Make More of Your Job

Exercise to Improve Your Performance at Work

Scientists have long spoken about the importance of diet and exercise for those of us that want to live a long and happy life. It even seems like as time goes on, science is proving more and more that good diet and exercise have almost limitless positive affects on our lives. Last week, a Duke researcher even proved that regular exercise is just as effective on depression as medication is! While it goes without saying that eating right and staying fit should have a direct impact on our health, I’ve been shocked at what a considerable impact a little bit of exercise has on my ability to maintain a high energy level on the job.

When I hit my mid twenties, I noticed for the first time that my physical world was starting to change. It’s the same old story that most of us go through at some point: I would eat less and still gain weight. I wasn’t bouncing back as fast from illness or a night out as easily. My body was telling me that I wasn’t a kid anymore. It was even beginning to affect my work.

I’ve never required a great amount of sleep, but as I've gotten older, the more prone I've become to  listlessness at work at some point during the day. I tried sleeping more, to no avail. I even wondered if that was just the way I’d feel forever, if life really was just a slow downhill slide to the grave. Then I started to exercise.

It actually started out as a weight loss program, but long after I ended the diet, the regular workouts have remained a part of my weekly life. Within days of starting to exercise, I could feel a difference during my working hours. Not only was I back to my old energy levels, but I generally exceeded them. The amazing part to me was that I wasn’t participating in a comprehensive personal fitness program. I was just running a handful of miles per week and spending some time on the elliptical machine.

Over the years, I’ve figured out a bit more about what kind of activity level I personally need to keep energized throughout the day and even a few tricks to stay energized when time is limited. I can’t say I look forward to working out, but falling off the wagon every once in a while (often when I’m traveling a lot) is more than enough to remind me of the importance of exercise to my productivity. If I miss out on even a week of exercise, I lose about 30% of my steam during the day. When I finish up in the evening, all I want to do is relax and not work on other projects or even my hobbies. I don’t like feeling that way, so I inevitably head back to the gym to get back on track.

If you aren’t a regular exerciser, it may sound intimidating to think about making this change for your life, but it’s one you owe it to yourself to try. You don’t have to join a gym or even buy any expensive equipment. Just get moving. Walk the dogs, take a bike ride or even try 15 minutes of yoga in the morning before you head to the office. Whatever you choose, commit to 30 days of exercise and then compare your energy level throughout the day to what it was before. Not only will you be happier and healthier, you’ll get more done at your job and still have energy left over for your friends and family. All of that for just a few minutes a day of work. Now that’s a great return on investment!

Readers: what do you do to keep yourself physically primed for work?

Get More Done by Going Public

I love public transportation. I know, I’m probably the only person living in a major American city that would say that out loud, but it’s true. I’m not a big fan of dirt, stench or public drunkenness. What I am is a huge fan of making the most of my time, and in my life, public transportation is one of the greatest tools I’ve got.

I don’t live too far from my office, but in big city traffic, it can easily take me an hour to get to work when I drive. Public transportation takes me only about 40 minutes. You may be thinking that 20 minutes isn’t enough of a personal savings to make it worth while, but let’s take a look at some “lifestyle math” to see how much taking the train contributes to my life on an annual basis.

• Commuting 20 minutes each way is 40 minutes a day. With 5 work days a week, and about 50 working weeks a year, that boils down to 166 hours and 40 minutes (almost exactly one full week of waking hours) that I can spend with my friends and family, or doing things I love, instead of in a car white-knuckling it through traffic.
• My train ticket costs me $6.20 per day. Driving, I use 2.5 gallons of gas (at a $3 average that’s $7.50), plus between $15-20 a day for parking. That’s an average daily difference of $19. Again, multiply that by 5 work days, 50 weeks a year, and I end up with $4750 a year! If I invested that much money every year directly in the S&P 500 (using the last 30 years average growth rate), over a 40 year career I’d end up with an extra $2.3 million dollars at retirement. You read that right: $2.3 million!
• On top of just saving the 20 minutes a day in travel time, the 40 minutes I do spend on the train, I can spend reading - something you can’t (or at least shouldn’t) do in a car. It takes me an average of 4 hours to read a book (assuming about 350 pages), so with 80 minutes a day freed up for reading, I can read an extra 84 books a year or an extra 3,320 books over a 40 year working career. I know I read quickly, but even at a pace of a page every 2 or 3 minutes, the extra reading time freed up is amazing.
• Last, but not least: the difference it makes to the environment. By taking the train, instead of driving alone in a car I can help save about 2.8 tons of carbon emissions a year. It may not change the world, but it’s a simple way I can do my part to protect our environment.

