Big dreams are achieved through many small steps.

6 Steps to success:

Step 1: Set your goal

Step 2: Choose a routine that is achievable and fits your current situation (you can find a lot of routines / processes for achieving most things online so for now just pick one, don’t bother trying to find “the best one”).

Step 3: If required, customise the process to be very specific to you

Step 4: Rework your schedule around the process you need to follow

Step 5: Map out your daily plan

Step 6: Follow the process

Repeat from step 3 as required as you will learn things about yourself and what works best for you along the way.

Remember that life is like a marathon, not a sprint. The idea is for your daily plan to become a habit that you build on.

Example:
Step 1: Set your goal:
Let’s say your goal is to “get healthier” and for you that means being able to run 5Km without stopping.

Goal: Run 5Km without stopping

Step 2: Choose an achievable routine:
There are loads of routines on the internet about running 5Km so use these for inspiration or just pick one to start with and get going with it. Say one routine recommends running 500m, 4 times a week and increasing the distance by 10% each week. (this would get you to running 5Km in under 25 weeks).

Routine: Run 500m, 4 times a week and increase distance by 10% each week

Step 3: Customize the routine to suit you:
Say at the moment you can run 300m and you can do about 3 times a week. Start there and if you feel you can increase your distance by more than 10% each week then do that.

New routine: Run 300m, 3 times a week and increase distance by 100m per week for first 3 weeks, then move to 10% weekly increase.

Step 4: Rework your schedule around this new routine.
Put yourself in the best position for success here. If you know the best time for you to run is in the evening then make time for the run and if you have to take time away from cooking that evening then meal prep in advance by making extra the day before.

New schedule: Run immediately when back from work and meal prep the day before running day.

Step 5: Map out daily plan
Use all of the previous steps in to what you are going to do each day to help you achieve your runs.

Run 3 times a week starting with 300m each run, increasing by 100m each week until reaching 500m and then increase by 10% each week from there. Run on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. Meal prep on Sunday, Tuesday and Saturday.

Step 6: Make sure you follow that process
This might mean that you need to sit down and prepare a little bit in advance to make it all happen but this is a small price to pay for you to achieve your goal.

The table below illustrates your weekly plan based on the above conditions. By following that plan you will reach 5Km in 25 weeks.

This routine will be based on how far you can currently run, and how many days you can currently run each week. This could be as little as once a week but you will progress and create your running habit faster if you can make it 2 to 4 times a week.

If you can currently run 5K but you have no running experience, then you might consider doing 15 mins of running, 3 to 4 times a week to start with. The habit you create is getting up, putting on your running gear and going out 3 to 4 times a week to run. Once you do that, you can then plan to increase either time or distance run on those running days (say increasing it by several mins a week).

When leading a team, how we deal with a failure can have a huge impact on our team but also on ourselves in the short and the long term.

In his great book “Black Box Thinking” – Matthew Syed discusses this in the first part of the book where a tragic event happened during a routine operation which cost a woman her life. Syed goes on to contrast the approach to failure (and subsequent learning) between Healthcare and the Aviation industry.

Although most of us in our daily lives and jobs don’t deal with life and death situations, but we do deal with failure.

The way in which we act in the face of failure and the actions & decisions which contributed to it, can have a huge impact on how we, as individuals and as leaders, learn from it.

Why can it be so hard to admit or be honest about a failure?

Carol Travis – Co Author of Mistakes were made (but not by me) – discusses the concept of cognitive dissonance; she writes:

“Cognitive dissonance is what we feel when the self-concept—I’m smart, I’m kind, I’m convinced this belief is true—is threatened by evidence that we did something that wasn’t smart, that we did something that hurt another person, that the belief isn’t true.”

According to Travis, the only way to resolve the feeling is to “modify the self-concept or accept the evidence”

So as individuals and as leaders, accepting that a failure happened really is the first step to resolving it and to opening us up to exploring a potential solution.

Although we may not be personally responsible for a mistake as the leader, once an issues comes to light, it is our responsibility to get to the root cause and to resolve it WITH our team.

When you are a leader and a failure happens on your watch:

I touched upon this in another article I wrote about performance management but I wanted to add some key lessons here as well.

