Do you know Creativity, productivity, and energy: these are among the most elementary units of a richly rewarding life. If either of these three is out of balance, or lacking, in your own life, your sense of momentum, of satisfaction, is sure to suffer.
And since we’re all put on this earth to create, experience, and share as much satisfaction, momentum, and reward as is humanly possible to enjoy following are a handful of suggestions on how to get more productive, be more creative and have more energy everyday for a richly rewarding life.
You have my permission to wholeheartedly expect your momentum, satisfaction, and sense of reward to SKYROCKET as a result.
1. To Get More Productive, Creative And Feel Energized Everyday Deliberately Decompress at the end of Each Workday.
‘Fire-gazing time’ is important. And most of us don’t have enough of it.
Since most of us work at our jobs because we need to, rather than because we want to, it’s helpful – even needful – to take some ‘decompression time’ to reset your mind and relax your spirit when you arrive home at the end of each day.
If you don’t get this decompression time, you won't feel or have more energy when you arrive at home stressed out, aggravated - and oftentimes, secretly wishing that everyone would just leave you alone ‘until you feel better’.
But of course, since no-one’s a mind-reader, generally speaking what happens is that you get POUNCED on as soon as you walk through the door.
Children need your help with school projects.
Husbands want to talk about the chores they’re planning around the house this weekend.
Your girlfriend wants to talk about the conflict she had with her boss today and get your take on it.
Meals need cooking. Dogs need walking. And so on. ‘The bends’ are a condition that deep-sea divers are familiar with: lethal cramps of nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream that quickly and fatally erupt if you come back up to the surface too quick.
To avoid the bends, you need to stop and wait every so often on your way back up to the light and air of the surface - this ‘decompression’ allows your body to get more productive, be more productive and have more energy everyday and enjoy a richly rewarding life on a consistent basis.
The progression from work to ‘real life’ is much the same. Without that critical decompression time, you can get ‘the bends’ of the personality: lethal cramps in your mood that can wreak havoc with your adrenal glands, frustration levels, loving-kindness, relationships, and your day-to-day levels of Creativity, Productivity, and Energy.
FACT: to get more productive in your brain and body, to create new things, to surf the crest of physical and mental energy, you need DOWN TIME as well as up-time.
And without an opportunity to collect your thoughts and ‘come back to yourself’ after each day, you never GET that downtime because you never really COME DOWN from the demands of the workday.
FACT: It can be really difficult to end the day at work to have more energy– or ‘reset’ yourself properly after ANY stressful event – without a proper ‘underline’ to the day.
You need to RESET yourself before you can back off a bit and come back to yourself.
So here are some recommendations to help you feel happy to be at home, and to be a pleasure to be around, instead of angry/resentful/stressed out …
2. Underline the end of your day through exercise to have more energy in your body and mind.
I’ve found that the absolute best ‘decompression chamber’ is mild to moderate physical exercise – for at least fifteen minutes – directly after work.
Some people are lucky enough to have this already built into their day: maybe they live walking distance from their place of work.
Others have a fifteen-minute stroll to their car, scooter, bicycle, or bus-stop.
And right on, if so: these daily constitutionals provide an excellent mobile decompression chamber to wash away the difficulties of the day and to reset your mind into relaxation mode.
But for pretty much everyone else, it’s more along the lines of ‘leave really stressful place of work, hop into car and endure forty-five minute grinding commute through dense traffic, arrive home and put massive pressure on self to instantly snap into Relaxed At-Home Leisurely Happy Spouse/Parent Mode’.
In other words, we arrive at home STILL IN WORK MODE, and fretting about it. Still stressed, worrying about stuff, grinding our teeth, with no control on your emotions and DEFINITELY not in any state of mind to relax and accept whatever pleasures our new ‘at home’ status may mean.
Thus, we miss out on a huge part of the pleasures of our week - and our brains don’t really get to decompress, de-stress, or RELAX, either.
Instead, we’re in constant ‘pedal to the metal’ mode. And during prolonged cases of this, you can bet that BURNOUT is on the cards in short order.
To avoid burnout, underline the end of your workday through mild to moderate physical exercise to boost your productivity, creativity and have more energy.
I’m not necessarily talking ‘sweating to the oldies from five till seven’ at the gym every weekday more along the lines of 15 to 30 minutes’ gentle exercise, every day after work.
So if you can park your car or bike about 20 minutes’ walk from your workplace, so much the better.
Walking is different from any other exercise: it resets your body’s rhythms, calms your central nervous system, and forces you to breathe deeply and regularly. (Needless to say, this is NOT the time to make calls on your cellphone.)
