Have you ever found yourself unable to execute, focus, generate ideas, or produce your usual quality of work?

Whether we’re talking work, training, or damn near anything else in your life, left unchecked, it’s easy to ride your momentum too far in a given direction, either further from or closer to your mission.

For example, take your training too far, and you’ll end up sore, exhausted, injured. Training should invigorate, not deplete you.

Work too much for too long and you’ll end up losing focus, creativity, and drive. And there’s a good chance all you’ll want to do is stare at a wall.

Go too far in the other direction, and kiss your progress goodbye.

If you’re not training frequently enough, or without ruthless intensity, your gains will be stagnant, and you’ll be stuck looking like a single, limp, spaghetti noodle.

Skip working on your business in favour of Netflix & Chill, and you’ll be punching the same ‘ol clock for all eternity.

Now, how often do you check in with yourself, audit your efforts, your state, and recalibrate your dial accordingly?

If you’re like me, not nearly often enough.

Take the past two weeks I spent bumming around Europe. I didn’t actually take off work (surprise!).

Amdist sweating profusely, wandering old, tiny streets, stuffing empanadas down my gob, and sipping on freshly squeezed Valencian orange juice, I did what I do best: I thought a lot, powered through a chunk of Name of the Wind, and wrote about it.

When I raised the matter with Alicia, we had had a long conversation about how to turn the idea of analyzing your efforts, mental state, and turning into a simple system to help keep yourself optimized.

Because brooding is only productive if you generate progress from it.

Part of the action plan born from our conversation is a monthly “mental audit,” with my key metrics being:

— overall mood

— creativity

— focus

— levels of physical and mental fatigue

(This is actually quite similar to how I’ve come to intuitively manage my training schedule, and know when I’ll benefit more from taking 3-5 days off rather than stubbornly training.)

If these don’t check out, or seem up to par, it’s time to dial back and rest.

If they’re solid, then it’s full steam ahead.

Pushing yourself harder when you need to but don’t necessarily want to takes practice, and  doing so also builds an invaluable skill—breaking through plateaus, and keeping your momentum going.

But if you’re pile-driving yourself into the ground, slowing down means you’ll spend more time making progress before you run into a brick wall.

My competitive bodybuilding days taught me that you can’t push as hard as you want forever. If anything you’ve got to recover harder than you train to make real progress.

Flip forward to today, now placing greater focus on my relationships, business, writing, and overall self-improvement, the more I see it behooves you to adopt a similar cycle in all areas of your life.

Ride the wave until it breaks, then rest while lying in wait to catch the next one.

Which reminds me:

Those periods of lying in wait is the perfect time to read, study, and soak up stories like you’ll find inside the Sorcerers Guild newsletter.

The launch date is officially set, I’m cooking up two announcements to come over the next week, and the final “to-do’s” are being checked off.

If you’re not on the pre-sale list where you’ll receive early access to the launch (plus an exclusive lifetime rate), click the link below (no soggy spaghetti noodles allowed):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLqAFIMgpIU

(Note: clicking the link above will automatically add your name to the Sorcerers Guild pre-sale list, take you to a clip from Rick & Morty, the greatest animated show of all time, and allow you to gain access to the Sorcerers Guild launch special 24 hours before anyone else on this list or my social media channels does)

_A. Mullan