Gauri Chhabra
Have you ever wondered why some people seem to be more powerful than others? I mean, they exude confidence, energy and enthusiasm. Whatever time of the day it is, you will never see them frowning and cribbing. These are the most powerful people- they might not occupy the corner cabins and cushy positions today, but let me tell you, they are building a staircase for that.
We all wish to be powerful, in some way or the other- it gives us satisfaction and makes us feel happy about life as a whole. What do these people do differently? Believe me, very few of them have been to the best Management schools to become storehouses of knowledge, it is just small little things they do differently that makes them Powerful- in the right sense of the word.
Let us take a look at some of those:
Power Mornings
How you pop out of bed decides what gets dropped in your lap- you can get in bounties if you change the way you start your day. Here’s the thing: How you kick off your morning can set the tone—and momentum—for getting things done throughout the day. It is difficult to roll out of bed as the sun is coming up, budgeting some extra time to exercise in the a.m. can help give you lasting energy for the entire day. It helps improve mental functioning and memory—helping to make you more productive.
Convinced you don’t have the time or the discipline to meditate every day? Well, if you can spare just 120 seconds, you do. While that may not sound like much time, multiple studies have shown that even brief doses of meditation come with a slew of benefits that can boost your career—from making you cognitively sharper to improving your decision making capacity. Here is what you do- just concentrate on your breath. When your mind wanders, take note of that, but then gently come back to the breath. That’s it—no mantra, no emptying of the mind, no perfect lotus position, no meditation hall or guru. Just pay attention to your breath. These small bouts of meditation each morning can help you feel a bit calmer, less distracted, and less reactive during the day—especially when work stress creeps up on you.
Power chores
Well, this may sound weird but it is true. Even if you have to do morning chores like washing the dishes, it can be a great power booster. Rolling up your sleeves to hand wash a sink full of dirty dishes from last night’s dinner may be the last thing you want to do in the morning. But, let me tell you, research has proved that mindfully doing daily chores, even cleaning dishes, helps you stay in the moment, while scrubbing away leads to reduced anxiety and enhanced inspiration. But in order to truly reap the benefits, you have to do it right. While doing the chores, you should only pay attention to the experience of the chore and attend to the full sensory experience. If you simply crib while doing it, you might not experience any emotional changes—just the chore done.
Power Choices
We make choices all day long—from picking an outfit to deciding how to approach a major project at work. The problem is that making one decision after another uses up mental energy, leading to a fatigue just in decision making which means you may have already used up your best brainpower for the day by mulling over the options for your morning. But there’s a way to combat decision fatigue. When you wake up and you’re at your freshest, “decide on the one or two things you want to accomplish. And to help keep your decision-making sharper for longer, consider creating a morning routine that minimizes decision-making.
Power Dressing
It is time for you to dress up for the day. Power dressing helps. Till now it has remained taboo partly because clothes and grooming are, subconsciously at least, often interpreted as artifice. The corporate world wants to present itself as a serious and sincere institution about substantive issues, rather than a popularity contest based on what the contenders look like. That’s why giving attention to fashion potentially undermines it all.
But, experience it yourself, the day you are dressed smartly, you will be able to be more productive and you will actually feel the power exude from you. The fact is that the right fashion on the right person in the ladder in the right circumstances can be mighty power packed currency.
Power Inbox
This is when you have landed at your work place. Well, we all make a laundry list of ‘to do’ list that we semi-diligently try to tackle each day. I would suggest the opposite. Write a journal and list the ‘not to do’ things throughout the day. If you could single out and eliminate the biggest time wasters of your day, like looking at your smart phone every 5min, starting very meeting with a meaty gossip, striving for a ‘zero inbox’ every now and then- you’ve made it – big. While you probably can’t go email-free for too many hours of the day, you can start your day by checking mails, but you can always prioritize when you respond to them.
E mails in your inbox are everyone else’s agendas. They represent what everyone wants from you—their goals and objectives. Why not start your day with your own goals and objectives?
If you use Outlook there are numerous ways to flag, set reminders for the mails you wish to respond to and when. Make use of them rather than blindly responding to all at one go.
Power nap
Few of us enjoy jobs that allow an afternoon siesta, but we’d probably all be better off if they did–including our employers. Research tells us that we all need a solid 10-minute power nap to boost our focus and productivity. The 10-minute nap would produce immediate improvements in all measures including sleep latency, fatigue, vigor, and cognitive performance, and some of the benefits would be seen for the rest of the day. However, as the time of the nap increases, the productivity may not increase as much. The 30-minute nap may produce a period of impaired alertness and performance immediately after napping, indicative of sleep inertia- a sense of grogginess and disorientation that comes with awakening from a deep sleep.
The problem is that naps are awfully hard to cut down to 10 minutes; once you get a little taste, it’s tempting to just keep sleeping. Therefore, longer naps are not the best naps.
Power meetings
This is very simple. It has to do with the power of Thank You’s. If you wish to be powerful at meetings, always start your meetings with a thank you. However, a thank you is only powerful if we feel it is sincere, thoughtful and specific. I like to give three-part thank-you’s. Actually say “thanks” or “thank you”—don’t assume someone will “get it” or “know” you are grateful. Also, mention the behavior or achievement you are grateful for. This is the thing you want others to know gets rewarded. Then, link it to a value or to a strategic initiative.For example,
“Hey everyone, before we begin our scrum call, I just want to say…Rohit, thank you for coming in last weekend to deploy the site. Coming even during inclement weather conditions is a sign of your dedication to towards work and your understanding the criticality of deployment. We really appreciate it.”
Power sleep
The way you end your day is as important as you start your day. Next time you tell yourself that you’ll sleep when you’re dead, realize that you’re making a decision that can make that day come much sooner. Pushing late into the night is a health and productivity killer. The short-term productivity gains from skipping sleep to work are quickly washed away by the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on your mood, ability to focus, and access to higher-level brain functions for days to come. It has been scientifically proven when you sleep your brain removes toxic proteins from its neurons that are by-products of neural activity when you’re awake. Unfortunately, your brain can remove them adequately only while you’re asleep. So when you don’t get enough sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells, wreaking havoc by impairing your ability to think—something no amount of caffeine can fix. Skipping sleep impairs your brain function across the board. It slows your ability to process information and problem solve, kills your creativity, and catapults your stress levels.
Summing up
As you brace yourself for 2016, you don’t have to make grandiose, sweeping changes in your life. Just follow the subtle yet powerful power boosters and experience a feeling of exhilaration and power that sets you apart- from the crowd.
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