Cycling is exercise too, and it can also help - but walking is the absolute best, because of its complete lack of stress, the lack of need to pay attention to traffic and stop-lights, and its way of putting you back in touch with the healthy slowness of real life.
If walking isn’t ‘Type A’ enough for you, bend your mind enough to encompass other forms of physical exertion: you can go to the gym, go for a run, go for a swim.
I even used to know a man who brought his yoga mat to work with her. When the end of the day rolled around, he’d find an empty room somewhere in the building and do 20 minutes of Sun Salutations and Downwards Facing Dogs.
So whatever. Whatever works for you is best. But NEVER underestimate the calming, restorative power of physical motion.
Such a ‘decompression period’ allows you the quiet time necessary to hang out inside your own head, where nobody is making demands on you.
Quiet time like this enables you to feel more happy, feel rested, cared-for, and relaxed – so that, when you get home, IF somebody needs your help with something, you’ll be able to offer your assistance warmly and with kindness and you WON’T plunge yourself deeper into the tarry pits of Burnout Swamp.
So: get some exercise at the end of each workday. Optimally, you’ll arrange for a walk after work, as I’ve found that walking is the absolute BEST way to ‘reset’ your emotional patterns and stress levels.
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3. Fire gaze when you get home for at least 30 minutes. It will help you to get more productive, be more creative and have more energy everyday.
When you get home, you need to take some time to allow your body and mind to catch up with reality: you’re at home now.
That means you can relax and feel warm and fuzzy. How you want to handle the niceties of this one is largely up to you.
Some people find that they really need NO interaction at all, for at least 30 minutes, in order to get into ‘home mode’. Others are fine to spend time with their loved ones, as long as no ‘difficult stuff’ (bills, arguments, problems) gets laid on the table until they’ve had a cup of tea.
The point remains, though: your arrival at home should be a JOYOUS occasion. It’s the time when you come back from the big crazy world and reunite yourself with your loved ones. They don’t call it ‘homecoming’ for nothing.
But if you come home and straight away have to deal with the corrugated forehead of your spouse as he worries aloud about car repairs and power bills or three messages on the phone from repo companies or screaming bickering kids who want you to intervene in the argument then homecoming becomes less of a joy, and more of an extension of the working day.
In such a life, where do YOU get the time that YOU need to decompress, unwind, and generally soften yourself? Where is your sanctuary?
The answer: you’ve got to create one of your own to boost your productivity, creativity and energy.
And that means, you’ve got to get comfortable asking for what you need. Because make no mistake: you DO need this.
Nobody is suggesting that you hide from the realities of life, bills, caterwauling kids, or repo men – in fact, you shouldn’t, since that will only add to your burden and stress you out further.
What I am suggesting is that you need a ‘demilitarized zone’ that is entered once you step foot in the door – a zone where nobody can reach you (unless it really is an emergency), and that you don’t emerge from until the big hand of the clock has traveled halfway round the dial.
Just 30 minutes of peace and quiet – time that you can spend how you choose – truly does make ALL the difference.
A demilitarized zone such as this gives you the inner strength and resources to meet the needs of your family (if you have one), calm your kids (if you have them), and figure out how to pay the bills (we all have those) with a sense of inner strength, instead of desperation and panic.
When such an even keel is maintained, for the most part, in your home life, you’ll find that you have the ‘workplace armor’ necessary to head out into the outside world each day with a light heart.
And that’s when you make the most progress in your job … forge the most meaningful relationships … come up with the most brilliant ideas enjoy the most creativity, productivity, and energy and, yes, earn the most money.
The secret? What happens in your ‘up time’ is always a result of what happens in your down-time.
The trick is to make sure you get some - before trying to deal with whatever else it is that life (and your family) have in store for you.
4. Let Your Boundaries Down But Only To Certain Select People.
To have more energy in your life, it makes sense to reduce the friction. No friction = more momentum = more energy for you to enjoy.
Something that causes a lot of inner friction for many people is the sense of GUILT they get from asking others for help. When I ask a favor from wife, she will invariably respond with ‘Sure’ but then she’ll immediately follow it with, ‘And then maybe you can do X for me, too.’
The first time this happened, I couldn’t help noticing it, because I was raised to acquiesce graciously to a request for help without telling the person what they could do for you ‘in return’.
To me, my wife’s way seemed to be almost like a bartering system instead of a no-strings attached favor-granting.
So naturally, being the kind of person who likes to have everything out in the open, I brought this up with my wife and it turns out she believes that people feel bad when they ask for help.