When you lead a team of people, chances are high that someone will make a mistake at some point under your leadership. It is important not to ignore the failure and hope that it will just go away because the conditions that caused the failure in the first place are likely to still be there.

Additionally, mistakes made by one employee, can cause additional work for the rest of the team, which is another reason why it is essential to not ignore mistakes. But… it has to be done in the right way.

Simon Sinek discusses the concept of the “Circle of safety” in his book Leaders Eat Last:  “Only when we feel we are in a ‘Circle of Safety’ will we pull together as a unified team, better able to survive and thrive regardless of the conditions outside.”

It is the responsibility of the leader to create that environment, to earn the trust of your team and to work with them and not against them when mistakes happen. It can be easy to carelessly blame your team for the mistake / failing, but that quickly dissolves the Circle of Safety and creates the exact wrong environment for a team to survive and thrive in the long term.

I have seen managers try to hold people accountable without taking care of the circle of safety and rather than creating an environment where people work together to resolve issues, the predominant drive is to survive, hide mistakes and work un-collaboratively.

Broadly speaking there are two approaches… which one would you pick? and is it the same as what you’d like your manager to choose?

1. Instantly blame the team / individual, formally reprimand them and tell them never to do it again
2. Discuss the mistake, understand the consequences surrounding the mistake, offer support to the individual and give them a chance to get it right. If there is repeat behaviour, then consider using a more formal approach (performance improvement plan, verbal warning, disciplinary procedure etc as appropriate)

Work with and develop others to enhance long-term performance

Use mistakes a precious learning opportunities… a way to look in to the Black Box and find out what caused the issue.

One of the biggest impacts you can have is to work with your team when an issue arrises, involve them in the problem solving process, listen to and learn from their ideas and then work work with them on the implementation and the coaching.

If you rush in and just do the job for them but offer no support or coaching then congratulations…you have taken the responsibility away from them to deal with that issue in the future while creating additional work for yourself forever.

An example:

I had an incident at a factory I was working at whereby several Tons of product was scrapped because of poor quality. Because of the complexity of the product and the process, there can be any number of things that could cause this issue (wrong ingredients used, wrong quantity of ingredients, substandard ingredients, mechanical failure, Quality checks not fit for purpose, Quality checks not carried out correctly etc etc…).

I had an inkling as to what the issue actually was through my understanding of the process which narrowed down the root cause to the Quality checks conducted on the product.

When I asked a few of the other managers how a particular check was conducted, their answer was “by eye and through experience…it’s always been done this way”.

This instantly set off alarm bells ringing in my head because products should have specific Key Quality Attributes that can be quantified and measured… otherwise what is the point of the Quality check in the first place and how can you expect anyone to come in to the business and be successful at that job?

So what’s the plan?

My plan was to put together a process confirmation routine, whereby every hour, I go around every station on the line and discuss the latest quality check with the operator at that station. By doing so, I can learn more about how the check is carried out, whether it is fit for purpose and also discuss the failure modes and what actions should be taken by the operator in the event of a failure.

By taking this action, I put myself through additional work in the short term with the aim of having less work to do in the longer-term as the team became better equipped to deal with issues themselves. Additionally, it shows that these checks are important to me, the leader, and further empowers them to take control of their work.

Forward on / Get in touch:

If you think this post can help someone then please forward it on to them. The recommended reads section on the main website has additional resources that you can use to find out more information on this topic.

As always please let me know if you have found this helpful or if you’d like clarification on anything in this post. I want to make these as valuable as I can to you, the reader.

Thanks, Alex

Managing performance of staff is arguably one of the most critical aspects of your role as a people leader as it can have a drastic and lasting effect on the performance of individuals but also on the team as a whole.

Why is it important?

The performance and attitude of a poorly performing individual on your team can drag down the performance and engagement of the team as a whole.

Simon Sinek discusses high performing teams in his book “Leaders Eat Last” and often uses the Navy SEALS as key examples. High performing teams trust and support each other, they work together to achieve the common goal and are willing to be there for each other.

If one or several members of the team are under-performing in their role and you as a leader don’t help them to get back to an acceptable level or performance, it can also really harm the trust given to you by the rest of the team. By not managing individual performance on the team, you are basically telling everyone else that they will need to pick up the slack indefinitely.

