Strategic Discipline Blog

“Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance. Performance, health, and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy.”

-Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement

Energy, not time, is the new currency for productivity.  We visited this idea several times including: Key Behaviors Build Effective Energy Management Rituals, Why You Need Positive Energy Rituals, and Vacations - Breakthrough in Time Management. 

When it comes to building the capacity for energy to build performance and productivity, most owners, leaders, and managers overlook the absolute critical area of rest and recovery to achieve peak performance.

Getting enough sleep is essential.  Karoline Gore, who previously published several guest blogs on our Strategic Discipline Blog, shares insights and helpful strategies for owners, and anyone who leads people, to attain better sleep habits.

Strategies for Getting Better Sleep When You Own Your Own Business

Sleep is not only vital to your health and well-being; it also impacts success and productivity. 24% of people surveyed reported that insufficient sleep leaves them less productive in the workplace, and 13% reported making more mistakes. The pressures of owning your own business can heighten stress and keep you tossing and turning in bed. It may be difficult to transition out of work mode and start unwinding for the day. Making better sleep habits a priority will benefit your overall well-being and your business in several ways. Follow a few easy strategies to achieve the quality sleep your mind and body deserve. 

Unplugging At the End Of The Day

When you are running a business, setting limits on your work schedule may be more difficult than it would be for a 9-5 employee. With technology that allows for constant, rapid communication at your fingertips, leaving the office no longer signifies the end of the workday. Creating boundaries to delineate between personal time and working hours is an important practice for improving sleep hygiene. Alerts from your phone and laptop can be jarring and disrupt sleep. Even if you have the sound turned off, just seeing your phone or computer can keep you in a heightened state of vigilance. Furthermore, blue light from screen devices can have a negative impact on circadian rhythm and melatonin production. Unplugging two hours before bedtime and keeping devices out of the bedroom can give your mind time to ease gently and naturally to sleep. 

Staying Asleep Once You’ve Fallen Asleep 

If you suffer from interrupted sleep, you may never reach the deeper, restorative REM stage of sleep, which plays a role in memory formation, processing new information and other critical skills for effectively running your own business. Common causes for frequent nocturnal awakenings include needing to use the bathroom, feeling physically uncomfortable and unpleasant dreams. Wear comfortable clothing, use a white noise machine, or wear an eye mask to eliminate disrupting sounds, sensations and light. If bad dreams are keeping you awake at night, it may be the result of stressful and anxiety-inducing experiences throughout your day. You can exercise greater control over your dream states by practicing lucid dreaming, which helps guide you to overcome distressing dreams and imagine better outcomes for troubling scenes. Lucid dreaming can also improve your ability to cope with sources of stress and find solutions for problems in your waking life. You may be able to effectively resolve your next big budget problem, make your next hiring decision and solve scheduling conflicts, all while you're asleep. 

Maintaining A Consistent Sleep Schedule 

Burning the midnight oil may feel like an unavoidable necessity from time to time, but evidence shows that rising earlier, rather than staying up later, is better for productivity.  Rising with the sun regulates your natural circadian rhythm, and signals to your body when it’s time to expend or conserve energy. Aim to wake up at the same time every day, even on vacations and weekends. To optimize your energy levels in the morning, make exercising one of your first activities for the day, eat breakfast and take advantage of the quiet early hours before the rest of the world comes to life. Throughout business hours, you may spend much of your time interfacing with clients and employees, and quickly resolving problems as they arise. Spending a quiet hour or two in the office before the rest of your staff arrives will help you stay ahead of things, and give you time to handle more cerebral aspects of running your business, 

Adequate sleep is an integral part of reducing stress and preventing burnout. By making health a priority, you’re setting a positive example for the rest of your workforce, which will result in fewer work hours lost to stress-related illness. Healthier sleeping habits will help you become a happier, more productive business owner.

​Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

How can you build an enduring great organization? 

You need disciplined people, engaged in disciplined thought, to take disciplined action, to produce superior results, to make a distinctive impact in the world.

Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period of time, to lay the foundations for lasting endurance.

It’s the framework for Good to Great:

• Stage 1: Disciplined People
• Stage 2: Disciplined Thought
• Stage 3: Disciplined Action
• Stage 4: Build Greatness

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically. Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Positioning Systems helps your business achieve these outcomes on the Four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $250M) business Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing!  Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

Next Blog – Disciplined People, Disciplined Thought, Disciplined Action

One of my favorite Good to Great Jim Collins quote is “A culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of greatness.” How do you create this discipline in your organization?  We’ll explore this next blog.