Now do you see why I like public transportation so much? When I get on a train in the morning, even if it’s dirty or crowded, I’m not thinking about the downsides. I’m thinking about all the ways that taking that train contributes to my life. The goal of this post isn’t to make everyone rush out and start using public transportation (though that would be great), but to illustrate how a little flexibility in your life can create great value. We may not be able to wave a wand in our lives and create piles of money, or more hours in the day. But with a little agility and some creative thought you can make a huge difference in the quality of the live you live, and the world you live it in.

Winning the Career Lottery

I spent some time at a work event in Las Vegas last week, and during my time there I managed to hit a small jackpot on a slot machine while I was playing alongside some of my co-workers.  Nearly the second the machine hit the jackpot, one of them said, “Of course it would happen to you! You have to be the luckiest person alive.” Now, I don’t deny that I have an incredibly fortunate life.  In fact, I wouldn’t trade places with a single person that I’ve ever met. That being said, however, I’m not sure that the life I have is based entirely on luck. 

I love Las Vegas and go there multiple times a year. I truly enjoy gambling, and will play during almost every moment of downtime I get. It’s not that I expect to win, because I'm a realist. I simply view the money spent on gambling as entertainment cost, just as I would a concert ticket or dinner out.  One of the basic concepts of gambling, which is based on odds, is that if you play long enough, you’ll lose.  However, if you play long enough, you will also undoubtedly hit a jackpot or two along the way. It’s just the odds at work.  So the truth is, when I hit that jackpot (which just happened to be in front of other people), I wasn’t so much lucky as I was living up to the odds I had created for myself.

The reaction that this coworker had, assuming I was "the luckiest person alive," got me thinking about how often we ascribe luck to the actions of successful people in the workplace as well.  When we see someone make it big, move up quickly or even strike it rich in the corporate world, one of our first instincts is to call them “lucky." Just like in gambling, I've found that achieving such results is more about taking advantage of the odds, rather than leaving the results up to luck.

Is there some good fortune involved?  Probably.  Let me use another example from the world of gambling: the lottery. You can't win unless you buy a ticket, and you're very unlikely to win unless you buy a lot of them.  Successful people look at life as a controlled lottery, and their objective is to buy as many tickets as possible at every opportunity they get. When we suggest that these successful people are merely “lucky,” we’re letting ourselves off the hook. We're chalking others' wins up to luck, rather than considering the things that we could be doing to appear as lucky as them.

Here are a few areas where you can buy tickets in your own career lottery to increase your odds of winning:

• Working Hard: Are you always going above and beyond your duties?
• Constantly Learning: What skills are you attaining, both on the job and off?
• Opening Up: Are you always meeting new people and opening yourself up to new experiences and viewpoints?

So, what career lottery tickets are you buying right now?  Are you staying late to finish an important job when everyone else bails?  There's a lottery ticket.  Using a weekend to take a class that improves your skills?  There's another. Networking at a non-work function?  And another. The opportunities are endless.

If you really want to make more of your job, I suggest you start collecting those lottery tickets.  Of course, it's sometimes necessary to be in the right place at the right time. But if you’re always using your time, always growing and pushing, it's only a matter of time before the odds you've created for yourself reward you. You’ll guarantee that you’ll be in the right place at the right time in the not-so-distant future.  By always buying career lottery tickets, you will expose yourself to many more opportunities than you would if you just keep doing the bare minimum with your job or life. The more opportunities you expose yourself to, the better the likelihood you will have that you will find the right one.

Thinking back to what my coworker said, I now realize he's partially right. Some people can be very lucky, but it takes a lot of hard work to stay that way.