When life is busy and you want to succeed in everything you turn your attention to, it helps to break down your objectives and tackle priorities in order. To take a step by step approach rather than trying to fix everything at once.
For everyone looking to take their wellness and performance to the next level in 2025, here's a suggestion of how you might master some key behaviour changes by adopting a linear approach.
January: Set up a day and time for your regular wellness & performance review
Pick a safe weekly slot. Maybe 15 minutes on a Saturday morning. Or 6pm on a Wednesday evening.
Choose an inspiring location for your review. A calm space at home, a favourite coffee shop or somewhere outdoors. You can sit in your chosen spot or conduct your review the move.
Design a simple framework for your review that you can evolve over time. It could be as easy as asking yourself, based on your chosen objectives, what do you need to do more of or less of to move closer to your goals by the same time next week.
February: Map out your desired workout schedule for the month
Then reality check this blue sky plan with your diary - both work commitments and social events.
Make any adjustments necessary e.g. some workouts may need to be short, some may require a different venue if you’re on the move, some may need to be arranged with other people if you suspect you’ll need some extra motivation and accountability during a busy period.
The most important factor here is to decide how many workouts you’d like to achieve for these 4 weeks, get them in the diary and then apply creative solutions where necessary to make them happen.
March: Regulate your wake up time
Ideally you should be waking up at the same time, or within 30 minutes of this time, each day across the week. Including weekends.
April: Build reflection / strategy / planning time into EVERY day
It’s vital to know that you’re applying your time, energy and effort in the most effective way so you need to step back periodically throughout the day to make sure you’re working on the business and not just in the business.
May: Start, evolve and regularly update a list of non work related elements of your life
Variety is the spice of life. And the key to effective leadership and decision making.
June: Begin keeping a list of things that take up time in your week but aren’t actually the best use of your knowledge, skills, experience, brainpower and energy
This list or ‘bucket’ will come to contain everything that you need to delegate, stop doing or come up with a new system for getting them done.
If you want to maximise the time you have to add your unique value to everything you do, or even if you just want time to take a break, the items on this list need to go.
Read: Free up valuable time
July: Take a quick inventory of your typical food and drink routine.
Identify any items you’d like to consume less of and thank about any simple replacements that might help your physical and mental performance. Common adjustments include:
Less caffeine and more water
Fewer sweet snacks and more nuts / seeds
Fewer take outs and more home prepared food
Read: Healthy eating made easy
August: Review your vacation history for this year so far and ask yourself two things:
What vacation do I want to take between now and the end of this year?
Is there anything to learn so far from this year that will help shape up the ideal year of vacation for whole of next year?
You cannot have your most productive year without regular periods of rest and recovery. Plan them and prioritise them.
September: Design your ideal morning routine
What do you need to do to get yourself into the optimum frame of mind for delivering your best day of work?
The easiest way to do this is to map out your timings from wake up to work.
Spoiler alert, this time slot should be more than 2 minutes!
Probably best not launch straight into emails as soon as you wake up. Make sure you include something for yourself during this period.
October: Design your ideal evening routine
How do you wind down and balance the day.
From the moment you switch off from work to the point at which you go to sleep. What’s the best use of your evening and down time to set you up for good sleep and the following day.
Do something for yourself during this period.
November: Walk as much as you can this month
This could be a way to establish your ‘emergency’ activity plan.
When all else fails on the exercise front, even in the busiest of times you should be able to find opportunities to walk. If you have a clear idea of how many steps you could be capable of in a month if you really put your mind to it, you can try your best to make these happen during months when time for workouts is tight.
December: Review the past 12 months
Take your time with this process across the month. If you do it in 5-minutes you could miss some key learning points.
If instead you make observations, written notes, audio notes or even visual diagrams you’ll have plenty of material to work with to refine your plan for the year to follow.
This is the first step towards an evolving framework you can use every year.
Ask yourself, what went well, what would you like to do better, what did you enjoy and would like to do more of, what would you like to remove from your life?
Sketch out an action plan for the next 12 months. You can break it down into monthly priorities.
Focus on an evolution from where you are at this point, to where you will get to in a further 12-months.
Good luck!
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