How To Foster Sustainability: The Exponential Principle
THE EXPONENTIAL PRINCIPLE
We believe in you. We believe your unique calling has led you to do something that only you can do. As you pursue your calling, we want to help you create a sustainable thriving enterprise that won’t burn you out, but will continue to cultivate the passion for what you do that motivated you to start doing it in the first place.
As we discuss sustainability, it is important to realize there is no one-size-fits all policy. Because you are unique, the way you pursue sustainability will be unique to you. In order to serve you well, we’ve developed three principles of sustainability. Over the next few weeks, we will share them with you in the hopes that they inform your personal pursuit of sustainability.
The first principle is The Exponential Principle:
When there is space to rest and prioritize what is important, the amount and quality of work that is possible increases exponentially.
People often think that if there were just more hours in a day they could accomplish what they need to. But as much as we wish for it, we cannot add more time to a day. Even if we could, it may not solve our problems like we think it would. What we really need is to leverage the hours we have more effectively. There might be great short term benefits to burning the candle on both ends, but ultimately the candle is going to burn out. Your pace matters. And when we have good sleep and good nutrition and other healthy habits, it enables more creative thinking and generates more energy and motivation.
It is not uncommon for people to say that their most creative thoughts always come when they are on a drive or in the shower or brushing their teeth. It is because in those moments we aren’t trying, our minds are in a place where they are free to wander. “Even in our brain’s resting state—when we are not directly focused on a task—it’s still active, engaging its ‘default network’ to plug away at problems, examine and toss out possible answers, and look for new information.”
If you’ve ever trained for a race, you know that your stretching habits are just as important as your form, and rest days are just as important as the long runs. Our rest directly impacts our capacity for more. And somewhere along the way we started believing that more increases our capacity for more. More hustle equals more results. Research is showing that this is not the case. If we want to be more effective, creative, thoughtful, and efficient, we have to believe that our pauses are just as significant as our progress. Even more so, that our pauses are integral to our progress.
To create something sustainable, we need to plan time for rest and creative thought.
Here are a few practical ways to capitalize on the exponential principle.
Take time to rest before you need it.
Rest is not reactionary, it is a proactive choice. Schedule rest, be firm with your boundaries, and know what rhythms work for you. For more, see our blog about rhythms and boundaries.
Stop working when your tank is still full.
“A counterintuitive but effective form of deliberate rest is to stop working at just the right point: when you see your next move, but decide to leave it until tomorrow. Ernest Hemingway was a famous advocate of the practice, and many notable writers have followed his advice to ‘always stop when you know what is going to happen next.’”
Take the time to learn your personal stress/burnout/close-to-empty signals.
You know you best, so when you take the time to grow in your self-awareness, you can better identify when you need a break.
And so, from The Whiteboard Room to you, we just want to say, rest well. We are in your corner! To speak to a coach, click here!