The best career advice that’s not actually career advice:
Mind your diet, exercise, and sleep. A career is a marathon. Think of yourself as a “corporate athlete.”
Diet, exercise, and sleep reinforce each other in a virtuous cycle.
✔ Eat well, and you’ll have more energy to exercise.
✔ Exercise, and you’ll sleep better.
✔ Sleep well, and you’ll have more self-discipline with your diet because your appetite hormones will be in balance.
You get the idea…
The key is to prioritize your health. Don’t wait for motivation. Instead, build habits (read Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habits”). Most of us underestimate the value of sleep, but it’s incredibly important. It impacts your energy, mood, defenses against disease, ability to concentrate, and appetite. (Read Matt Walker’s “Why We Sleep”).
If you take one of these three pillars away, it becomes difficult to maintain the other two.
Recently, I’ve also discovered a “fourth pillar”: mindfulness/meditation. This may not be for everybody, but I’ve learned that training the mind to make room for stillness is also an essential part of the corporate athlete’s training regimen.