Skip to main content
Entrepreneurs' Organization
Site navigation

10 steps to living your optimal life

February 23, 2022

Gino Wickman shares The 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy that will teach you how to harness your energy, run faster, make an impact, get total freedom, and understand what is most important in your life, making you the best version of yourself.

Gino Wichman Contributed by Gino Wickman, a recent EO 360° podcast guest and the author of Traction and The EOS Life, as well as the creator of EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System), which more than 130,000 entrepreneurs use to run their companies. He also created The 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy.

You deserve to live your optimal life. Being an entrepreneur gives you the freedom to do so.

For the last 30 years, I have obsessed about helping every entrepreneur be successful and free. Now, with more than 130,000 entrepreneurs using the system I created, EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System), and living their ideal life, aka The EOS Life, that dream is becoming a reality.

Regardless of which operating system you use to run your company, I am going to assume you are relatively successful and have the basics down: eating right, sleeping well and exercising regularly and that you have a strong work ethic.

Now, I’d like to share how to go to the next level and live your optimal life by applying what I call The 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy™.

I have been practicing these disciplines for over 20 years. They are for racehorses who are ready to run. They will teach you how to harness your energy, run faster, make an impact, get total freedom, and understand what is most important in your life, making you the best version of yourself.

You’re a ball of energy (we all are), and your energy either burns bright or it doesn’t. It’s all about mobilizing that energy.

Below are The 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy. Each discipline is fast, simple, powerful and fully customizable. They will help you expand, focus and manage your energy.

  1. 10-Year Thinking: Shift your mind from short-term thinking to thinking in 10-year time frames. This is about shifting your thinking from wanting everything now, now, now to making 10-year decisions. Time slows down, a peace comes over you, you make better decisions and, ironically, you get there faster.
  2. Take Time Off: Take at least 130 days off per year and don’t think about work the entire day. Now, before you react or maybe think that’s a lot, consider this. If you take off every weekend (104 days), holidays (five to 10 days) and three weeks of vacation (15 weekdays), that’s close to 130 days. You have to make time for family, friends and personal passions in order to recharge your batteries and avoid burnout.
  3. Know Thyself: Be you 100 percent of the time, 24/7/365. The secret is to be yourself in every situation, but to fully be yourself, you must first know thyself. So, who are you? Imagine the freed-up energy, not having to pretend you are something you are not.
  4. Be Still: Sit in silence for 30 minutes every day. As a driven person, you go hard, all day, every day. You’ve got to stop. You’ve got to turn it off and let your soul catch up—meditation, contemplation, prayer, thinking time, journaling or breath work. Sitting in silence for 30 minutes every day will transform you.
  5. Know Your 100%: Decide on and commit to your perfect number of hours per week and weeks per year that you will deliver your craft/value to the world. This is your work container. Understanding your work capacity, protecting it and delegating all else will increase your productivity, energy and creativity.
  6. Say No … Often: Say no to everything that doesn’t fit in the first five disciplines. As Warren Buffett says, “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” You have to set boundaries to be truly free.
  7. Don’t Do $25-an-Hour Work: Never do anything that you could pay someone $25 an hour to do. This allows more time on your craft and things that give you energy and you are passionate about and less time on things that drain your energy.
  8. Prepare Every Night: Before your head hits the pillow every night, document the next day’s plan. You will sleep better, wake up with ideas, be more creative and hit the ground running. This discipline is so simple and yet so powerful.
  9. Put Everything in One Place: Pick the one place you will capture every idea, commitment, thought, action item and promise that comes up throughout the day. The sad reality is that you are letting people down because you can’t possibly keep all of that in your head. You must choose your “one place”—a legal pad, a tablet, notes in your phone, your calendar, a journal or any device—you just have to choose the one and only place to capture it all. This will greatly free up your mind.
  10. Be Humble: View yourself as an equal to every person on the planet. As Rick Warren said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.” Humble is not weak; humble is strong and powerful.

I encourage you to practice one or all 10 of these disciplines. You will notice a huge impact on your energy, creativity and productivity.

I wish you tremendous success. You deserve it.

For a deeper dive into these 10 disciplines and to gain all of the benefits, go to the10disciplines.com.

For more insights and inspiration from today’s leading entrepreneurs, check out EO on Inc. and more articles from the EO blog.