These are messy times. Days of intense volatility. A period of immense uncertainty. For you to be a peak performer and deliver the best results, for you to rise above the crowd and be visible at your work and business, you’ve got to do what peak performers do. If you want to achieve the results only 5% achieve, you’ve got to think, and produce, and behave like only 5% of the people on the planet, then here’s what your mantra should be.
Just before the Thanksgiving weekend of 2015, I was in Montreal speaking at a huge tech conference. On my flight back home, I had a seat near one of America’s top financial gurus. I couldn’t hold myself back and began a conversation with him. Now, one of the questions I ask most of the super successful people I meet is about their weekends. I was blown away listening to how this financial guru, like other successful people, optimizes his weekends. It put me into deep thinking to know that the difference between average and peak performers lies in their weekend routine. You see, one of the biggest habits of peak performers is how productive they make their weekends.
So while a lot of people see the weekend as a time to hang out and relax, exceptionally successful people have a different idea of how Saturdays and Sundays should be spent. Here is how they spend their weekends to set the tone for a week of crazy productive work. These -weekend habits will work incredibly and will make an immediate difference in your life helping you become an awesome leader.
HAVE A PLAN.
Weekdays go by quickly in completing your targets, team meetings, and planning. But what about your weekends? Do you have a plan for every weekend? Apart from relaxing and family time, what about a plan for your self-development. If you want to achieve more, it's not going to happen purely because of your hard work during your working hours. Your weekends need to be enriched. PRACTICE STILLNESS. I coach and speak to thousands of high-end executives globally. And what I often get to hear is that there is no time to sit and practice stillness. A leader's power comes from self-awareness that is responsive to feedback but independent of the good or bad opinion of others. Use your weekend to sit on stillness and calm down the running mind. REFLECT. The best way to move ahead and be 110 % ready for Monday with full momentum is to reflect on the week gone by. What most people do is that instead of taking the time to analyze their week’s experience, they move onto the next one, never learning from their mistakes. We have all heard the phrase “experience is the best teacher” a million times. We can’t learn from experience if we don’t take the time to reflect on what message it is trying to give us. Actively think about what it is you are trying to improve. Ask yourself: “What do I really want?” “Why do I really want it?” STRENGTHEN YOUR INSTINCTS. Leaders and entrepreneurs must make decisions in their daily work life. If you are not able to trust your experiences and instincts, you will most likely end up being dependant on others around you for suggestions. We all have this innate ability to listen to that inner voice telling us not to go through with something, or to go ahead and take a risk. But in the daily grinding of the work our instincts weaken. Use time over your weekend to strengthen this and apply it during the week. READ. I save articles throughout the day to a folder called “Read It” and then I spend an hour or two on the weekend absorbing the new ideas. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, for example, spends 80%
If you are able to optimize your weekends, you what you’re going to find is that every measure of performance skyrockets exponentially. Come into work at 110% on Monday. So beginning today
___ Optimize your weekends
___ Produce work that fuels your best self
___ Make time to enter new territories of unimaginable possibilities
Why be average when you and I both know that you are built to be an achiever.
Hope this is of much value to you in your journey to success.
Your Friend + Mentor
Payal Nanjiani
