Restore time – part 2

A personal example might help

I went through the exercise in the last section a while ago and found that I came up with a number SYDs. (Remember him?)

My main Syd was that I never quite found the time to go to the gym, for example.  I'd identified that as a way for me to Restore (don't be impressed – I hate the gym, but I recognise that being fit and strong is good for me, my work, my health and my productivity). The thing is that going to the gym took two hours in total: 30 minutes travel, 45 minutes workout, 15 minutes shower and so on, 30 minutes travel back. The way my work was shaped I couldn't ever find two hours to get things sorted. The solution was simple, and two-fold.

One – change the way I used the gym so that I got organised enough to do things near the gym such as have meetings. That way the 30 minutes travel time there counted against the meeting (at least in part) and so on. So much so obvious!

Two  – put the gym in my diary. Not only put it in my diary, put it in at least as far in advance and with at least as much gravitas as anything else that goes in.

Here's the deal – I like most of us – was trying to fit my Restore around my Act. But as we've discovered, Restore is as important as Act in the long term, so why not treat it like it is?

Here's a screenshot of part of my diary. Don't worry about the other colours at the moment – they're for other things. What's interesting here is the stuff in red and the pinks. That's the colour I use for my Restore time.

(Don't be fooled by the white space – I don't stop working then! 😉 )

But notice that there's quite a bit of red/pink scattered around the six days I've shown. They go into my diary as soon as they can and they're set as defaults. I put them in with the same amount of "fixed-ness" as the other things that go in.

Here's a bit more of a personal take…