What You Can Learn From Michael Jordan on Productivity
Michael Jordan never felt guilty on his recovery day, where he focused solely on low impact activities like stretching and flexibility.
Recovery is part of his success formula; by giving his body a chance to recuperate, he avoided injury and could be on top form on his game days.
We should all take a lesson from Michael Jordan and the world of professional sport. Success is not achieved only from high impact training but a combination of high and low impact strategies.
Now you may not be a professional athlete so let’s adapt the concept to high impact and low impact productivity.
Low impact productivity vs high impact productivity.
High impact work is where you expend a lot of energy, like doing an intense weight training workout. It is very clickable and makes you feel like you got an excellent R.O.M — return on the moment. You sent out that proposal, wrote a powerful presentation, completed your sales forecast, etc.
When you exercise at a high-intensity pace, your body releases the feel-good chemical endorphins. Likewise, your body releases dopamine with your high impact work, the good feeling you receive from ticking that oversized item off your success list ( I do not believe in to-do lists).
Low impact productivity includes more calming activities such as meditation, yoga, journaling or mindful breathing. You can also go for a walk, colour, paint — basically any activity you engage in without a device to fill in the silence and allows your mind to wander.
There is one distinct difference between low and high impact productivity: instant gratification.
The significant impact activities make you feel successful in the moment; there is an immediate outcome for the time invested.
The low impact activities do not provide this same feeling, and as a result, you feel guilty for ‘wasting your time on them. You do not see the immediate return and disregard it as a productive use of your precious time.
The hidden gifts of low impact productivity.
Michael Jordan’s trainer, Tim S. Grover, has used stretching between each weightlifting exercise for years with his most famous client and more than 30 other pro basketball and major league baseball stars, including ex-Bulls Scottie Pippen.
Your objective isn’t the same as a pro basketball player but the gifts that low impact productivity yields are equally valuable in your world.
These low impact activities are where you develop self-awareness that gives you the ability to be aware of your thoughts, triggers and feelings in the present moment. If you are busy ruminating about what you could have or should have said, it’s too late.
Another low impact benefit is self-regulation and state management, where you can operate from a place of calm confidence rather than stress and overwhelm. Traits like contentment, gratitude, creativity, resilience, empathy are also part of the low impact repertoire.
The low impact activities enable you to insert a mental pause button between stimulus and response and provides you with the gift of choice in the big decision moments when it counts.
Are you going to work on the presentation or procrastinate and watch cat videos?
Are you going to eat the cookie or the apple?
Are you going to send that rude email or wait a day when you are no longer emotionally charged?
Are you going to grind through the day or notice your head is pounding and take a break?
When you can expand the space in the critical decision-making moments, it gives you the power to transform the moment and move in the direction of your goals.
How to get the maximum return on your time.
It’s not enough to arrive at the gym; you need to set your intention before getting there.
Setting your intention defines the motive behind the activity. What energy do you want to bring to it?
If it’s a big weight training session, then put effort into every curl. Adopt the mind to muscle principle and concentrate on putting your total effort into every set.
If you go through the motions and tick the box of going to the gym for the day, did you really get the maximum value of your workout?
You can spend an hour in the gym, but you haven’t achieved anything for your efforts if you use the incorrect form.
It’s the same with the high productivity tasks. You can feel busy all day, but if you put your effort into other people’s urgencies and fire fighting, did you truly have a productive day?
This is equally true for low impact activities. You have the choice to show up to the yoga mat because it is something you ‘should’ do and spend the session waiting for it to end and frustrated that you could be doing something else.
Although you ticked the box of yoga, you won't reap the full potential of the benefits it offers.
Your other option is to invest that time with the intention to let the poses ‘do you’. You can choose to relax into the practice and not require anything from it other than the practice itself.
Simply showing up unfortunately isn’t enough. Showing up with attention and intention is where you make progress in your world.
Develop your mental strength.
Athletes do intense training sessions not only to strengthen their bodies but their minds. When they feel like stopping, they push and give it one more set. When they feel like their muscles are burning and at capacity, they hold the curl for a few seconds longer.
They practice this every day, so they are ready when it counts.
You would assume that only the high-intensity productivity activities yield this result — stay up one more hour, push for one more email, but this will only escalate you into burnout.
The proper mental training happens in low-intensity productivity activities. It’s easy to enjoy something when you have the instant gratification of having pushed through a long run.
It takes self-discipline to stay on that meditation mat for an extra few minutes when you feel like you are wasting your time and thoughts flood into your mind constantly.
It takes faith to persevere every day when you don’t see an immediate result but trust that the process works. Over time, you realise you are less emotionally reactive, more self-aware and make better decisions in the high stakes, high-pressure moments.
This is the behind-the-scenes action that enables you to achieve your goals. You cannot just rely on the highlights reel of the high impact productivity actions.
Final thoughts.
A successful athlete knows that their training needs to incorporate high and low impact activities to continue competing at a world-class level.
Equally, you need to develop skills in both areas so you can be on your top form.
Although they may feel slow or unproductive, the low impact activities are the building blocks to creating your future self and who you want to become.
Without reflection, how do you know where you are going, how can you identify your strengths and weaknesses, and how you can interrupt destructive patterns and habits?
“The minute you get away from fundamentals — whether it’s proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation — the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing” — Michael Jordan.
Don’t mistake high impact productivity alone as the fundamentals; when you can combine both, you win at the game of life, not just a career.
Here’s to staying in the game,
Warm wishes
Lori