Reflection as a Leadership Tool, Jupiter's Travels, Peaks and Valleys, and More

Bring Ambition Newsletter - May 5, 2022

May 05, 2022

Hi folks and welcome aboard new subscribers!

The Bring Ambition Newsletter is like having a personal executive coach in your inbox every other Thursday. You’ll receive 3-5 quick bulletpoints (~3 min. read) related to professional development, peak performance psychology, leadership, learning, productivity, and much more.

As always, if you enjoy the newsletter please share with a friend!

1.) Peaks & valleys

On a personal note, last week I traveled to Miami to facilitate a series of trainings on a variety of topics: management skills, “managing up,” interviewing skills, time management / productivity, and team effectiveness. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, but after returning I immediately came down with the flu. All of life is peaks and valleys, as they say.

Hope you guys are doing better than I am this week!

green trees on mountain under white clouds during daytime — Peaks & Valleys. Photo by Rohit Dey on Unsplash

2.) Reflection as a Leadership Tool

Self-reflection is a powerful yet overlooked practice for coaches, executives, and anyone looking to optimize their performance. According to the Boston Consulting Group, CEOs say structured reflection helps them make bold moves, mitigate crises, establish plans for delivering the most value, manage the demands of their job, and more intelligently allocate time and energy.

This will be expanded into a broader post, but to cut to the chase here’s one way to implement self-reflection into your daily routine, synthesized from the work of several performance psychologists:

Morning reflections:

How do I feel right now? How do I want to feel today?
Examine your state immediately upon waking. Define upfront the state you want to be in when approaching your day (e.g. strong, productive, energized, positive, good leader, etc.)
What are my 1-2 biggest priorities today?
I.e. if you get traction on these things, you will end the day with a sense of satisfaction and/or accomplishment
What can I do to raise my energy before I start the day?
This sets you up to have a marginally better day — but a marginal improvement in how you feel over the span of many days becomes an exponential improvement

Midday reflections:

How did the first half of my day go?
This should relate to your morning reflective questions. Are you operating from your desired state? Are you making traction on your focus areas?
How do I want the second half of the day to go?
This is similar to how an athlete might reflect at halftime before approaching the second half of a game. If things are going well, how can you continue the momentum? If things didn’t go as planned, how can you learn from those events and start fresh, in a more positive direction?

End of day reflections:

What are 2-3 things I did well today?
What are you excited about for tomorrow?
What’s one thing I can do to so I can feel better / more energized for tomorrow?

3.) Jupiter’s Travels

After reading it on and off for about 3 years, I’ve just finished Jupiter’s Travels by Ted Simon. This will easily go down as one of my all-time favorites.

In 1974, Ted Simon set out on his Triumph motorcycle on a trip around the world. In just four years he traversed over 78,000 miles and traveled through 45 countries. Already an established journalist, Simon’s writing is incredible and we get to experience a world that is now lost to time - people, landscapes, and events that would be unrecognizable today, almost 50 years later.

Jupiter’s Travels has inspired countless adventures, round-the-world trips, and motorcycle purchases since publication. Strap on your helmets for this one.

4.) Coolest article ever on how a watch works

Mechanical Watch by Bartosz Ciechanowski. Not only is this super informative - who hasn’t looked at their watched and wondered how that tiny piece of magic works? - but it has beautiful, super-interactive illustrations. It’s like being able to play with the pieces of a watch as you learn about them. This post (dare I say it) makes learning fun.

Mind blown.

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! I’d love to hear your feedback — reply here or reach me via the links below.

The Bring Ambition Newsletter