How would that make you feel? To know that you had to come to work and expend 10% more effort every day just to get by?

Key principle – Work together

The key principle of the PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) is that the line manager and the individual work together to bring performance back up to standard.

The PIP is not a tool to fire someone or to punish someone… it is ONLY there to drive individual performance back to an acceptable level.

Make sure to go in to every conversation with a level-head and take a factual approach as a calm mind will help put you both at ease and will allow you to appraise the situation as objectively as possible.

What is causing the low performance?

There are many different reasons why someone could be under-performing; it could be that they are lacking a particular skill, have poor time-management, poor prioritisation, a bad fit for that particular role, lack of interest…

The hard part is pinning this down and sometimes the reason for the poor performance might not be immediately obvious by looking at the symptoms of the issue.

Finding out the reason for the under-performance can be done through observations and through conversations with the individual as well as other members of the team.

At the start of my career as a Project Engineer, I went through a period of under-performance; I wasn’t achieving the desired results and my projects weren’t progressing as they needed to. For me, the under-performance was due to poor time-management and poor planning (well… I planned but never stuck to them). This was the focus of my PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) and it only took me 4 weeks of conscious effort and coaching from my line manager to get everything back on track and to continue achieving at a high level.

The Process:

The process of a PIP is actually quite straightforward, I have included a template that you can download to go along with this post but your company will (should) have their own policy and procedure so make sure you pick up with HR and use this as a place to start. The one I have is the most comprehensive one I have come across and the one I use.

Current state:

Identify the current areas that need to be improved; make sure to have concrete examples of where you have observed the poor performance (Use the SBI model to keep it clear and concise).

Start by giving feedback:

It is important to give your team feedback when you see examples of under-performance. Sometimes this is all that is needed to bring the issue to the attention of the individual. Make sure to ask if they need any support, help or guidance from you at this stage.

Make a note of the conversation that you had with the individual as you might need to refer back to it at a later date if the poor performance (or behaviour) is repeated.

Repeated behaviour:

If you see the issue arising again, I would ask to see the individual away from their area of work (factory production line, their desk etc) and go somewhere you can have a private conversation.

Once again give feedback to the individual about what you have observed, ask if they need any further help and support and make sure to document the conversation. Make sure to remind the individual of the first conversation that you had regarding this issue and discuss why they think that the poor performance has continued.

Perhaps at this stage you might uncover something during the conversation that could be a relatively quick fix with a little more training, support or coaching.

Poor performance continues:

Repeat the step above and this is the stage where I would broach the subject of putting a formal PIP together.

The PIP:

Identify the current state (where is the individual starting from). This gives context to the PIP by highlighting the steps that have resulted in he PIP being formalised. Write down the examples of the poor performance and the summary of the conversations had up until now.

Identify the future state (where you want to get to). This makes it clear what “Good” performance looks like. Use metrics were possible to illustrate this (no more missed quality checks, no more late projects from lack of organisation etc etc).

Identify the key areas needed for improvement (Max 3). This is the top level skill that is required to put performance back on track (The Lominger 67 Competancies are a great place to start – Click here for a link to them with brief descriptions).

Create a 70/20/10 plan for each of the key areas needed for improvement. The 70/20/10 plan refers to the ways in which we can learn and the proportion of effort that needs to be put in to each (70% learn by doing ourselves, 20% learn from others, 10% learn from a course or a book etc).

List specifically WHAT they are going to do in their day to day jobs that will help bring performance back to an acceptable level. For each of the elements of the 70/20/10 plan, agree and write down HOW they will demonstrate that they have done that element of the plan and what they need to bring as evidence to the next meeting (this can be things that they do but also don’t be afraid to include things that you as the line manager are going to do / observe as well).

Agree a timeline (usually 12 weeks but can be more or less as required). Most often it will be hard to see a meaningful improvement in less than 12 weeks so I make this the standard. However for a particularly difficult case where I wasn’t confident that I would see ANY (let alone meaninful) improvement in 12 weeks I made the PIP 4 weeks long and the individual showed no willing to engage with the process at all.

