One of the best ways of measuring your fitness levels is with VO₂ Max which is the maximum rate of oxygen you can consume whilst exercising. The higher it is indicates a higher level of cardio fitness and endurance.
And whilst there are different types of exercise you can perform to improve your VO₂ max, one of the best is HIIT also known as High Intensity Interval Training.
What’s great things about HIIT workouts is relative output to the time you input… You could do a 20 minute workout that can be more impactful on your fitness as jogging around the park for 1 hour.
The key thing is “high intensity’, you’ve got to go at it for 20 min as hard as you can.
Which brings me back to the standard working environment.
Typically employees are coming in and working 9-5, but studies show they’re only productive for about one third of that time.
They’re the ‘joggers’ of the office.
What if you applied a HIIT style working environment to the office where you would have 1-2 hours of ‘high intensity’ interval work (HIIW), followed by 2-3 hours active recovery, massage, light exercise, mediation, reading. (no phone scrolling!)
You could do it 2 maybe 3 times a day.
Just as you wouldn’t run a marathon everyday, why ‘work’ all day?
It’s not about the hours clocked in, but what you actually do within the hours…
Would you try a HIIW day?
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❌ a**hole boss ❌ lousy pay ❌ horrible commute ❌ no WFH ❌ no bonus this year ❌office politics ❌ toxic culture ❌ zero training ❌ dread Monday mornings
Your Dream Job…
✅ purposeful work ✅ inspiring environment ✅ boss you can learn from ✅ leaders who listen ✅ colleagues you respect ✅ compensation you deserve ✅ flexible work policies ✅ benefits that actually benefit you! ✅ clear career path defined ✅ personal-career goal alignment!
No one is going to call you for your dream job.
Be pro-active and start the search for your Dream Job today!
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What you say ‘YES’ to today, you are saying ‘NO’ to something else…
Time is a zero sum game.
If one of your meetings overruns by 10 minutes – something or someone will have to be sacrified later on.
If a collegue or employee comes to you with something ‘urgent’, whatever you’re doing will have to give.
Whatever you CHOOSE to say ‘yes’ to today whether it is in your own mind when organising today’s tasks, or whether it’s a random phone call or meeting… CHOOSE the action that moves YOU further along to your overall primary goal.
And if that’s not possible – keep the trivial short and sweet and to a minimum!
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‘Every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking, and running by running…therefore, if you want to do something make a habit of it.’ -Epictetus
The old cliche is that ‘looking for a job is a full-time job’, well that’s because it’s largely true.
If you want to find a really good job, not any job but one that excites you, challenges you, fits your values, pays you what you are worth then you’ve got to look for it full-time and make ‘looking for a job’ a habit.
As James Clear said in his hugely successful book, Atomic Habits, the best practice for forming a new habit is to ask yourself,
‘How do I make this behavior more obvious, more attractive, more easier, and more satisfying?’
Ask yourself these questions today and make ‘looking for a new job’ a good habit.
If you are not happy in your current job, There’s nothing wrong with Job hopping if the overall effort is to live a better life. Equally, if you don’t put in the effort then don’t complain if you only live as you’ve begun.
If you’re recently into a new job and it’s not as what you expected that doesn’t mean that you’re committed to it forever. At the same time it doesn’t mean you should necessarily quit before you’ve tried to solve the problem.
But if it does turn out to be flawed, then take the courage to make the change for it will lead to better things.
Back when I was 28 years old, I took a career break and decided to travel Asia and Australia for a few months…alone and in the unknown, I fell in love with Thailand and decided to stay.
It was easily the best decision of my life.
Around 8 years later, I decided to take another career break, this time travelling around Europe with my newly wed wife… it was an amaizng experience travelling through the Tuscan vineyards, truffle hunting, flamenco dancing in Sevilla, and drinking big beers with friendly strangers at Oktoberfest in Munich. Prost!
One year later we welcomed our son into the world.
Who knows what my life would be like now had I not took those career breaks.
Yes my retirement pot may be bigger and financial independence would come sooner but most likely I’ll never have some of those experiences again and the memories will be with me forever.
Not only that though, taking a break gives you the time and space to think, reflect, learn new things, grow as a person, it helps shape you for the future.
A new improved version of yourself to resume your career with new energy and ambition.
If you get the chance to take an early career break or ‘micro-retirement’ as they are calling it, I highly recommend it – you don’t know where it might take your life!
Could it be that you are slowly killing your business by the way you recruit talent? Maybe you are missing out on acquiring top talent by not thinking outside the box? Maybe your recent hire is under-performing or even worse – quit within the first 6 months? It could be time to change the way you recruit talent by assessing what is going wrong and re-evaluating your old tactics.
When it comes to hiring a new or vacant role, many hiring managers fail to think ‘long-term’. They are so busy or pressurized with fixing short term gaps or results that the thought of hiring a person who will fit in culturally, and add value in the long term goes completely out the window! They tend to look at the wisdom getting someone with ‘x’ years of this or ‘x’ years of that. But what does it matter if they have industry experience or relevant qualifications if they don’t fit in culturally or fit the company’s strategic vision? They won’t last 6 months.
In a growing economy, where the talent pool shrinks and skill shortages emerge it is time for hiring managers to show some courage and try something completely different. Why not look for talent outside your own industry? You might say, ‘If we hire someone outside our industry it will take too long for them to understand our business’. But is that really true? And how long does it really take? What makes your business so unique that only people that have worked in it are able to take over? In lots of cases the answer is, ‘Absolutely nothing’!
