Life Cancelled – Have to go to a Meeting!
Posted by mrleadiology on November 30, 2008
How many of you always believe there’s never enough time in the day to get everything done? There’s the morning breakfast meeting afternoon board meeting, then there’s the late afternoon city meeting and then there’s the all-important family or friends meeting. But how often have you had to cancel your social life because meetings are running late and you know you’re just going to be too tired or have any energy left to do anything else afterwards.
So why do you feel like that, is it because you have too much on your plate which makes you feel tired or is it the drain of energy which occurs during the day? So by the time you’ve come your last meeting you’re absolutely exhausted and you’ve cancelled your evening out. All you really want to do is go home and fall asleep in front of the TV.
How many of you can identify with that?
Your personal time is flexible but your career or business isn’t, people understand you just can’t cancel or cut short your last business meeting just to have a dinner with your partner or friends, you have to make a living it’s your job’s it’s important. They can’t possibly carry on a meeting without you can they?
Let me tell you a story, which was told to me when I was working in a hi-tech company a few years ago.
I was talking to our product manager who used to work for a company, which made audio speakers. He shared with me this little nougat, which I thought was very apt when considering our own importance to the organisation.
One of their directors had an office with pictures of his family his awards and achievements. One day he died suddenly, within 24 hours his office was cleared, within a week they had a new director, within a month all trace of the last director was gone and business carried on as usual.
Now consider this then when you go on holiday do the meetings stop, if ever you are ill does the business stop. Probably not unless you are the business in which case that’s another problem! Business moves on whether you are present or not. Obviously I’m not suggesting you’re not important to the decision making process but do consider which meetings or activities you really have to take part in and those which wont make any difference to the outcome whether you’re there or not and you know which ones they are!
To help you decide on the latter just in case you’re not sure consider the following. How many do you recognise in your regular business activities?
- Squirming and shuffling in your seat
- Discretely looking at your watch wishing lunch would arrive soon?
- Disguising a yawn and pinching yourself to stay awake
- Drifting into a personal fantasy
- Hoping the fire alarm would go off to disrupt the meeting
- Thinking of all the things you could be doing
- Thinking about whether you’re going to be able to attend parents evening
- Thinking about what you should be having for dinner or even cooking for dinner
- Thinking about your presentation at the next meeting after this
- Looking out of the window and watching the world go by
At the end of the day it’s your decision but consider this, by stopping certain activities you will have more time and create more energy to do the more important things more effectively, increasing your productivity and improving your result. Now doesn’t that sound like a good reason to stop doing something?
It’s not easy but once you get into the habit of identifying what’s really important you will soon start reaping the benefits and so will everybody else within your circle of influence including your family and friends.
Now you will get days when everything is important so how can you ensure you have enough energy to help you sustain your day and still have energy left over to enjoy a social and personal life. Below are a few energy tips, which can help you through your day if not every day!
Energy Tips
“The higher your energy level, the more efficient your body. The more efficient your body, the better you feel and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results”. Anthony Robbins
Eat in a relaxed environment. This helps by encouraging the blood to move more freely towards to the digestive system and make it work effectively in breaking down food. Stress takes blood away from the digestion system.
- Chew your food very thoroughly. This breaks down your food into smaller pieces making it easier for the digestive system to break it down.
- Have lean cut meats or vegetable protein with salad and a small amount of carbohydrates at lunchtime this reduces the amount of sugar entering your blood stream and maintains your energy levels keeping you sharp and alert to handle any stressful situations.
- Avoid alcohol. It will either make you aggressive, passive or sluggish.
- Avoid large quantities of simple carbohydrates at lunchtime to avoid increasing your blood sugar spike responsible for the sharp energy high and dip after 3pm.
- Reduce your caffeine intake if you drink too much tea/coffee. Some caffeine can be beneficial but too much could disturb the sugar balance, even more so if you are also eating a simple carbohydrate like a cake with your coffee.
- Avoid drinking water at meal times and for an hour afterwards as water reduces the action of digestive fluids.
- Avoid fizzy drinks including diet drinks. They’re full of sugar and or sugar substitutes, which are worse than sugar itself. They disrupt fluid balance in the body. You end up feeling thirstier after drinking them.
- Eat little but often. This stabilises your blood sugar balance and reduces those energy dips during the day.
- At teatime, avoid simple carbohydrates such as, sugar, biscuits, pastries, cakes, processed cereals, pizza, sweets, chocolates and soft drinks.
So there you go, you can have more energy and better results if you really want it without having to sacrifice anything it’s matter of getting your head round what is really really really important to you. Once you’ve figured that out the rest is easy!
