• What is your Default Mode?

    edited by Alexander Becker

    What is your default mode, how do you act when it's over, when you're done? Finally idle again? How does it feel?

    You're idle, in between projects or right after a show. You've just completed the big project. That is exactly where the potential to do something really stupid is the greatest.

    The best way to prevent a potentially negative aftermath to any accomplishment is to set up some idle-time protocol.

    Raw idleness tends to be -- especially between bouts of higher achievement -- relatively negative. You can't be high all the time. Also, to really feel the high, you need, by definition and for comparison, the corresponding low. What follows is, that the higher the high, the lower the low.

    Try to establish a baseline or maintenance program that will prepare you for the next project, restore your physical and mental energy and backup your intellectual resources. Start immediately upon exhaustion to appreciate and use the void, as long as it lasts.

    This void, this emptiness does indeed exist and it infects potentially anyone. Creating some routines prevents the "hole" that opens up after finishing any kind of creative work from becoming all too deep.

    My protocol, for example, consists of a strict diet, exercises and -- to contain and to enforce -- discipline. Whenever I become idle, which isn't all too often but especially at the crossroads between projects, before and after, I quite literally fall back into a set of default habits of eating cleanly, exercising hard and absolutely regular, and so on...

    Debriefing; analyzing the finished project is often hard since it's all over and done and you can't change the outcome anyway, but it is an important conclusion of anything you worked so hard for. Just recount what you will be proud of and note what and how to improve when trying next time.

    Research, study, and refining skills are part of my strategy. The more unrelated the better, seemingly unrelated that is, inspiration comes best when the field of research seems way too remote.

    Enjoy the low and appreciate it, for the greater the difference, the more pronounced the reward will be. Live both the low and the high as deeply as you can. Just make sure and try to establish a default mode somewhere in the middle between high and low, defaulting to either high or low makes the respective opposite state unbearable.

    See also: Getting Past Done: What to Do After You’ve Finished a Big Project --

    Revise your resume or CV. How does your new perspective affect the way you describe what was important about your previous experiences?

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  • Employ Your Instincts Against Overtraining and Burnout

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Plato has Phaedrus say: You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched.

    When the initial motivation is extremely high or the external and internal, personal expectations are too demanding, often physical and mental burnout are observable. What is happening in management can be compared to a similar phenomenon in sports: overtraining, plateaus, physical burnout, and fatigue are the results of the triumph of will over sensibility. The cure against burnout and overtraining is very simple: stop immediately and rest.

    Excessive training, trying too hard, or monotonous routines that don't challenge the mind or body lead to overtraining syndrome with symptoms that are hard to recognize and differentiate from mere temporary exhaustion or psychological causes instead of effects.

    Overtraining may lead to training plateaus, the body cannot catch up regenerating itself and gets stuck on a mid-level that is achievable without adequate rest. Overtraining is the result of weeks or months of wrong training, you're not going to burnout after a couple of days or some high intensity training.

    An effective strategy to avoid and to prevent overtraining is to listen to your body's needs and its instincts. It's all too easy to override pain in order to achieve the next promising and potentially rewarding goal. The body as well as the mind need rest. Growth and improvement take place while not training, while at rest, between workouts and after work. Hard work is definitely necessary but the moment it becomes mindless it is a sure sign of becoming insensible and therefore against nature's requirements.

    It is vitally important for eventual success to balance and level the eagerness in the beginning and focus on maintaining the discipline through the initial motivation and the lows and the highs and the plateaus.

    Consciously relax and release all the tension from time to time. Make no exercise a dedicated exercise and count the non-reps, e.g. try to statically hold nothing for the intended duration. This special exercise is the only exercise that let's you grow while still working on it...

    The same holds true for corporate executives: rest consciously without working at all. Schedule an amount of time where you absolutely do not work. Consciously dedicate this time to not working at all. As a side effect, you will notice how, perhaps unexpectedly, your productivity will go up. Your energies will replenish and you will gain new clarity.

    Enjoy every moment of your recovery, as much as you enjoyed, with all your heart, work until crashing.

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