Agree review dates. This is an important step because you need to agree on WHEN you will meet (what week number) and WHAT you will each bring to the review as evidence of improvement. With this, I ALWAYS put the responsibility on the individual to arrange the meeting and give them a 1 week window in which to do it. This puts further responsibility on them to own the process and be engaged in it. I also would put the reviews at no less than 4 weeks apart, once again to give the individual time to make some improvements and gather sufficient evidence.

Review the performance. At each review meeting, discuss how you feel the PIP is going, whether any changes need to be made and then further agree on WHEN you will next meet and WHAT you further evidence of improvement you’d like to see.

After the final review, assess the progress and extend as required (sometimes an extra 4 weeks is helpful to solidify the desired performance in place).

Closing the PIP:

If you are both satisfied after the final review that performance is back on track make sure to congratulate the individual for their efforts! This is likely to have been a stressful time for them and making a marked improvement (even if it’s back to performing well) so make sure you stress this point in the process.

Every time I have gone through this process with an individual (no matter the final outcome) they have shaken my hand and thanked me for my support and help as a line manager. This is a true testament of how well you managed the process and how much the individual felt supported by you as their line manager.

Of those who passed the PIP process, most went on to being amongst the highest performing members of my team and all of them sustained their new level of performance.

One final note:

Please let me know if you’d like me to dive deeper in to any aspect of the PIP or if you have any questions on the above.

All jokes aside about Molly-Mae and everyone having the same 24hours in a day, I would wager that you don’t exactly spend your time in anywhere near the most efficient way.

Thinking about where you spend your time and re-arranging WHEN you do things can really increase your productivity

Where we spend our time:

Ofcom research found that in 2020, the average screen time (on phone apps, TV, games consoles, streaming services etc) totalled around 5hrs and 30 mins for UK adults between the ages of 25 and 34.

That is an immense amount of time that we are spending on distractions or “relaxing” each day.

These findings are confirmed by Ourworldindata in a December 2020 article that looked at where people spend their time across 23 countries and found that the average daily time spent on “leisure” activities being around 305 mins (or just over 5 hours).

I invite you to think about how much time to you spend on the above out of habit each day. With that in mind, do you ever tell yourself (or others) that you “don’t have time” for things?

Could you move just one hour out of our screen time and put it to better use?

The question:

What if you could spend an extra hour per day on something productive? Something that was going to improve your life? Help you earn more money? Learn a new skill? Get a head start on your day?

Well altering your sleep pattern is certainly one way to do it!

Out of habit:

That ever elusive “extra hour a day to do XYZ” is there… it’s just hidden in poor habits.

Quite simply, by going to bed an hour earlier and getting up an hour earlier, you are more likely to spend that additional hour being productive than you are using it to “wind down” at the end of the day.

Think about it… It’s 7pm, you are fed, you have done all of our daily chores and now it’s time to wind down at the end of the day. Except you have about 3 more hours to kill before you need to start getting ready for bed and 3 hours to “Kill” is quite a lot.

3 whole hours to kill before bed…What am I going to do? Sit here and be bored? Do more work at this time of night?

So out of habit, we spend it scrolling through our phone and watching streaming services.

Why getting up earlier works:

We are presented with fewer distractions.

Most people don’t get up at 05:00 am so you have fewer distractions getting up at this time than if you woke up around 6:30 with the rest of the world.

Check out this article written by Gabrielle Kassel where she went to bed early every night for a week and see what you think: https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-sleep/sleeping-at-9pm

Want to get the most out of that extra hour?

Plan tomorrow, today.

To get the most our of your additional hour, spend time at the end of each day planning what you want to accomplish the following day. It also helps to think about and plan in WHEN you are going to do the items on your to-do list as this helps increase the chances that you will actually do them.

But what if you struggle to get to sleep?

See my article on sleep here for ways to help improve your sleep and make getting to sleep easier and more reliable.

Overspending can be SO EASY right…?!

“Live in the moment! YOLO! I can pay it back later right? Who needs to save for retirement, a house, a car, a holiday or an irregular shock…. right…?”

Well, yes… but also NO!

With so much in our lives being so easily accessible, we can be thinking of something we might want to buy and it can be in our homes the next day and we don’t even have to get up for it… and this makes it hard to resist the instant gratification in buying something.

