Engage in Energy-Giving Activities
Welcome to Edition #08 of THE BLUEPRINT
Below you will find an image of a ‘KU Basketball Energy Chart.’ Contrary to the usual tracking of points, rebounds, steals, turnovers, and other important stats, this chart shows something special: which players are creating energy.
Each column defines an action that steals energy from the opposing team and sets the moment in favor of the good guys, even with a negative point differential. Generally, these statistics track extra effort and hustle.
A quick definition:
Energy - The feeling of excitement and accomplishment brought by hard work in the pursuit of your goals, translated to strength and momentum to continue pressing forward.
Let’s apply this:
Similar to sports, our life can be tracked to accentuate our chances of success. By structuring our life around energy building activities, we see two results:
Our work will naturally be better because we apply ourselves more fully to activities that give us energy.
Consistent engagement in energy-building activities curates a ‘winning record.’ With practice in pursuing energy, the rest of your life will receive the positive runoff from this, leading to a natural excitement for life.
The first step to building your energy chart of success is identifying what brings you energy. We are all unique and find energy through different pursuits, but the framework to identify them is the same…reflect!
CTA:
This week, keep a journal with you or create a new notes page on your phone and title it Energy Flow. Every time you complete an activity, categorize it into Green: it gave me energy, Yellow: it neither gave nor took energy, or Red: it took energy from me.
And question EVERYTHING! Question the time you wake up, how quickly you get out of bed, when you eat breakfast, the order in which you get work done, the food you eat for breakfast, who you speak with throughout the day - let nothing escape your eye. As it is easy to let some activities slip because they are habitual, compare your day to that of a caveman. If there is any activity you partake in that he would not have in his ordinary day, write it down and assess how it makes you feel.
Importantly, analyze activity through three different lenses:
1) In the moment - right after I workout, how do I feel?
2) One week from now - how will I feel about this workout in one week?
3) 5 Years from now - how will my energy change if I continued working out like this consistently for 5 years
After assessing which activities bring or take energy from your life, strategize how to increase the green category and decrease the red category. This may be immediate or it may take a few years of progressing. Remember, we are in pursuit of bringing value to the table and the best way to accomplish this is filling your energy tank to the brim each day so you can apply yourself fully.
Finally, create an energy chart with your green category and actively track your consistency. Just like the chart above from KU, high numbers do not mean success every day, but it does set the base for a winning record.
Some activities that bring energy to me:
Participating in heavy gym sessions
Having deep conversations that develop my thought
Eating a healthy breakfast before my first activity of the day
Learning from relevant podcasts, articles, mentors, and other intake
That’s all for Ed. #08 - see you next week!
Spencer A.
Link to the KU energy chart article
