We've all heard that we need to get seven to eight hours of sleep to feel our best, but what if we're already getting that much sleep and you're still feeling tired? No matter what you do, you just can't shake off that mental fog. The challenge with feeling tired all the time is that getting even the smallest tasks done feels difficult. In today's episode, I'm going to share my experience with mental fog and how I use the concept of closing loops to gain a massive amount of energy.
I'm Amin Ahmed and welcome to Be Well, Do Well. I learned a new word recently: enervator. It was the first time that I heard this word and I had to look up the etymology. Enervate comes from the Latin inner Vaus, the past principle of the verb Ive, which literally means to remove the sinus F, but it's also figuratively in the sense of to weaken. So innovate is the opposite of energize. When we do activities that give us energy, we're energized, Sports, nature, meditation, sleep.
These all give us energy and leave us feeling great afterwards. Energy drains can come from many things, The first is lack of sleep. It's devastating to me that sleep deprivation has become a badge of honor amongst entrepreneurs. To say that you pulled an all-nighter, or that you wake up at four o'clock in the morning, but you go to sleep at midnight has become some kind of battle scar to say that you've made it as an entrepreneur. It's terrible, and I think we need to get rid of that.
The second is dependence on coffee. Now, notice I didn't say coffee itself. I love a good brew, but it's the dependence on coffee that I'm referring to here. Coffee is great because it gives you a boost of energy. It can improve cognitive abilities. There's lots of health benefits to coffee. But when we start getting dependent on coffee, that's when it starts to become more challenging because we allow the coffee to govern our states of energy.
If we find that we are only using coffee to gain energy rather than for the flavor or for the taste or for some of the cognitive abilities, that's when you know that you're dependent on coffee. The next is poor nutrition. So many of us will resort to fast food when we're in a rush, and that's okay. Sometimes you just need to do what you need to do For me, Subway is one of those fasted restaurants that I really enjoy.
It's nutritious, it's healthy, it's filling, but other times I'll also go to McDonald's. And the food there is tasty, yes, but not nutritious. What happens is when you eat food that depletes your energy, you feel much worse afterwards, even though it may give you a quick boost of energy after eating it. Exercise is one of those things that I talk about often. Now enough cannot be said about the power and the value of exercise.
While people think that exercises actually reduces your energy and takes away your energy. The opposite is actually true. When you exercise, your body releases endorphins into your body that make you feel really good. Those endorphins can be addictive as well, which gets you to exercise even more if you have a stronger body. If your mind is more clear, if your cardiovascular system is stronger and you can breathe better, it's so much better for you when it comes to getting more energy.
And the last point I wanna make here is open loops. Now this is what I wanna expand on, specifically. When I talk about open loops, what I'm really referring to is unfinished work. This could be mentally in your head, it could be physically in your environment as well. As an example, you may start to empty the dishwasher in the morning when you get up for breakfast, but then you stop and you start making breakfast for the kids.
Then you go back to emptying the dishwasher, and then you continue making breakfast. This constant back and forth and not finishing one task before you start the next task is what I'm referring to as an open loop. Then you get back to your desk and you start your workday. Well, maybe you're in a meeting and you're having a discussion with your teammates, but on the side you've got your second monitor and you're checking email, or you're responding to instant messages. These are all open loops.
If you don't focus on one thing, complete that task, and then move on to the next one. You're leaving open loops. The problem with open loops is that you're constantly thinking about it. Now, if you look at it as your phone or your computer, your phone and your computer have what's referred to as ram. It's temporary memory that gets used when you perform lots of tasks at the same time.
on your computer specifically, you may notice sometimes that your fan, your computer fan starts running and it gets really hot. The same thing is happening in your mind, your mind is using up resources, your attention, resources, and it's trying to process all these things in the background while you're focusing on one thing. Because of all these open loops, the best way is to close those loops one at a time.
Now, I've talked about it in a different podcast episode is context switching when you go back and forth between. You're really not getting anything done because you're constantly bouncing from one to the other. In the past, people used to be proud of the fact that they were multitaskers, but really multitasking is just rapid switching from task to task. You're not actually getting two things done at once. So here are three ways to close open loops. The first is time block.
When you're doing a task set, asides a specific amount of time, let's say half an hour, 45 minutes. For me, 45 minutes is the optimal amount of time, any less, and I feel like I'm not getting enough done anymore, and I start to fade and I start to get distracted. So say you set aside 45 minutes and you're going to write a blog post, or write an email or a proposal in that 45 minutes, only work on that.
Turn off all the distractions, flip your phone over so that it's not gonna be notifying you or it's not gonna be flashing and beeping in your face. When you time block, you finish that task and then that's it. You don't come back to it again. The second tip here is daily planning, ideally the night before, so that your subconscious has some time to process it. When you start wrapping up your day, you think about what you need to get done for the next day.
Check your calendar to make sure there's any events that you need to attend or any meetings that you have coming up. And your daily planning will actually help you when you get to your work the following day. The last tip I wanna make here about closing loops is work only on your most important task first. So when you get up in the morning, whether you're getting up really early or you're getting up later in the day, focus on just one important task and get it done.
I refer to these as my mips, my most important project. So if a project is small and you can get it done in the first couple hours of a day, great. Finish it up in that day, if not, and it's gonna take you, let's say, seven to eight hours to finish. Well work on it in chunks every single morning. Chip away, work on it for an hour, maybe two hours, but start with that and only work on that first thing in the day.
Definitely don't check your email first thing in the day, because all you're doing is you're flooding your mind. You're flooding your brain with stimulus and other people's priorities, and then you're gonna get distracted, and then there's gonna be a ton of open loops. Just as a side note, email is the best way to open loops because you're constantly responding and reacting to other people rather than working on your own task.
The Be Well Do Well Planner, which I've talked about a lot, has this designed in mind specifically. When you start your day, it has a section at the top where you'll fill in what your life looks like, and then it gives you a block. It says, What project are you gonna work on today?
This is your most important task, your most important project, and it gives you three spots where you're gonna fill in item number one, number two, number three, and these are the first three steps in order to get that most important project complete. On the right hand side, there's a schedule and you can fill in where you're going to spend that time doing those three things.
Ideally, you wanna do it first thing in the morning, but if it's something that needs the rest of the day, you can fill it up at the rest of the day. As a quick recap, open loops are really like your computers fan running. At full tilt, you wanna make sure to cloth all the loops in your mind so that you don't have to think about it, and your mind isn't thinking about it.
When you're not working on that task, specifically, if you're gonna start something, try to finish it up as quickly as possible. This will reduce the amount of stress you have in your life. This will also make you more present when you're not working. So rather than thinking about it in the back of your mind when you're out for a bike ride, let's say, or you're driving, instead of thinking about it all the time, your mind is now settled and calm. I hope this has been helpful.
Tomorrow I'll be talking about how to craft the perfect evening routine. I talked a little bit today about how you should plan your day, the day before, and I'm gonna get into more detail about what an evening routine looks like and what your perfect evening routine can be. Thanks so much for making the Be Well Do Well Podcast a part of your day. I'll see you tomorrow.