The thing is, as a species it is so hard to have “self-control” and to override the chemical boosts we get from buying something because it makes us feel good. We are literally wired to gravitate towards actions that bring us pleasure and stay away from things that cause us pain because, not so long ago in our history, we relied on these things to SURVIVE.

So… take the willpower out of it and do some forward planning.

I know… I can hear your eyes rolling as you read this but spending just 30 mins of planning followed by sticking to that plan and following THE PROCESS, you can safeguard yourself to never overspend on anything ever again.

The Process:

What is the cost of your essentials?

1. Look through all of your expenses over the last month (or pick a typical month if last month wasn’t a normal spending month for you) and categorise all of your essential life expenses. Put them in to an excel table with the item on the left, and the monthly cost on the right.
   1. Essential (Phone, fuel, all household bills, food, car tax, car insurance, car payments etc…)
2. Add up the value of these expenses (if you don’t have exact figures then make an estimate for now but be honest with your estimate).
3. Subtract these essential costs from your total monthly income.

Doing the above will give you an idea of the things you NEED to spend on a monthly basis and will also tell you how much you have left over for EVERYTHING ELSE (Holidays, week-ends away, a new laptop, a new phone etc etc…)

Split the difference:

Next in the process is to split up the funds you have left in to other categories of things that are important to you (Saving for a house, money for fun things, money for investing, saving up for holidays…).

Now open one bank account (with NO OVERDRAFT) for each category (this is very easy to do, can be done online AND you can even name the bank accounts differently according to what they are going to be used for).

When the debit cards arrive CUT THEM UP and throw them away (Except the one you are going to use for fun things / outings). This is to resist the urge to just spend from that card.

Now every time you get paid, put the required amount in to the “Essentials” account, and split the rest among the various saving accounts you just opened.

Stick to the plan:

Now, for the magic!

Don’t over-spend from any of those accounts.

That’s it. If, based on what you have allocated, you can save £100 per month for “fun / outings” then you will have only that to spend on that each month. This FORCES you to make decisions on what to spend your money on and you can’t just go out on a bender every week end.

This may seem like a chore, but if you want to stop over-spending then this is what you have to do.

Streamline:

Putting all of your expenses in front of you and having to allocate them in to a category also shows you WHAT you spend your money on. If you feel you want to save more money, then you have to remove something from one of the categories altogether (do you have Netflix and Amazon prime and Disney + and Now TV? – and do you NEED to have all of these?)

A final thought:

Try to steer clear of loans for things that depreciate like Cars, Holidays etc because you end up paying more for them in the long-term.

AND if you can afford to pay back a loan at £150 per month to pay for that holiday, then you can save £150 per month in advance of taking that holiday.

The fact that it is a loan FORCES you to pay it back and FORCES you to make a decision on something that you have to go without to pay that money back. So do it the correct way around, save up and then spend.

Further reading:

Here are some of the best books I have read when it comes to managing personal finances if you want to dive deeper in to this topic:

1. Secrets of the millionaire mind – By T.Harv Ecker
2. The richest man in Babylon – By George S. Clason
3. Money – By Rob Moore

Forward on / Get in touch:

If you think this post can help someone then please forward it on to them. The recommended reads section on the main website has additional resources that you can use to find out more information on this topic.

As always please let me know if you have found this helpful or if you’d like clarification on anything in this post. I want to make these valuable to you the reader so you can have practical ways to improve your life. Thanks, Alex

I know this goes against most conventional wisdom about goal-setting and achievement but hear me out…

Both Jeff Haden in The Motivation Myth and Chris Bailey in Hyperfocus discuss the idea of setting and then forgetting your goals if you want to increase the likelihood of achieving them.

Well ok this isn’t the whole story but it is the start!

Both say that having a goal is useful because it is important to understand where you want to go but both also go on to say that the goal should inform the process and routine that you need to achieve your goal.

So it’s the start of 2022, a fresh new year after an appalling 2020 and 2021; most of us want to achieve more this year than we have done before.

Anyone want to loose weight? Do a couch to 5Km? Write a book or start a business?

All of these things are great goals but none can be done with a single action… all will require you to take a great many steps (Quite literally with the couch to 5Km) to achieve.

Let’s take the couch to 5Km as an example because that was very popular in 2021 and so is a great way to illustrate the point here.

