U2 Can B an ACE

During WW1, fighter pilots successfully downing 5 enemy planes were designated as ACEs. My challenge for you is considerably less dangerous.

My A.C.E. formula for effective performance is:

Alkalize
Calendarize
Exercise

Consuming more alkaline-producing foods reduces the energy drain we experience when digesting the highly acidic diet most common in the western part of the world. A less acidic diet leaves us with more energy to engage in our daily work.

Here are 5 easy steps you can take to alkalize:

• Drink more water (including mineral water)
• Eat your vegetables (especially kale, spinach, cucumbers, broccoli, avocado and celery)
• Add wheatgrass to your diet (available in frozen cubes, tablets and powder)
• Get 7-8 hours of sleep (too little sleep and too much stress also increases the acidity of our blood)
• Breathe deeply several times a day (this activates the vagus nerve, adjacent to our diaphragm, which is a natural – and free – relaxant)

One of the biggest drains on our vitality, preventing us from earning our A.C.E. badge, is the overwhelm we experience when we feel out of control relative to all of the incoming tasks, emails and commitments that flood our days.

In The Vanishing To-Do List™, one of 32 learning modules in our Leadership Fitness curriculum, we teach our clients to make everything on their to-do list vanish at the end of every day.

I start each day with a fresh, and blank, to-do list by answering the following 3 questions the night before:

• Can I do it now (meaning I can do it in 2 minutes or less)?
• Can I delegate this to-do?
• When in the future can I calendarize taking action on the to-do?

When I process my to-do list at the end of every day, if I cannot do something in 2 minutes or less, and I must do it myself, I look at when in the future I can complete the task or at least get it started.

The power of calendarizing lies in setting aside time in the future for the promises and commitments we make to ourselves and/or others today.

If instead we keep the more complex and more time-consuming tasks on our list for another day or week (or longer), we delude ourselves into thinking we have more bandwidth in the future than we really do. This leads to taking on too much and decreasing our overall effectiveness over time.

Finally, to become a true A.C.E., engaging in regular exercise is essential. In Spark: The Revolutionary New Science on Exercise and the Brain, Dr. John Ratey refers to exercise as “Miracle-Gro for the Brain”.

Exercise has been shown to cause biological changes in our brain, optimizing our performance and our ability to learn.

When it comes to exercise, consistency trumps intensity. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most healthy adults should be getting at least 150 minutes of moderate to rigorous exercise each week.

U2 can B an A.C.E. by taking the time to alkalize, calendarize and exercise!

CU in the sky.