Being Potent to Free Up Time and Energy
I used to be great at filling an 8-hour workday.
Meetings, a little email, Teams chats, some walk-and-talk, a fair amount of gossip.
And I would look around at the end of the day and wonder what I’d gotten done.
(Inevitably, I would then work focused, for about an hour after everyone left for the day, and tackle the deep work I needed to move my goals forward.)
It’s the equivalent of dawdling for 2 hours on your phone at the gym versus doing a focused, potent HIIT workout and then taking a break afterwards.
Are you being performative in your life and business?
Or are you being potent?
Potency isn’t rewarded in traditional business - because the more potent you are, the more work gets piled on because we are tethered to being available for an 8-hour work day.
But what if you could reclaim your time, attention, and energy?
How can we set aside performance for potency, allowing for more focused impact and then recovery time?
Make the task smaller
One way we get stuck in performative actions is by trying to tackle long tasks that inevitably get overwhelming and we go down a rabbit hole.
If a podcast takes too long, can you do three short form reels or TikToks, just looking at the camera?
Can you build a streak of writing ~250 word atomic essays on LinkedIn?
Instead of a Herculean sales outreach complicated system, how about a text to 5 people a day you’re thinking about?
Decide on “good enough”
Another way we get in the ‘performance over potency’ tradeoff is by creating an unsustainable standard of perfection.
Do you need to spend 3 hours making your posts or can you get a point across with your notes app?
As much as you care about making the slides or analysis perfect… does it change the outcome? Does it directionally impact the results? No? It’s time to do a swag and move on.
Leverage a starting point
We can get stuck and distracted when we are staring at a blank sheet of paper. Can you begin with a starting point to focus your efforts?
Use Canva templates or Powerpoints as a starting framework
Save articles and client stories as inspiration for posts
Break up your long-form content into smaller posts
Take a break
But ultimately, you might also just be burnt out and exhausted. Instead of trying to push your way forward… take a break. Just like in the gym, if you’re not focused you’re likely to hurt yourself.
Take a walk
Connect to your breath and body
Detach from external inputs. Yes, leave your phone at home.