#1055 Dirty Ankles

On this day, the remembrance day for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, please take a moment to honor Dr. King, one of the greatest Americans of our generation.

I’m a runner. 

Check that - jogger. (You’d have to move faster than this old guy to be a runner!) I jog dirt trails through the woods of my local parks with my faithful jogging partner, a hound named Goose.

I’ve noticed that on longer runs, I have dirty ankles. The longer the run, the filthier my ankles are.

I know why this happens. As I fatigue, my form gets sloppy, and my right heel brushes up against my left ankle and vice-versa, marking my ankle bones with mud from the trails. The more tired I am, the more mud cakes on my ankles.

“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, General George Patton, and Vince Lombardi used this quote to motivate their men to focus on conditioning.

What my dirty ankles have taught me is:

“Fatigue makes careless clods of us all.” 

My dirty ankles remind me to put the big rocks in first – to tackle my most demanding tasks early when my energy is high. My consulting clients will tell you that I don’t schedule meetings in the late afternoon. That’s because fatigue threatens the soundness of my late-day decisions.

Perhaps your biorhythms have you peaking when I’m fading. That’s OK. This post is not about early birds and worms but about doing your most important work when your energy is highest and avoiding big decisions when your energy levels are low.

“Sleep is a weapon,” Jason Bourne.

Mistakes, poor decisions (and, apparently, dirty ankles) happen when we’re functioning on fumes.

Own Your Sales Gene…