The Couch to 5Km

The whole premise behind the couch to 5Km is that it is broken down in to small steps (the training plan) which, when all done correctly and according to the plan, will result in you being able to run 5K (for many this will be a first).

So to run 5Km, you may well start with a 1Km run. Completing the 1Km run will give you a sense of achievement and will encourage you to run again.

Say the first part of your training plan is to run 1Km 3 times a week for say 3 weeks. The focus here shouldn’t be on how far away you are from your goal of 5K, but instead it should be on making time to do the next 1Km run because that is the next step in the process.. the rest is largely irrelevant.

One you have done your 9x 1Km run, the next stage might be to do several 1.5Km runs because if you can do 1Km consistently, you can surely up it to 1.5Km?

See how following the process is the important thing here?

Jeff Haden discusses the idea that if the gap between our current situation and where we want to get to is big (like in a couch to 5Km) we are more likely to feel demotivated and may not even start.

So the idea is to follow the process you have set out for yourself and to be consistent in executing that process because if you do, success will be inevitable.

Focus on what you need to achieve TODAY as part of your process and when you do, pat yourself on the back, let yourself feel good about it and this will keep you motivated to continue.

Where to go from here:

(The following is taken from Jeff’s book The Motivation Myth because I couldn’t have put it better myself)

1. Decide on what your goal is and be specific
2. Chose a routine that is realistic to achieve
   1. Being unrealistic can reduce the likelihood of following the process, reduce your motivation and make you more likely to give up
3. Customise your process to be extremely specific
   1. Decide what you will do, when you will do it, where you will do it and what your success criteria is. This further increases the likelihood that you will actually do what you say you will do
4. Rework your schedule around your process
   1. You may need to make changes in your life that are compatible with freeing up time or energy to follow the process
5. Put together your daily plan
   1. I suggest doing this a week ahead of time and then planning other activities around this to give you a better chance of success
6. Get to work, working the process you have just created
7. Fix your schedule problems
   1. You won’t be able to anticipate all of the things that come your way and this might mean that you have to compromise on something in the short term to stick to your plan (like getting up extra early to do that 1Km you have to do in the next few days)
8. Adapt as you go
   1. The more time you spend working your process, the more you will get to learn about how well the process works for you personally. If something doesn’t quite work, then adapt it so it is closer to what does work for you

So go on… take a wild guess?

The main reason is that we are more intentional about getting up for work than we are about winding down at the end of the day and the consequences of being late, minimises the need for willpower or determination to get up at when we need to.

Getting up also feels like it is much more within our control; we can set an alarm (or several) to go off at say 06:00 and when it goes off (assuming we actually set the alarm to “loud” and not on “silent”) we will wake up. We don’t have to decide whether we need to wake up at that time, we have already decided that’s what we need to do and thus we just work on auto-pilot from waking up to getting to work.

Jeff Haden has this to say in his book “The Motivation Myth”:

“Sure, some people may be more self-disciplined than you. But it’s unlikely they were born with some certain special something inside them—instead, they’ve found ways to make decisions that don’t require willpower and determination.” 

So how can you remove the willpower and determination from the process of getting to sleep?

You can’t just set a timer and when it goes off you just fall asleep at that exact time BUT… here are some simple things you can do to set you on the right track.

1. Work backwards from the time you wake up and find the time you’d ideally like to get to sleep
   1. Say you need to be up at 06:00 and you work best on 8hrs of sleep so you need to be getting to sleep around 22:00
2. Determine how long you need to get ready for bed and wind down
   1. For me this is about 60 mins to shut off electrical devices, get ready for bed and get between 30 to 45 mins of light reading in before I need to go to sleep
3. Set your alarm!
   1. So to wake up at 06:00, having had 8hrs of sleep and accounting for a further hour to wind down and read, means you should set your alarm for…. 21:00!
4. Stick to a routine.
   1. By getting in to the habit of going to bed and waking at the same time, your body will get in to a better sleep routine, making it easier to get to sleep at the time you need

The great thing about this method is that you remove all decision-making from the process and you just work on auto-pilot from the time the alarm goes off, to the time you get in to bed and then to sleep.

