take time to walk before you do anything else. This allows you to get your thoughts clear before you begin your day.
3. Write down what you are grateful for. Make a list every day.
4. Write down who you are. I am_.  Write empowering messages every day. This is a practical way of reminding yourself about who you are.
5. Write down the one thing that you must do today. And do it.
6. Do a small workout where you are. Get stronger. Also eat well. If you take the time to do these six simple things, you will build up an indomitable force within yourself that will express itself through you in every interaction throughout your day.

ENERGY
You must figure out how to generate energy. A car needs a functioning engine and fuel. There are two parts to that – one that does the work and the other that feeds the first.

Similarly, your body is the one that does the work, while your energy is provided by what you put into it. If you load up your body on chocolate, alcohol, heavy food, fat and sugar, how will your motor function?

Feed your body with good things. Eating healthy food is our normal operating mode – remember that eating junk is not our default mode.

We are not depriving ourselves when we do not eat unhealthy food; we are living as our body is designed to function. As soon as you start eating right, you will experience a greater sense of energy. As you reinvent yourself, your eating behaviour has everything to do with how much energy you are going to have.

Another key factor to ensure higher energy levels is waking up early. This gives you power over your mind and you start your day with personal success. To wake up early means that you will have to go to bed early. Going to bed early is a wonderful way of cutting out a lot of the excesses and useless activities such as ‘binge-watching’ online, surfing the internet, playing games and watching TV until the early hours of the morning.

These activities drain energy. One of the points people share with me about why they stay up late is that they believe they can work in an uninterrupted and focused manner at night. The problem is that biologically, you start winding down at night. Your body is coded to go to sleep and no matter how hard you try, you will see distractions creeping in, which in turn will affect your sleep cycle.

The moment that you start waking up early and eating well, you are going to feel a sense of power in your body. You are going to experience weight loss, which will make you feel good. You are going to quit wasting time in the evenings, which is going to encourage you to do more with your day, and your body is going to be turbo-charged, which will make you feel stronger.

All of this will provide you with greater energy and more time. With these two resources operating at full capacity, you will be able to face every day motivated, focused and ready to succeed.

You are now reinvented.

Mark Dickinson is a Gulf Business Academy trainer