I try to challenge myself every day to complete the three most important things by 11.33am.

When I left corporate, I wanted to keep the “good habits” I’d gained over the years by working a consistent 8-9 hour day.

I tried that for a few months and I was bored.
Filling up the day with things that didn't move the needle.

Then, I started paying attention to my natural rhythm of work... which was actually more about PACE, then consistency.

Starting to treat my workday like a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout:

Go hard.
Get stuff done.
Pause.

Go hard again.
Get more stuff done
Pause.

Once you smash 1 or 2 things off the list, you get into this feeling of unstoppable momentum.

BUT

There is a catch if you want to work this way:
(I'm not here to preach work less! Earn more! This is not a sunshine, rainbows and get-rich-quick scheme).

To compress your work hours, you must increase your level of INTENSITY.

And because I love packaging my thinking, I’ve wrapped it up into Hughesy’s HIIP System (High-Intensity Interval Performer).

To break it down, here are the three ingredients:

1. Purpose
Be intentional and decide ahead of time what results you want to create that day. This is based on a 12 month vision of who you want to be (identity).

Chunk it down so there's a finish line on the daily:
For example: Rather than write a whole article?
I focus on one daily result: Outline the article.

2. Pace:
Work with intensity.
Race the clock.
Make fast decisions (and if you can't decide immediately, make a decision on when you will next tackle it, so that the limbo/ambivalence doesn’t chew up any more of your bandwidth).

3. Pause:
Factor in strategic resting.
Often, just throwing in a walk around the block, pausing for a period of time lets your brain simmer on an idea...and it's amazing the problems you can solve when you're not actively tackling them.

Btw, 11.33am is my target for those three key things. But when I'm less effective in the afternoon, I might tackle lower-cognitive things, like admin.

How do you like to work?

1. Work longer at a more consistent pace
2. Be a HIIPster like me and work more deliberately for shorter periods (no growing a beard required).

#HIIP #performance #productiity