So she automatically suggests something they can do for him in return - so they don’t have to feel ‘guilty’ about asking for a favor!
Now isn’t that interesting? And my wife is not the only one who feels this way. SO MANY PEOPLE feel, on some level, that asking for help is a BAD thing.
Many women and men, especially, don’t like to be the ones who ‘ask for stuff’.
They take pride in ‘keeping themselves to themselves’ and being ‘self-sufficient’ and ‘running a tight ship.’
And granted, there is something very feminine and very ATTRACTIVE about a woman who is able to solve many, if not most, of her own problems and to put that feminine energy to work on behalf of her beloved also.
HOWEVER it’s worth noting that there are times when to ask for help with something is not only the smart thing to do, it’s fully NECESSARY.
And I think many of us would do well to internalize the idea that asking, graciously and without self-deprecation, for help can actually be an incredibly ATTRACTIVE thing to do.
There’s something sweetly authentic about it - something that invites a true human bonding experience into the mix there’s a definite sense of ‘letting down the shield’ in the company of others.
Interestingly, many high-quality men and women will actually feel FLATTERED at being privy to such a shield-dropping.
That being said, obviously you don’t want to make a HABIT of sponging off others.
But unless you’re socially maladroit enough to really push the envelope in this regard, you can rest easy knowing that asking for help is actually one of the ways that human beings connect with each other.
So next time you’re fretting about a problem you can’t solve alone – whether that’s a bill that needs paying, a project that needs finishing, a speech that needs hearing, a house that needs sitting, or simply your own need for some quiet, undisturbed Time Alone – how’s about this choose someone you trust and then let those boundaries down a bit.
Practice asking for what you need. Say something like this: “I could really do with some help with X … and I was wondering if you’d mind giving me a hand.”
If you’re afraid that that person will feel imposed upon by you asking such a favor, you can always preempt their response with a benefit for them: ‘I’ll give you a hand tomorrow/buy you a six-pack/help you move house next weekend …’ Then take a deep breath and wait for them to respond.
More often than not, the response will be ‘yes’. And when it’s not?
Try not to take it personally. (You won’t always be able to succeed here … but try anyway. It’s character-forming.)
Above all, remember that this is one of the ways that human beings forge connections with one another.
And when it comes, allow the help that will come your way to streamline your life and boost your joy in living, and your energy levels, along with your momentum.
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5. Take more naps help you to get more productive, be more creative and have more energy everyday.
Napping is a richly self-indulgent thing to do.
Taking a nap is such an authentic act of self-care: you can hide from the world for awhile, treat yourself like someone who deserves some chillout time, and lie down in the softness until you feel better. There is nothing wrong with this.
In point of fact, allowing yourself to ‘indulge’ in this sort of way requires a kind of strength not often seen in our driven world:
The strength to give yourself what you know you need in order to live well, produce well, and create well.
Whenever I’m feeling tired or stressful, I take the first opportunity to go have a lie-down. (I rarely set an alarm.) I inevitably wake up feeling refreshed, recharged, and much, much stronger – and also, a lot ‘clearer’ about whatever needs to be done.
The thing about taking naps as a ‘strengthening mechanism’ is that it’s more about a shift in mindset than a physical thing to ‘do’.
Yes, the nap itself will make you feel better, more pampered, and clarify your thoughts for you. But the change in MINDSET that actually allows you to take the nap, guilt-free, is what works the BIGGEST changes of all.
Most of us are too heavily invested in the puritanical ‘work should be drudgery, progress means pain’ mindset to even THINK about allowing ourselves to do what we need to feel better.
Instead of feeling proud and capable for recognizing our body’s signals that it needs rest, we feel shamed and incompetent for daring to be so blatantly human. We deny ourselves what we need and HIDE from our humanness behind a shield of automaton-like efficiency.
(The toll you pay, of course, is the fact that sooner or later you’ll BURN OUT and literally have to give yourself what you need ‘or else.’) I used to have a girlfriend who disapproved of my nappishness.
She – and her overbearing mother – would imply that such voluntary prostration was lazy and that I wasn’t demonstrating enough ‘strength’ in forcing myself to get through the day and ignoring the impulses of my body.
(If you look hard enough, you’ll generally find traces of this ‘work should be hard, life is tough, and if you’re not hurting, you’re not growing’ mindset in plenty of people.)
Know what I have to say to this sort of ‘you don’t get ahead by taking it easy’ rubbish? What we think of as ‘self-indulgence’ is so often simply our bodies, in their brilliance, offering us the wisdom we need to make our lives easier.