An article by Danielle Pacheco for The Sleep Foundation² says that a lack of sleep has been linked to a higher risk for certain diseases and medical conditions (Including obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, poor mental health, and early death) as well as reducing cognition, increasing attention lapses, delayed reactions and mood shifts.

References:

1. The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win by Jeff Haden – P.31
2. Article by Danielle Pacheco – https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/why-do-we-need-sleep – cited on 13/1/22

Now I know what you are thinking…. “I am so sick of these “life hacks in (x) steps” and to be honest so am I.

In life I don’t think there are any real “shortcuts” to get what you want…well no legal ones anyway (lol).

However many of us have days where our mood is incredibly low and it can be hard to snap out of it and break the downward spiral. The steps outlined below are simple, effective but can be hard to implement because they can be uncomfortable (especially number 3!). But seeing as there are no shortcuts, I promise, if you perform these steps correctly, you WILL feel better than you did before doing them.

How this came about:

2020 was a hard year for me, I broke up with my long-term girlfriend, went back to living by myself and felt incredibly lonely as over the preceding few years had alienated many of my close friends due to the toxic relationship I had found myself in.

Some days I really struggled to motivate myself to do anything at all and had a real hard time reversing the low moods I often found myself in.

So… what did I do?

I knew from reading many books on mindset / personal development and from my own experiences, that several things do help with maintaining more of a positive outlook.

These things were:

-Gratitude

-Exercise

-Positive self-image

-Getting a jolt of adrenaline

-Overcoming an obstacle

-Focussing on the small victories

I already did these things individually; making my bed in the morning was my small victory, gratitude in the evening, exercising 4 times a week etc… but these are great maintainers of mood, but didn’t help in situations where I started in the day in a very low place.

So I figured I needed a routine that I could do in 15 mins and would have an overwhelming effect on my mood by compounding the boost I got from doing the above individually.

The idea behind the method below is that alone, you would get a small increase in your mood, but doing some of these one after the other, then you will see a much bigger change.

The method:

Note: I am not a medical professional and can’t give medial advice. All I can do is tell you what has worked for me and for others who have tried it. Always seek independent medical advice if you are worried about performing any steps within this method.

Mins 0 to 3: Think of 3 things that you are truly grateful for. These can be big or small but when you think of them, try to really feel the positive emotion behind the gratitude and list the reasons why you feel grateful. At this stage it is OK if it feels phony and silly… this is only the first of 4 steps.

Mins 3 to 6: Do 10 to 20 burpees! These are a great way to use a lot of your bodies muscles as well as get oxygen flooding your system because of the heavy cardio-vascular use when performing this exercise. If you are unsure on how to do a burpee, then search how to do them on YouTube and don’t be put off, just do the best you can.

Mins 6 to 9: Cold shower time! Now I did say this method was SIMPLE but HARD. This is probably the most uncomfortable part of the 15 mins but has many positive effects all rolled in to one. The easiest way to do this is to not think about it too much and just GET IT OVER AND DONE WITH!

Put on a song that makes you want to conquer the world, set a timer for 40 seconds, stand under the shower head, count down from 10 and once you get to 0, turn on the cold water full blast! The aim here is to stay under the cold water until the timer goes off.

The cold water gives you a jolt of adrenaline, opens up your airways and makes you gasp, taking in more oxygen in to your system. Try to get your breathing under control under the water so you are breathing normally by the end of it. Remember, it is only 30 seconds of your life and the benefits will be HUGE!

Note: I will go under the cold for 30 secs, turn off the water, soap up/shampoo my whole body and use the cold water to wash it all off. That way I get clean and I get the cold shower and probably spend 60 to 90 seconds under the running cold water.

Mins 9 to 15: Dress in something that makes you feel good. Get out of the shower, laugh and smile, get dry and get dressed. Our appearance on the outside can affect how we feel on the inside. Whenever I have done these few steps, I dress better than I would do normally for what I have planned for that day because it has to feel special.

And finally: Reflect back on what you did, how you feel now compared to how you felt before doing any of this. Feel pride in the victory of over-coming some hard mental objections to those burpees and the cold water, look at how good you look in the mirror then go out there and kick some BUTT!

As always, please let me know what your methods are for over-coming a low mood and if you try this one, please tell me how it went!