Alex Nottingham JD MBA emphasizes that high performance is not determined by time management but by managing energy.
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About Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Alex is the CEO and Founder of All-Star Dental Academy®. He is a former Tony Robbins top coach and consultant, having worked with companies upwards of $100 million. His passion is to help others create personal wealth and make a positive impact on the people around them. Alex received his Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida International University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:02
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management, and training. Hi, everyone. I’m Alex Nottingham, and welcome to the Power of Full Engagement. We’re going to do a four-part series covering this topic. So I want you to fill in the blank. Blank flies when you’re having fun. Time, right? If I only had blank in the day, I would be more productive. If I only had more time, I would be more productive.
00:32
So time then is equals high performance. And I would submit to you no, it isn’t time that equals high performance, it’s energy that equals high performance. And so we want more energy. And what we’re gonna be talking about in this four part series comes from the book The Power of Full Engagement, written by Jim Lauer and Tony Schwartz, hopefully I pronounced the first name correctly.
01:03
Now the powerful engagement. These sports psychologists would work with great athletes, NBA, tennis, like Pete Sampras, Grant Hill, and they adapted the work with athletes into the business and personal realm. Because athletes can be very demanding, they have an off season, which we typically don’t.
01:28
Their average work lifespan is five to seven years. Ours can be 20, 30, 40 years. So there is differences between athletes and what we do. They eventually get a break, we don’t. But we can learn from some of these energy pillars that apply to athletes as well as to the workforce. Now the powerful engagement compares two paradigms. The old paradigm is we want to manage time.
01:57
We want to avoid stress. Life is a marathon and downtime is wasted time. The new paradigm, the new paradigm however, says instead of managing time, we manage energy. Instead of avoiding stress, we want to seek stress. And life is a sprint, a series of sprints, not a marathon. And that actually downtime can be very productive time.
02:26
For those that are seeing this conversation, this talk, I’m posting some images with it and some video, but I’ll describe for those that are just listening. But here, if you look at life as a sprint, you have a marathon runner, you have a sprinter. Think about the physique of a marathon runner. They’re very slender and skinny, not a lot of muscle, but a sprinter is powerful, big muscles.
02:55
One does short bursts, powerful and strong. One does a lot of running and is very thin and fragile. So we wanna be a sprinter in our life, not a marathon runner. Did you ever have that day where you worked all day, nothing got done, you’re tired, you’re irritable? Sure, we’ve had those days. What about this day? Got tons of energy.
03:23
You didn’t think you did that much work, but you got a lot done. What’s the difference? Why? And I want to share with you this insight I called midnight madness. I remember putting together a presentation that I’m giving to you now. It took me three plus weeks to do, and this didn’t feel right. So I redid it. I did a whole new presentation, this one, and I got 90% done in three hours, 70 plus slides. So.
03:53
What’s the difference? It’s energy, not time. One took me three weeks, one took me three hours. Now, there are four types or levels, if we create a chart of energy. You have low, negative, so we’re creating a horizontal, horizontal axis and a vertical axis. You have the low at the bottom, the high at the top, the positive on the right, on the left you have
04:23
The negative. So the bottom, low negative, you’re exhausted. You’re burnt out. You’re hopeless. You could also have low positive. You’re relaxed. You’re peaceful. You’re mellow. And you can have high negative, anger, fearful, defensive. What we’re looking for to be fully engaged is high positive. You’re confident. You’re joyful. And you’re connected.
04:52
That’s fully engaged. There are four principles to a fully engaged life. First, you want to draw energy from physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual or purpose energy. The second principle is renewal. You need to find a place to renew energy to avoid overuse or underuse. Principle three, capacity. You want to build capacity so we can push beyond.
05:20
our normal limits in a systematic way. And fourth, rituals, positive energy rituals or automatic behavior to manage energy. To be fully engaged, you wanna be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and purposefully aligned. We’re gonna talk about physical energy in this episode. There are four gifts for energy. The first is sleep.
05:51
One in three adults don’t get enough sleep. According to the CDC, adults should get seven to nine hours per night. You gotta be consistent with your schedule, early to bed, early to wake, for productivity. So we wanna get our sleep, critical. And for those that say, oh, I only need six, five, five, six hours, no, you need seven to nine, you need eight. The second gift is exercise. According to
06:20
The National Institutes of Health, it has well established that exercise regulates mood. CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise and two days a week of strength training. So we need to get a lot of exercise. Do 30 minutes, if you can, five days a week of exercise. This way you can spread it out. Walking is a great low impact way, an easiest way to be consistent.
06:49
and that you can get that added benefit of mental energy. So make sure you’re exercising. And again, I’m giving these broad brushes. When we talk about sleep, exercise, you’ve heard it before, it’s well established, do it. The third gift is diet. We wanna eat, in many cases, five to six small meals per day. Some will do intermittent fasting and they do less. You gotta find out what works for you.
07:18
Eat a balanced, healthy diet. Minimize simple sugars. Breakfast every day. In most cases, that’s gonna be very helpful. Again, if you’re doing fasting, that may not work. But there’s many ways you gotta find a diet that works for you. But if you think about all these diets, keto, paleo, fasting, the whole goal here is you’re gonna be somewhat of on a calorie deficit, if you will, to be able to maintain a healthy weight.
07:45
Your goal is to maintain consistent energy levels. If you eat too little, you’re gonna be tired. If you eat too much, you’re gonna be tired. You need just enough to perform. Same thing with athletes. Hydration is the fourth gift. Water is life. We are 60% H2O, hydrogen oxygen. Males should drink 16 cups of water, or 125 ounces a day. Females should drink 11 cups of water, 91 ounces per day. So.
08:14
Make sure you’re drinking your water. Rest and recovery is important when it comes to energy expenditure. The higher you expend energy, the more rest and recovery you need. You know, you’ve heard before, I’ll sleep when I’m dead or I’ll rest when I’m dead. You know, it’s a nice thing to say, but you know, I would say nice, but it’s interesting at first, but not nice for your body. The harder you work,
08:43
the more rest you need. And in longevity studies, you see those that sleep more live longer. Those who rest more live longer. So that is the introduction to being fully engaged, the powerful engagement. We talked about the different pillars, and we focused in on physical. So that is this, and then we’re gonna talk about the next energy pillar in the next episode. So make sure you share with your friends, like, subscribe, and follow.
09:12
Comment if you can, and until next time, go out there and be an All-Star.
09:19
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
