Understand Your Rhythms

Humans are built for rhythms. Our biology forces us into a daily rhythm of energy. Of wakefulness and rest. We can violate this for a time if we wish, but we’ve all felt the impact of doing so. I’ve always marveled at the fact that we spend a third of our lives asleep. It’s as if the world is trying to remind us daily that we live best in a state of rhythm.

Anyone who’s been an athlete knows the importance of rhythm. You must pair periods of intense work with periods of rest. Otherwise your muscles don’t have time to rebuild, and you risk injury.

The planet has a rhythm. Seasons of growth, seasons where things slow down, seasons of quiet stillness.

Various cultures and religions have also submitted themselves to weekly rhythms, monthly rhythms, annual rhythms. Times where you have a ton of activity, times when you perhaps have less. Times to work, and times to reflect. Times to reap, times to sow.

It’s as if we’ve always understood implicitly the need for a rhythm or cadence to life. It seems as though only recently have we forgotten this.

I believe we function best when we submit ourselves to a rhythm.

Look at your day, your week, your year. Ask yourself when you have the most energy and the least. Ask yourself when you can prioritize periods of intense activity and when you should prioritize rest.

Some examples that might be helpful.

• I’ve learned my ability to focus tends to wane throughout the day. So I carve out 2-3 hours in the mornings to only work on my MVT. Then I can spend the rest of day in meetings or in admin work. Obviously this is easier to the degree you have total control of your schedule - if you have a boss you might have to defer at times to their schedule. But align to your natural daily rhythm as much as you can.
• My wife and I prioritize a weekly date night. For many years we did it on Wednesday. But we found that our energy level wasn’t that great midweek, and were giving each other the leftovers of our week. So we moved it to Saturday night most weeks, when our energy is high, we feel refreshed, and our stress levels are low.
• Our professional lives and our kid’s schedules have rhythms. I learned over the years that most potential investors and clients were pretty checked out in August and December. I learned that friends go into hibernation for big chunks of January. Our kids obviously have many days off. So we try to align our lives to fit these rhythms.

It can be helpful to ask yourself what your ideal workday looks like. Your ideal weekend. Your ideal month. Your ideal season.

Try to visualize it as vividly and realistically as possible. You’re going to have to do housework or errands, for example. But perhaps you want to double down on experiences, and you’ve realized that’s most likely to happen on the weekends. What if instead of binging Netflix weeknights you front-loaded your home responsibilities on Thursday or Friday nights? That gives you a much more open weekend, making it more likely you’ll take that day trip to go sledding or apple picking or whatever.

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