Thesis

In a positive mood, you process better and energy is boosted.

Long term - reserve of emotional goodness for resilience and such

Energize

• Play

  • do things for fun and for curiosity.

• Create an adventure,

  • take on different personas (identify type of play you want and make a player persona that makes sense for this)

• The 8 play personalities:

  • Collector, competitor, explorer, creator, story teller, joker, director, kinestate.

  • Try being one of these to encourage play by being some of these (1 or 2 usually really resonate with others)

• Embrace curiosity, encourages fun and recall

  • Do life side quests,

• What would this look like if it was fun? (Music? In background?)

  • Make the process more interesting by having mini challenges (try to sell the BBQ sauce)

• Enjoy the process, not the end result.

• Lower the stakes,

  • People can't play in stressful situations.

• Reframe failure, - you get points for failing rather than losing them. No failure is failure, it's just more data points to learn from

• Don't be serious be sincere

Power

• Confidence about a task, makes you both better at it and enjoy it more. (Exercise your are good/bad outcomes)

  • Act as if, what would it look like if I were really confident at this

  • Listen to others stories who are going through the same things as you to feel like you can do it

• Learn through doing (inactive mastery)

  • Beginner mindset (humility and trying and failing a lot and learning) basic reminders, new idea or opportunities, collaborate, no strong beliefs about what will work and desire to diversity.

  • People who teach others learn better

• Take ownership of your work (taking autonomy, increases intrinsic motivation, desire for control)

  • You have more controll over the process than you know (not what you do but how you do it)

  • What tasks, your boss, their priorities. Can own, automation, tooling, how engaging and motivating you are

  • Changed your attitude / mindset. I choose to and I get to, rather than I have to for self talk

People

• People can energize you and that's great.

• Finding a scene can be extremely good your to progress and grow.

• Success isn't a 0 sum game, (bad to think of it like if I win someone else has to lose)

• Try to think of yourself as on a team, we win together kinda attitude

• Work with others in sync (even if it's not the same topic)

• Helping others, makes you feel good.

• Random acts of kindness

• Asking for help will actually make people like you more. (People underestimate others willingness to help, IRL is better, avoid negative, emphasize positive reasons / aspects of person)

• Over communicate, especially the good, share positive news, react to positive news energetically.

• Share excitement about their future,

• Share opinions directly and show what's going on in your head. Don't assume you know the truth. Objective terms and facts. Tangible results. Turn towards the solution rather than dwelling on the issues.

• Lying activates fight or flight section of brain which is bad for brain. Honesty does not.

Unblock/seek clarity

• Procrastination is caused by negative feelings and you can solve your negative feelings to do things

• Uncertainty

  • Overwhelmed by the uncertainty and can't figure out where to start

  • Know, why you're doing the main thing.

  • General states a why they're taking action instead of a how and let's soldier do their thing

• Think back from the end goal, and the why, then use that to inform next steps

• 5 whys

  • To what went wrong, or when trying to figure out if an action is good for you to do

• Ask what

  • Figure out what you have to do first (can be intimidating to try and figure it out)

• NICE goals,

  • Near term (daily or weekly)

  • Input based (emphasize process)

  • Controllable (within our controll)

  • Energizing (play, power, people)

• Crystal ball method - pre mortum

  • Re through what will go wrong to help prepare and think better

  • Imagine it's 1 weeks from now and you still haven't gotten started. What do you think the most likely culprits are (top 3)

  • What can you do to mitigate risk against those things above

  • What action can you take rn to help stay in track

• Comitt to a when you will do a thing

  • Triggers, when x happens I will y. When I get home I will call my parents

• Time blocking

  • Give you time and controll back

  • 3 levels

  • Just the most important things you tend not to do.

  • Block a full day

  • Have an ideal week

Fear

• Know your fear, state your feelings out loud

• When procrastination try to ask what am I afraid of.

• Identity conflict (I'm not an athlete kinda mental stuff)

  • You can make your own identity something move positive. I am a hard worker, I'm a life long learner

• 10/10/10 rule

  • People catasorohize, I didn't get the job and I will never get one sob...

  • Remember this is an exaggeration.

  • 10/10/10 rule, will this matter in 10 minutes, 10 weeks, 10 years

• Irrational self doubt

  • How confident do I need to feel just to get started

  • Create an alterigo, who is what you want in a person for the situation ideally. This distancing yourself from your fears.

  • People tend to over estimate how closely others watch us and care about what we do.

• Get started

  • Reduce environmental friction, make it easier to get started

  • Make good choices the default choices

  • Reduce emotional friction

  • 5 minute rule, commit to working on the thing for just 5 minutes (be willing to genuinely stop after 5 minutes)

Take Action

• Clear concrete steps to take, next step to take.

• Studying -> open book

• Track progress and reflect,

• Celebrate wins

• Accountability buddy, not wanting to let others down, social obligation

• Forgive yourself

  • Procrastination created a vicious cycle of thinking poorly of themselves

  • I didn't do x but I got to do y.

Burn out

Over exertion burnouts

• Too many things jam packed into a day

• do less, don't just sprint, walk some more

• say No to various things, don't over comitt and don't say yes to everything

• energy investment portfolio,

  • list A: dream ambitions you want to do later

  • list B: things you're actively investing in RN (keep to 5ish)

  • if you want to move from A to B make sure you have the time.

• power of No

  • Hell yeah or No

  • 6 week trap, looks empty 6 week in the future calendar. Then you get there and it's jammed packed.

  • should think, would I be excited if this was happening tomorrow?

• resist distraction

  • add friction, make it harder to do distractions

  • uninstall apps from phone, or log out

  • apps that make things load slower

  • failing with abandon -> don't give up if you fail once.

• 52 minutes work 17 minutes rest.

  • schedule breaks (more than you think)

  • embrace energizing distractions (impromptu breaks)

Depetion burnout - Not taking time to really rest

• list for things you do when you have no energy

• list for things you do that actually energize you

• creative acts are good for recharging (should be low stakes)

• should be enjoyed via the process,

• resist the urge to turn it into work

• alternatively, a calm project

• recharge naturally (use nature), can look at images or listen to sounds.

• take a walk

• recharge mindlessly (reality TV or midnight wandering)

• you're allowed to write off a day and just do nothing for that evening

Doing the wrong stuff (to much time into things that aren't meaningful)

Align

Intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic

Misalignment burnout - actions not in line with your values

Begin with the end in mind, write your own obituary to figure out where you're trying to go

Areas of life and fulfillment 1 - 10

Health

• body

• mind

• soul

Career

• mission

• money

• growth

Relationships

• Family

• Romance

• Friends

What do you want to be celebrating in 12 months for each of the above categories

3 actions you can take today to move you towards your 12 months celebration state

Alignment experiments

Find area where you are unsatisfied

Hypothesis, changing this one thing will hopefully do something

Take minor steps

Reflect

Iterate