If you have a job to do, but are feeling tired and worn-down, then any time spent ‘resting’ is actually time spent preparing yourself to do a better job.
You will do more, think more clearly, and enjoy larger, more vivid bursts of creativity if you learn how to heed the messages of your body and if you can learn to TRUST yourself enough to ‘take the easy way’ for once.
NOTE: By refusing to ‘struggle’, and taking the ‘easy way’, you’ll very often do a better job anyway. You will get more productive, be more creative and have more energy and in much less time.
Nap more. You should try it.
6. Get a pet to get more productive, be more creative and have more energy everyday.
Pets force you to get out into the world, even when you really don’t feel like it (which is often when you need it the most anyway.)
Some people like a glass of wine when they’re feeling persnickety. Others light up a cigarette, or reach for a chocolate Danish when the stress becomes overbearing.
Me, I’ll take a romp with my dog, a cuddle with my cat, and a walk in the park with either (yes … you can take cats for a walk) over and above any ‘stress releasers’ that other humans seem to enjoy.
Pets make you laugh. And unlike the comedy shows you laugh at on the silver screen, pets actually INTERACT … with you. You can touch them. They respond to you. And best of all, they touch you back a lot.
It’s been proved in labs and hospitals that physical touch, and physical play, from an undemanding, friendly source is one of the most potent brain-tonics, stress-releasers, and physical healers around.
And if you can get a laugh out of the encounter too then you’ll be spurting ideas, energy, and productivity more dramatically than Old Faithful ever spouted hot lava.
Next time you get bored, sucked too far into your computer screen, or too caught up in the clickety-clacking of your home keyboard, imagine turning round and seeing a pair of adoring eyes staring pleadingly at you eyes that just want you to come and play - even just for a second.
Eyes that will willingly do joyful backflips for the privilege of strolling round the block with you.
(And might I add that the accompanying fresh air and movement from just such a stroll inevitably does wonders for simultaneous brain stimulation and central nervous system calming both of which are like nuggets of pure aviation fuel for your idea-generating abilities.)
Pets will love you with all their might. Pets make you a happier, less stressed, more flexible, more affectionate, more intelligent, more energetic person.
Somewhere out there, there is a cat or a dog that needs you.
7. Food-wise, have a little of what you like – or, if you’re in danger of overindulging, have none at all
Overindulgence – and the accompanying farts, achy belly, stinky breath, and guilty feelings of regret – is the enemy of balance, energy, creativity, and productivity.
And yet so many of us react to feelings of overwhelm by trying to NUMB ourselves through overindulgence … … mostly in food.
When you eat too much, you basically glue your mind to the ground. It gets so heavy, so smeared with the thick paste of whatever it is that’s now being processed through your guts, that it can’t ‘lift off’ and neither can your ideas OR your energy levels.
(Sometimes we need the heavy, sleepy, ‘just-checking-out-for-awhile’ feeling that comes with overindulgence, and that’s OK. It’s only a problem when it BECOMES a problem – when you start wanting to be able to stop, but can’t.)
Of course, the pendulum can swing too far in either direction and at the other end of the spectrum, we have food DENIAL.
Food denial is an equally strange, destructive thing – and, like overindulgence, is wildly over practiced by many people. Why? Because in our society, CONTROL FREAKISHNESS, especially when it comes to food, tends to be looked at as a GOOD thing.
I’m sure you get my drift. Someone mentions they haven’t eaten all day except for half a muffin at breakfast (with a faint tinge of pride in their voice), and everyone in the room says, ‘Wow! I wish I had your self-control.’
A yoga teacher announces in the studio that she’s only eaten one meal in the last two days ‘because she’s been too busy, and really, she just didn’t feel hungry anyway’ and all the women from that class go home after class and pinch their bellies in the mirror, wondering if they too should try skipping more meals.
Food denial is SEEN as a good thing. But if you want a balanced relationship with your body – which means, all of the highs, with none of the lows as well as to enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship with the source of your creativity, professional success, dynamic attitude at work, productivity, and ENERGY LEVELS you need to embrace what it means to be BALANCED with your food intake also.
Because overindulgence AND self-denial are BOTH the enemies of your happiness which means they’re BOTH the enemies of all that other good stuff I just mentioned, none of which will come easy without generous lashings of contentment.
Here’s what that means for you: When it comes to food, have a little of what you like. Or, to put it more forcefully:
8. Eat what you crave but in limits to get more productive, be more creative and have more energy everyday.
A big juicy cheeseburger? Enjoy. A bag of potato chips? Ditto. A big bowl of caramel ice-cream? Go right ahead.