What is the guarantee that someone from your industry will fit in and perform in your company anyway? In leadership roles there are always challenges and problems and many of them are all the same, no matter what industry. The only differences are the variables like product knowledge, market knowledge and years’ experience. The skills and motivations to do the job in many cases are the same. Yes, there are exceptions, a manager in a service business may find it difficult to adapt to a manufacturing environment or someone in telecoms may not adapt to healthcare but the point is identifying what the ‘transferable’ skills are in great people and filling in the gaps. Would you rather have someone with the product knowledge but no motivation or someone with no product knowledge, similar skills and high motivation? Would you select 10 years of mediocrity over 7 years of achievement?
Instead of hiring clones, search in a wider, deeper, more diverse talent pool and look at what great talent from outside your industry could do for you. If done correctly, you will have someone your competition doesn’t have. You will have a ‘game changer’. They are adaptable, enthusiastic, and eager to learn who will challenge the status quo, look at things from a different angle and provide new creative approaches to problem solving. They will reinvigorate your business and change the direction for the better.
Instead of hiring clones, search in a wider, deeper, more diverse talent pool and look at what great talent from outside your industry could do for you. If done correctly, you will have someone your competition doesn’t have. You will have a ‘game changer’.
Hiring outside your industry might create more work in the short term but in the medium and long term you will have a great hire, with the right skill set, trained, loyal and full of drive and imagination. Within 6 months you will be wondering what all the panic was about and within 2-3 years you could well have found your successor!
Instead of hiring based on numbers and facts, widen your search to focus on skills and motivations and you will have invested in looking after the future of your organization.
You are a great leader or so you think. Here are 10 things you may be currently doing that are guaranteed to be demotivating your staff and ruining your business!
1. Lack humility
You probably have a nice office with the door shut most of the time because you are too busy! You usually take all the credit for success yourself, that way your boss thinks you are great and without you the business will fail. You prefer not to mix with your team on any social activities and especially avoid corporate events like annual parties or sports days. Yes, you are a big boss and big bosses only talk to other big bosses! You like to isolate yourself away from your team as much as possible and create your own pretentious executive bubble.
2. Limit innovation
Especially works well if you lack humility. If any of your team have good ideas; either take them yourself and the credit that will come with it, or tell them it is a bad idea and get on with what you’re paid to do. That way there is no threat to your position by some rising star in your team. Initiatives and innovation only disturb the delicate balance you have created in this little empire of yours. You have always done it this way so why change it now? The status quo is fine thank you very much!
3. Lack emotional restraint
This works really well in Thailand. If ever you want to damage your relationship with your staff, get angry with them! Yes, turn into the Incredible Hulk, that will really make for good team bonding! Your team have not hit their targets, not reached the deadline, your new staff keeps asking you the same questions – get emotional, show impatience, and don’t take time to think. You will be highly effective at demotivating your team and isolating yourself to business failure.
4. Be inconsistent
You are a Jekyll and Hyde type character, one moment you are somebody’s best friend the next you are giving them ‘evil eyes’ across the office. Or maybe you are someone who likes to moan about everybody’s time keeping only for you to come in late every day. You might be someone who has office favorites, usually anyone who is making you money at that time. Consequently they can do what they want, whereas those employees trying their best looking for your support are on their own. Continue being inconsistent, it is a great way to fail as a leader!
5. Poor communication
You don’t listen. Yes, you are there in the meetings with your staff but you don’t listen to what they are saying! You don’t know what problems they are having, you don’t know what they are trying to solve and you have no idea why they are failing. You also don’t give your team feedback so they lack confidence and direction.
6. Don’t get buy in
An extension of poor communication, you constantly tell people they need to do this and that and then you are confused and angry when it is never carried out or achieved? You fail to read your team’s ‘blank’ expression’s and take your sub-ordinates ‘yes’ for actual consensus. Failure to communicate effectively on goal setting is a great way not to get ‘buy in’ or ownership from your subordinate!
7. Be inflexible
You don’t take into consideration the different generations, cultures, mindsets in your organization and treat everyone the same. You wouldn’t consider that different people may be motivated or demotivated differently. You have honed your leadership style down to ‘one size fits all’. It is ‘your way or the highway’ and you will be damned if you should adapt to anyone!
8. Lack integrity
You will fail if you do not have the trust of your colleagues, employee and customers. If you openly show no ethics, lack of principles or transparency then you will not inspire much trust. Be careful of the race to win and be successful at all costs at the expense of doing the right thing. Once trust is broken there is no way back.
9. Be Mr. Know it all
Being ‘Mr. Know it all’ is easy, you are always right! You are someone who knows many things, and even the thing you know little about…you still probably have the correct opinion. Woe betide those that challenge your opinion as ‘they will be shot down to pieces’! Don’t ever admit when you are actually wrong. You can always blame it on someone else. Be careful of your infallibility because it may just be your downfall.
10. Lose your passion
If you really want to fail, lose your passion. Come in to work every day with that look on your face that says, ‘Get me out of here’. Every time you face a challenge or things get tough, lose that passion and desire because that will kill your business. If you have lost sight of what you want to achieve then don’t expect your team to follow you. If you don’t love what you do, don’t expect your customer to buy from you. If you are not excited by your brand, then don’t expect anyone else to care either.
So if you think you are excelling at any of these points, well done, give yourself a pat on the back and continue because you are on a fast track to losing your job and destroying your business!
…Or perhaps it is not too late. You have recognized and accepted you may have some ‘skill gaps’ to close. Now take the first steps towards being a better leader.
