Earlier this week I had ‘one of those days.’ By which I mean I was useless. I was clumsy in interactions with friends and colleagues, my lack of concentration meant I barely put a dent in the project I was working on, my run form was off and my pace slow. I sucked. The singular cause for all these unconnected failures? A bad nights sleep.
Force multipliers exist in many forms. They are the attributes we possess, the tools we use, the skills we develop. They are things at the root of many of the tasks we take one. They are the things that, if developed or implemented, can have a dramatic and wide-ranging impact on our wellbeing and performance.
Below is not intended to be a comprehensive list, but a few examples of force multipliers that have been helpful to me that will perhaps give you food for thought for your own.
Meditation
The ability to pay attention to consciousness and it’s content. To notice when thoughts and feelings arise and to gain a degree of control over them is profound. Waking Up and Headspace are an excellent place to start.
Sleep
Sleep is a force multiplier for, well, pretty much everything we do, (as demonstrated above). In his fantastic book ‘Why We Sleep’, Matthew Walker outlines a host of studies that demonstrate the impact that low quality sleep can have on our overall performance and wellbeing. There are many great resources where you can research improving your sleep hygiene.
Communication
We can have fantastic ideas, profound thoughts, dazzling insights. However, without the ability to convey those to other people and, where necessary, get buy-in and support, these can be as good as useless. Cultivating a practice in speaking, writing and visual design can help in many different contexts. Communication, of course, extends to the other side of the equation as well. Learning how to listen. Being able to really ‘hear’ what people are saying with their language, inflections and bodily signals can have a profound effect on our ability to build rapport and relationships. Which in turn impacts the quality of our life experience. I’ve found the coach training in neurolinguistic programming the most impactful thing I’ve done in this area.
Tools
Like many, I use a computer and leverage the internet for much of my work. I’ve spent far too much of my life, and I suspect I’m not alone, lamenting time wasted as a result of slow hardware and poor connectivity. If you have the means, and your laptop is your main productivity tool, I’d suggest investing in, and caring for it.
For the sake of brevity, I’ve omitted many things that have been life changing for me. Diet, exercise, frameworks for strategic and critical thinking, productivity tools, etc. But hopefully, the message is clear, invest in the handful of things that will move the needle many domains of your life.