The only ‘caveat’, which I’ll borrow from my good friend Tracey T’s nutritional mandate The Trimmer Method, is that, if you’re physically full already, that you try your damnedest NOT to eat just yet.
Or, in her words: if you’re not hungry, PUT THE BAG DOWN. (Again, this will probably NOT always be possible and again, I’m cool with that.
Perfection is not your goal here; awareness of what will help you to feel and do your best in life is.)
We already know what happens when you make a habit of overeating: your brain becomes the hog-slop trough. Mmm, yummy.
In the other direction, what happens when you become a control freak about food is that one day despite all your best, most obsessive efforts your willpower snaps, and you spend the next three months stuffing yourself full of whatever it is you were denying yourself.
Let’s not forget that you’ll also have lived your life up till the ‘breaking point’ in a state of perpetual FEAR of that very moment.
And needless to say, it’s pretty hard to enjoy life when you’re constantly struggling with FEAR OF WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT.
Instead why not TRUST yourself that you want that food for a reason (whether that’s a physical, psychological, or emotional reason) and just let yourself have what you need?
We want foods for a variety of different reasons, and emotional reasons are at least as valid as physical ones.
If we look at food as ‘just’ a source of nutrition, we miss out on so much!
Plus, to deny the emotional power of food is to shut down a whole world of delights that are available to us and the pleasures of this world, I firmly believe, are available to us for a REASON: Because life is better when it tastes good.
So eat what you crave - just don’t OVERDO it.
9. AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT FOOD CRAVINGS.
Some people recommend that if you have ‘real problems’ with a particular type of food, that you just don’t eat ANY of it.
A few years ago, I accompanied a friend to an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.
During the talks, one man said that sugar was his ‘devil food’ and that if he ate anything with sugar in it – even dried fruit – he would disappear from the planet for the next 3 days because he’d be barricaded in his house, eating sugar.
So now, he doesn’t eat ANYTHING that tastes even remotely sweet. To me, this doesn’t sound like much of a life.
As it so happens, our resident nutritional and food-mentality expert, Tracey Trimmer, agrees wholeheartedly with me.
Matter of fact, she used to be pretty much the exact same as the woman from that meeting and she sure didn’t get into the awesome shape (and total lack of bingeing) that she enjoys today by AVOIDING the foods she loves.
Nope, she got there by embracing the foods she loves without OVERDOING it.
Her theory (and it works!) is that, if you give yourself enough of the food that you want one day you’ll balance out, all on your own.
The denial is what’s keeping that food so appealing. In the meantime, though, you can avoid physical blow-outs and mental stodginess by neither avoiding nor overindulging.
Instead, just have a bit of what you like. Enjoy it thoroughly. And when your tummy is full, stop eating. This will help you to get more productive, be more creative and have more energy everyday.
10. Sweat more to get more productive, be more creative and have more energy everyday.
If there is a cure-all on this planet, it’s exercise.
Exercise has been proven to cure stress, work worries, insomnia, obesity, appetite problems, headaches, even depression.
Yep, it’s true: doctors in the UK are now prescribing gentle running 3 times per week to patients with mild to moderate depression. The really crazy part?
Studies confirm that running is actually more effective than antidepressants! And the harder OR the longer you work out, the better you feel, too – a short walk will doubtless ‘clear the cobwebs’ and set the world straight again but a good sweaty run will actually make you feel HIGH.
Literally. That’s because the brain releases opiates, called endorphins, whenever you’re really working hard.
(Tip: that’s when you’re breathing hard and starting to sweat.) Exercise cures stress.
And it’ll give you a killer body, too – not to mention, a totally authentic, totally natural, totally feel-good HIGH!
These 10 tips, when embraced wholeheartedly, will help you to avoid mental sluggishness, stodgy relationships, boredom at work, and a general lack of life-enjoyment.
Instead, when you start experimenting with approaches that make you feel alive, what will happen is your - energy, productivity, and creativity - will all go THROUGH THE ROOF.
I’m not kidding. Practice tinkering a little with your daily habits. Make a few adjustments to how you live your life.
This article is an excellent place to start: every piece of information contained within these article is designed specifically to bring you to a place of greater satisfaction with your life.
So become someone for whom the words ‘status quo’ have almost no meaning.
Make a few changes. Shake it up a little! You never know - the end result just could be more energy, creativity, and productivity (the three building-blocks of an awesome life) than you’ve experienced to date.
I hope you loved reading this in-depth guide and if you really loved it please do not forget to share and comment your thoughts.
