CEO Corner: 4 Must-Dos to Care for Yourself in 2020
Alice Ayres, MBA
Published: 01/09/2020
Happy New Year! I hope your 2020 is off to a healthy and productive start. As is true for many of us at this time of year, I have spent some time thinking about how to make this an even better year than the one we’ve just said goodbye to.
As professionals, we have a lot of conflicting priorities. It is so important to care for ourselves in the process of our busy lives as parents, employees, managers, partners and friends.
Many years ago, a company called Paravis Partners provided a thoughtful “best practices” list to help executives at the Advisory Board Company with endurance and time management. I have kept the piece of paper for years, and I thought it might be useful as the new year begins. Here are their recommendations:
- Have rituals to stay in physical shape. This includes sleep, exercise and diet.
- Be purposeful about the start of the day and the week. I have started blocking off time at the beginning of every day to ground myself in what I need to accomplish and to give myself time to think strategically before the day’s activities get going. This is always an easy block to give up for “more important” things, so guarding it will be important as I set it in place.
- Have a calendar/scheduling philosophy. When is the best time for you for meetings?When do you need breaks in the day? When will you take your PTO? What parameters will you set on time in the office?
- Manage email. What is the best system for you? Do you only address email a couple of times a day? Do you limit yourself to a quick answer? How do you organize the communications coming into your inbox (Hint: Most email clients, including Outlook and Gmail, have the ability to set up rules to help with this).
Those are their “ground-level” behaviors and questions to help manage the juggling. Paravis Partners also has a list of behaviors to help with the more strategic side of our roles, which I will share in a future post.
I wish you a happy, healthy, balanced 2020. As always, if AHP can help, please do not hesitate to reach out.