LIFT Every Day
Discover the benefits of developing a habit of focusing on what matters most at the outset of each day.
Recommended reading: Brian Johnson’s Optimize newsletter and notes.
If you’re familiar with Brian Johnson over at Optimize you’ve probably heard him talking about his fundamentals (fundies as he calls them).
He believes they are the starting point for anything and everything you're trying to achieve in your work, and your life at large.
In essence, the none-negotiable, essential daily practices for showing up and performing at your best.
They are built around:
- Eating
- Sleeping
- Moving
As simple and obvious as they may seem, they are also the things so many of us manage to get wrong time and time again.
His premise is this – if we want to be optimal and achieve peak performance in our work, we must first prioritise our health, energy and recovery.
L.I.F.T
His approach to structuring his days and managing his energy, productivity and overall life have inspired lots of similar daily protocols.
Over the past year or so I’ve been playing around with LIFT.
Here's how it goes. First thing in the morning you set your intentions by writing down:
Learn: A topic you want to research, a book or article you'll read or maybe some audio you'll listen to.
Idea: Something new you're going to create. This is any creative act such as writing, designing, building.
Food: Nutrition. How you are going to sustain your energy levels throughout the day for peak productivity.
Train: This is all about practicing a skill that you are working towards mastering.
What’s Your Daily LIFT?
LIFT works incredibly well for me.
It also makes for a descriptive acronym. It literally will lift your day up by setting the standard at the outset.
Writing the four intentions down takes minutes. The impact on me sticking to them is huge.
Until written down, despite being important, they usually remain vague ideas.
At the end of the day, ticking off each of the items you've delivered on helps build moment and fuels the next days LIFT.
What’s your LIFT?
Write it down every morning. Tick it off each evening.
