Peter Hollins - Endless Energy: A Blueprint for Productivity, Focus, and Self-Discipline--for the Perpetually Tired and Lazy

By Peter Hollins,

Author and Researcher at petehollins.com

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Endless Energy: A Blueprint for Productivity, Focus, and Self-Discipline - for the Perpetually Tired and Lazy

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Energy Rules Everything

Pyramidal Thinking

Chapter 2. Physical Energy Vampires

Sleep, Circadian, and Ultradian Rhythms

Eating for Glucose

Shoring Up Deficiencies

A Note on Water

Chapter 3. Emotional and Mental Energy Vampires

The Self-Defeating Mind

Challenging Beliefs

The Real Vampires

The Exhausted Mind

Keeping Calm

Chapter 4. Its in the Cells

The Cellular Powerhouse

Hot and Cold

The Noble Bean

Chapter 5. Energized Productivity

The Physics of Productivity

Eliminate the Paradox of Choice

Motivation (and Energy) Follows Action

Summary Guide

Money is important. Time is important. But these are not the quantities that will limit you in your life.

Without energy, neither of these factors means very much; nothing really does. Think about it: you could have a huge bank account, but it wont matter one bit if youre confined to your bed with glandular fever and unable to stand up straight, let alone spend and enjoy that money. You could be young, bright and full of promise, but if youre depressed and lethargic 100 percent of the time, all that youth and potential means nothing. Without energy and the capacity for action and execution, all of your best intentions wont matter a lick.

This is a book about the psychological and physiological bases of energywhere it comes from, how we can maintain it, and how to get more of it. You can think of energy as the most primordial, fundamental kind of wealth. Energywhether its psychological or physicalis like your personal fund of life itself. Its the well that you draw all your motivation, enthusiasm, and passion from. Its what makes one persons life a boring slog while another person, doing much the same thing, appears to be living with zest and purpose.

It all comes down to energy. Theres a great big world out there, and if were to explore it, we need the physical and emotional strength to get out there and engage with it. Opportunities abound all around us, but if were too depleted and uninspired to grab them when they do, it doesnt matter how fortunate we are or how many lucky breaks come our way.

Its a little like having the world at your feet, and a map of this worlds awesome highways and roads in front of you, but not having any fuel in your car. Without energy, life becomes two-dimensional and gray. You may even feel like life is just whizzing past you, and youre left behind because you cant keep up.

When we have energy, the world is ours. We have the spirit and the wherewithal to grasp it. We can reach out and engage with others, with our environment, with ourselves, with our dreams. We have whats needed to build our ideal world, one brick at a time, and we have the resilience and spring in our step to appreciate what we already have. Energy is fuelit powers everything great in life, whether thats creativity, productive work, innovative solutions to lifes problems, personal development, rich relationships with others, or simply the joy of having a strong body, a clear mind, and robust emotional health.

The great thing about energy is that in some ways, it can feed on and encourage itself. When you are energized, you act decisively and with conscious intention. You turn down distractions or temptations. Youre able to push yourself a little, and grow because of the challenge. And when you grow, youre inspired to keep going, setting up today the conditions that will most benefit you tomorrow. Acting with energy has a cumulative effect, bolstering you against lifes trials and difficulties, and making celebrations and triumphs all the more wonderful.

Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. Low energy creates more apathy, more tiredness, more of that listless blah feeling that only seems harder and harder to budge the longer it lingers. When youre low on energy, youre more likely to take the easy way out, give up on your dreams because theyre too challenging, or put up with negative behavior in yourself and others that you might not have otherwise. The result is a steady stream of self-reinforcing behaviors that create a compromised life that just feels bad, plain and simple.

This is why its so important to focus on energy. It doesnt matter how many other great things you have going on in your life; if you dont have the energy to engage with them properly, to appreciate them, to bring them to life, its the same as not having those great things at all.

In a way, we can think of this as multiplying by zero, a mathematical mental model that preaches the importance of shoring up your weaknesses. In mathematics, it doesnt matter what else is going on in an equation or expressionif youre multiplying by a zero anywhere, the end result is always the same: zero. You might think youre onto the next big mathematics discovery like Pythagoras or Descartes, but if a zero slips in there without your noticing, youre just going to end up with a fail for the day. No amount of finagling or negotiating will impact your result.

And so lack of energy is like the big fat zero that cancels out all your other efforts and intentions, no matter how grand and noble they may be. In fact, you could do your best to keep on increasing the other variables as much as you wanted (for our purposes, well-wishing, hoping, dreaming, good intentions, and self-flagellation), but it wouldnt matter. Even infinity multiplied by zero is still zero.

A chain, as they say, is only as strong as its weakest link. Even if all the links in your life are looking pretty good, they cant do much about that one wobbly link, that zero that can break and undermine the strength of the entire chain.

In this book, were going to first examine ways to make sure your energy quotient is a non-zero, and in fact, is always one of the most powerful variables at your disposal. Soon after, well focus on optimizing the rest of the equation, learning to beat procrastination, creating better goals, and manipulating our psychology to be more effective and efficient. Often, youll find that increased energy is the true cure to what ails you because it allows you to have willpower, dig deep, and reach goals. Thats the real secret behind traits like self-discipline and resilience.

Lets consider a real-life example. Since you can remember, youve wanted to write that special novel about cats and murder on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. You have so many big ideas, a real message you want to share with the world, but somehow it never comes together. You wake up in the morning and promise yourself youre going to find time to sit and write today. You can barely sit still because of your anticipation over plotting, character development, and the invention of a new fantastical language (for the cats, obviously). But then after a hard days work, after your commute home, after housework and just, well, life, youre exhausted. Suddenly, you dont feel quite so inspired. You put off your Great Novel Dream until tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes next week, and then next month. And so it goes.

Lets run through a list of common recommendations for someone in your current position of struggling to write a novel. You could try and take other peoples advice on how to write your book. You could read about making better plans and outlines, or join a writing group, or even hire a writing coach to help you out of your writers block. These recommendations try to improve or optimize other variables in the equation, but they dont address the real problem. You dont have writers block, and you dont need a coach. Youve just run out of energy, and youre trying to multiply by zero. And again, when your energys at zero, none of that other stuff matters. So long as thats the case, youre going to keep coming up short when it comes to things that you really care about.