The Rule of One Third

The Rule of One Third

by | Aug 13, 2020 | Excellence, Lessons Learned

The Rule of One Third

Just one third of your day can and does impact the other two thirds of your day.

The Parts

Many of us sleep one third of our day, create value for society one third of our day, and pursue other interests one third of our day.

Sleep

The one third of our day that we sleep, certainly, impacts the other two thirds of our day. As we have all experienced from time to time, our quality of sleep affects our mental acuity, physical energy, and emotional balance.

Creating Value for Ourselves – Through Self Development & Living Life

The one third of our day, in which we pursue what is most important to us, our relationships, our passions, our personal development, can and does affect our general performance, including when we are creating value for others. It can also affect how easy it is for us to rest and recharge.

Creating Value for Society – Through Business or Work

The one third of our day, in which we create value for society, provides the resources to pursue our other interests. As you may have already experienced, the errors or failures in this part of our day can and does affect our quality of sleep. It can also cause frustration when we are creating values for ourselves.

Personal Experiences

During intense periods of personal development, I have allowed the quality of my sleep to suffer. I have stayed up late and woken up early too many times. How many times have you slept 3 to 4 hours? Have you been your best during those times?

Unfortunately for me, this was too common in the early part of my life.

I would swing back and forth between sleeping poorly and sleeping well. When I slept poorly, all I wanted to do was rest and recharge. My thoughts lacked clarity and my attention span was way too short. As a result, my personal development suffered during that time. Simple improvement activities seemed to require twice the time and effort, back then.

During that time, I remember being frustrated with my day-to-day experiences and the lack of resources in my life.

Thought and Reflection

I knew that in order to achieve my goals, I needed to be prepared and be my best. I had just started my career. I wanted to increase my income 15% within 12 months. Therefore, I had to protect the one third of my day that allowed me to rest and recharge. I committed to getting a full night’s rest.

So, I stopped going to sleep late and started allowing myself enough time to sleep well.

That decision required for me to figure out (1) the best time in my schedule to wake up, (2) how many hours of sleep my body needed, (3) how long I would need to fall asleep, and (4) when to actually go to bed.

What Happened Next?

As I followed my plan, my physical energy was getting back to normal. I was, also, more effective with my self development. I balanced my time better. My performance, at work, quickly improved.

I also recognized that there was a mismatch between my personal strengths and what my employer valued. I decided to change employers. Within 90 days, I had a new job and was earning 30.2% more than before.

This is but one example of how making a few changes in one part of our day, can impact each of the other parts of our day. There are other examples that I’ll share in future posts.

What About Your Own Experiences & Thoughts?

  • Have you, yet, discovered how important it is to establish a good bed time routine to sleep well and really recharge yourself?
  • Have you, yet, discovered the impact that regular investments of time and money can have in expanding your capabilities to create value for society, and in exchange receive the resources you want to create value for yourself?
  • Have you, yet, discovered how important it is to balance your life, so that you may fully live and creating meaningful experiences?

Conclusion

What changes do you need to make to in your life, so that you can sleep better, improve the value that you create for yourself, and increase the value that you create for society?

Below is a list of 8 self-reflective questions, in no particular order.

  • Do you need to sleep earlier or longer?
  • Do you need to research a better bedtime routine?
  • Do you need to increase your self development?
  • Do you need to increase your productivity?
  • Do you need to invest more time and money into expanding or improving your skills?
  • Do you spend enough time engaged in recreation?
  • Do you spend enough quality time with those who matter to you?
  • Do you need to enjoy your life more?

Initially consider making changes in as a few, or as many, areas as you feel comfortable. For me, I prefer fewer and smaller changes that compound and support each other over time.

3 Cornerstone Principles for Achieving Excellence

3 Cornerstone Principles for Achieving Excellence

by | Aug 4, 2020 | Excellence, Getting Started, Sequence 3

Background

If you’ve read my very first post, you know that I was promoted 9 times in 12 years. I worked at 4 different employers and had a number of managers.

How did I achieve that level of career success?

Types of Models

There are many models that I learned, assimilated, and regularly practiced. These models included new concepts, new behaviors, and knowledge of cause-effect dependencies leading to preferred outcomes.

My career success totally depended on these 3 types of models: conceptual models, behavioral models, and cause-effect models.

Cornerstone Principles

In this post, I’ll share with you the cornerstone principles, at the foundation of my success. It is these cornerstone principles that enabled me to rapidly achieve excellence, not only, in my career, but also in business, and other life areas.

The cornerstone principles encompass concepts and processes that led me to rapidly learn, retain, and practice various models of excellence.

By first learning and practicing the cornerstone principles, you can position yourself to also achieve excellence, in less time.

In other posts, I’ll share some of these various models that positively impacted my career, my business, and my life in general.

Principle #1

We are each individually responsible for identifying which actions lead to the results we seek. The results we seek are governed by cause-effect relationships.

The faster we execute actions, which actually lead to our desired results, the sooner we can experience those results.

There are three factors that can impact whether a result occurs.

1. Timing – when an action is initiated

2. Speed – how fast an action is executed

3. Quality of Execution – excellent execution, leads to excellent results.

Principle #2

Desired behaviors need to be encoded within our brains. Each behavior may be comprised of one or more actions. By encoding actions, I experience two benefits.

1. My brain automatically prompts my mind, on when, to execute actions or behaviors

2. I can allow my brain to rapidly and effectively execute actions and behaviors, without too much conscious thought getting in the way

When done properly, my general stress is low and my self-trust is high.

Imagine not having to worry about constantly scanning your environment, to find and respond to opportunities. Instead, your mind automatically scans it for you. It alerts you to opportunities. And, if you allow it, your mind can automatically respond in the most effective and efficient way possible.

It is this principle of encoding behavior, into my brain, that allows me to naturally and effectively respond to opportunities.

So how do you encode behaviors or actions?

Encoding

Encoding happens automatically. It occurs while we sleep. When we sleep, our brains physically consolidate and encode our daily experiences. Our brains can encode and change because of neuro-plasticity. Neuro-plasticity is the brain’s capability of physically encoding stimuli and changing itself.

Although encoding occurs automatically, not all experiences are encoded in a way that is easily available for recall or execution.

Principle #3

We can increase the likelihood of encoding, by creating anchors. We create anchors whenever we practice perfect execution or recall.

Anchor = Perfect Execution or Recall

Through my adult life, I have created anchors nearly every day.

I have found that there is a minimum number of anchors required. Failing to meet the minimum, leads to variable results. The minimum-number-of-daily-anchors required seems to depend on (1) the activity or (2) type of knowledge to be encoded.

I have also discovered that varying the time, in between practice, accelerated the encoding process. You can evaluate your encoding efficiency by measuring your recall or execution accuracy; and making comparisons against that accuracy when there is no variation-in-time vs. introducing variation-in-time, between practice sessions.

Because of the effort and discipline required to create anchors, I have had to prioritize which models to encode. You may want to do the same, if you too are super busy!

My last thought to share with you is that, at least for me, I need somewhere between 20 and 30 days of anchoring to realize the benefits of encoding new actions, new behaviors, and new conceptual models.

Summary

If you anchor every day and sleep well, then over time you’ll be able to rapidly respond at the right time, in the right way, when opportunities are presented. Do this often enough and you’ll begin to achieve excellence!