The Waterfall Effect - Thinking, Rejuvenating and...

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RESULTS, NOT ACTIVITY!

Those who want to achieve the most in life tend to fill up their lives with activities, often mistaking activity for results.

The point is not to be the most active and/or busy but to create those results in life that have the most value in life.

But what about those things that do not seem to directly create value?

Isn't "resting" a waste of time?  Isn't sleeping more than a few hours for the weak?  Isn't it macho to be tough?

Well, "not exactly...".  In fact, that isn't even close.

If we sleep fewer hours, we operate as "sleep-deprived" unproductive individuals - at a level proven to be that of a legally drunk person, but we don't realize it!  There is a waterfall effect when the harmful actions taken incur their consequences as the water falls to the next level. The fewer sleep hours cascade into taking more time to do things, doing them less well, making poorer decisions that are costly, the body malfunctioning, physical damage over time, a hypervigilant brain causing more anxiety...and on and on.

The problem is that we can't quantify it to be able to compare the value, the costs, the value lost.

We have to  actually use our head (to think) and do an evaluation under uncertainty.


1,000's OF SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE...

It turns out that we can  do that evaluation and come up with a definitive answer, as 1,000's of successful people have discovered. They have looked at the effects of adding enough sleep to be fully rested - and each time, they ended up being more productive in terms of the cumulative value they produced - and it was by a significant degree.  This is a proven "Duh!"  It wins by a large margin over the net results from that same person when he/she was sleep deprived even when he had more hours to work!

Yet people don't seem to buy into this seeming magic.  I hope that you do give it your own test, though, as Arianna has.

Arianna Huffington found this out, after getting the "signal" from lying on the floor in her own blood, and wrote a whole book on it and, of course, changed her life style dramatically.  She is now a big advocate.  Her book:  Thrive! The Third Metric To Redefining Success And Creating A Life Of Well-Being, Wisdom, And Wonder.


REJUVENATION VS. FATIGUED BRAINS!

And then there's the job of Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach when he tried, in one part of the one day we were in his first quarterly coaching session, to get us to take time off to "think" and to "rejuvenate" (doing nothing "productive" at all).  Surely that time seemed to us highly successful entrepreneur types as "lost production time" that could be used to produce!

But it turned out that we were operating, before the change, on fatigued brains and not well rested bodies, hyped up to the point where we were caught up in a world of anxiety and stress, which was dragging us under as we persisted in "pushing through".   And we had lots of only partially thought out strategies and actions - and we missed alot of what could have been done that was much better.

It turned out that there was a huge leap forward in net productivity, yet the average "free days" that the attendees took increased dramatically also!

How could that be?   Less time, more leisure, but more produced?  And a better life?

The answer, though you'll just have to test it or believe me and the results if you can:

Better thinking, better selection of what to do, more design time, more creativity, more focus, more effective action, clearer thinking for better strategies and decisions...and feeling good about life.

They all added up to a great combination!

It turned out that pacing yourself has huge effects on lowering anxiety, and that slowing down your life by taking days off, and taking time to think were all super-worthwhile.


YOUR CHOICE!

So , what is your choice on how to run your life?  Try harder, work more?  Or make life easier, work less, and get much more of a life and productivity payoff?

Yours toward a great life, not just a good life,

Keith
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