Engaged Content - Breakfast, Lunch (dinner), Tea (dinner) – (composed prior to Covid-19 – obvs)

Do you ever wake up and have the daunting feeling you are in the midst of an existential crisis?

Do you board your bus, train, get in your car or start your cycle and wonder how you are going to get through your day?

I know I do

There is a way to overcome these feelings – the feelings that can become overwhelming and negative unless addressed. This does have echoes of my previous articles on “Chunking” but that is essentially the point – you can indeed chunk your day, making it less trying, monotonous and adversary.

“Start the day, the right way”- that is how I break the first section down, a bike ride followed by fuel. Yes, I am just commuting to work and having breakfast before the morning meeting but to perceive this in a less tiresome I make it in my head that I am going on a bike ride adventure, followed by a fuelling breakfast – muesli, yoghurt, high fibre cereal with fruits and nuts of the forest.

That marks the first chunk of the day, then come the slog the to the lunch break. I imagine this in a hunter, gatherer type period of the day – I need to make the most of this period 8:30am – until 12:30pm. This is the “slab” of the day, this is what could well set up the rest of the day, week or month, fuelled through endorphin releasing aerobic exercise and forest fruits and nuts fuel I drive focus and determination in terms of cold calling, sales calls, booking meetings etc.

Lunch time- this is the 1.5-hour period to refuel, re-group and walk – always walk, whether 10 minutes or 45 minutes, this will assist in getting the brain neurons pinging, pathways growing and rev the engine!  Wherever I am I endeavour to walk either by something green or something wet, eg, by a river or alternatively through a park or some trees.

The key fuel at this time should be lean protein, stave off the hunger – perhaps some salad. I mean this is where in truth, I lie. My lunch usually consists of 5 pieces of fruit (good), noodles or noodle soup (ok), 4 chocolates (not so good), although I do try to keep the chocolate at the high cocoa content with all those antioxidants and flavonoids – I will digress slightly here but I am a chocoholic and have to have a colleague ration my chocolate stash. The “Fly” only allows 2 small chocolates for lunch chunk and then another 2 for afternoon tea. Something that I have found particularly effective and highly recommend to anybody who suffers from the chocolate affliction – get yourself a chocolate rationing guardian!

There in enters the danger zone, the period between 2:00pm and 3:30pm, which is from lunch finish to the afternoon chocolate and piece of fruit. This is the timeframe where there is a serious risk of daydreaming, sugar slump, lethargy and general lacklustre-ness.

Key targets during this period are not only to not fall asleep, but to try and stand up as much as possible when on the phone, use the stairs whenever I need to leave the desk, ideally up and down twice and focus my mind on the goal ahead, namely making sales and getting leads.

Then comes the homerun, the 3:30pm slot to 5pm, having eaten my banana and chocolate nibble, this is, the time to close the deals and set up the evening tasks and plan for the next day. Early in my career, this would have been the period when completing, as many business development calls to hit targets was an imperative. To many people this was laborious, tedious and tiresome but to me it was the way to earn the “gold star” – to tick the box and action the tangible activity required to meet billing targets. I don’t have such intense targets now but do actually miss that.

Then the hour to finish, which really closing what deals can be done, updating and collating the task list for the morning, the focus here is to create a completion of tasks in my mind so upon leaving the office I can switch my mind off from work as much as possible. This is where prioritisation and time critical assessment is key. Those tasks that are business critical, that mean the difference between making money and losing out on money must be resolved and completed during this time, even if that means finishing at 7, 8 or 9pm.

Then the world is my oyster but it must involve exercise, good healthy food and usually watching a good TV show.

Take this process; repeat 230 days a year for 40 years and the you’re done!