In the third episode of our Ask The Experts series, Glen sits down with high performance coach, facilitatory, speaker and consultant Kate McKenna to discuss productivity, mindset and how to harness peak performance.
Our Fox & Hare members will know how much importance we place on values. In fact, it’s one of the first things we chat about in our initial coaching sessions with our members!
Each of us have a core set of beliefs and values that we can harness to help take control of our personal, professional and financial world. Once we figure out what’s important to us, we can clearly map out a plan for how to use our energy, time and money to help us reach these goals. And the same goes for using your values to drive your performance in your personal and professional life.
We’re thrilled to be joined by high performance coach Kate McKenna for this next instalment of our Ask The Experts series. Having worked with Glen at Macquarie Bank for many years, Kate brings a wealth of experience to our community with a background in advice and financial planning, project management as well as a keen interest in health, wellness and peak performance. Kate is also the Program Coach for The Academy (created by leading talent agency The Lifestyle Suite) which delivers a unique 12-month program designed for experts and professional athletes to help grow their brand and drive their profile to new commercial heights.
In this conversation, Glen and Kate cover off on a range of topics including professional and personal high performance, mindset and accountability and how to get in-tune with the way you’re built to work.
Kate’s insights on productivity, performance and energy levels
During our conversation, Kate explored the importance of identifying how and when we work best. Through her work, Kate leverages neuroscience and psychology principals to develop tailored performance strategies for her executive clients, helping them to create clear roadmaps for achieving their goals and objectives. Sound familiar? It’s not far off the same approach we follow with you as a Fox & Hare member!
What Kate’s work uncovers is that each of us is wired differently, meaning we need to adopt an approach that’s unique to how we work best. In essence, it’s all about working smarter not harder to achieve better results in a more efficient way that’s right for us.
But for many of us, this isn’t something we’re taught from a young age. “We aren’t necessarily taught to be clear on our purpose and the value sets that we hold and the reasons why we do things a certain way,” explains Kate. In many cases, Kate explains we only encounter this when we reach a point of crisis, such as burning out at work, which forces us to reconsider the way we are working in our personal and professional lives.
Whether you’ve reach breaking point or not, it’s important to tune into your energy levels, passions and core values to understand how to break out of the ‘hamster wheel’ cycle. This concept of personal accountability is a challenging one, but so important to helping us realise we’re in the driving seat of our own lives.
As Kate explains, “it means no excuses. You create your world and it’s the choices we make that directs us towards which path we’re going to go on.” It’s about taking ownership of your decisions and understanding how these influence the outcomes you achieve.
And this is exactly what we help our members do at Fox & Hare. We believe everyone is accountable for their finances and it’s up to each of us to take responsibility to review our cashflow and lifestyle choices and acknowledge how our actions will impact our ability to meet our goals. Once we do this, we’ll be in the best position to rewire and improve our habits and behaviours to hit these goals sooner.
But change doesn’t happen overnight, as Kate tells, “think about it like going to the gym: you don’t go to the gym once and expect the run a marathon.” The same goes for our financial world: we need to commit to consistent actions over the months and years to come to build sustainable, long-term wealth.
Our top takeaway points
Here are Kate’s top tips you can implement today to improve your energy levels, mindset and productivity.
- Understand your optimal working pace: By identifying the pace you work best at as well as when your energy peaks and drops throughout the day, you’ll be in the best position to structure your workday in a way that best suits your individual working style.
- Identify the link between energy levels and our health: Your mental health and energy levels are deeply linked to your physical health, as Kate explains, “90% of illnesses are stress related. So that means the amount of cortisol in our body depletes our immune system, making you more susceptible to illness.”
- Strike a balance between tasks the energise and deplete you: “Get clear on what you’re trying to achieve and then start to prioritise your energy across those areas. You can’t do everything at the same time. That means we need to be realistic and accountable for our actions and clarify why we want to do it – the more we understand why we want to do it, the easier it will be to focus our attention in the right places,” Kate explains.
And for those of us who are feeling depleted by the demands of remote working during COVID-19, here are a few simple actionable tips from Kate:
- Be careful of ‘Zoom’ or online fatigue: while remote and digital working has opened up fantastic business opportunities, it does come at a cost to our energy levels. As it can be difficult to ‘read the room’ via video conferencing, it can cause our energy levels to deplete faster. Consider switching Zoom meets for phone calls (where relevant) and even consider going for a quick walk while you take the call too.
- Consider investing in blue-light blocking glasses: these can help stop the glare and eye-strain caused by laptops and computer screens (something we’re all spending a lot of time in front of particularly at the moment!).
- Get specific about what activities will drive the best outcomes for you: consider how each task is impacting your energy levels and whether it’s the best use of your time and be open to recalibrating your schedule to suit your individual working style and pace.
Keep an eye out on our social channels and upcoming newsletters for more information about our next Ask The Experts live Q&A session. Want to learn more about becoming a Fox & Hare member? Click here to book in for a quick chat.