The 30-day routine that solves 80% of problems and reduce stress for high performance

I finished June 2024 completely burnt out after an intense month with the launch of Flowtasking and several events.

And after a month of highs and lows in July, I got my act together, regained my best physical condition and atomized my stress!
Here's how:

Context and long-standing issues

I'd barely had time to recover from an intense June, when I had to deal with unexpected events in July, saying to myself, “Well, I won't be taking a vacation just yet!
The result?

• I injure my ankle at sport (even if it's as a result of basketball contact, a tired body is more fragile).

• I'm more irritable because I'm tired, and my diary keeps filling up.

• I remember what happened in July 2022 after pulling too hard on the rope (hospitalization) and tell myself that I must learn my lessons.

Especially as in 2024, I had set myself the goal of maintaining a good level of performance in my projects and my health, but with less stress and effort... It had taken me a long time to regain my full physical capacity after my health problems in 2022, which meant that 2023 was intense to achieve the remontada! But...

I had also noticed, with hindsight, that I tended to :

• Be erratic in my confidence and performance (physical and pro): I quickly became frustrated when I wasn't performing at the level I wanted.

• A tendency to wait until I was “burnt out” before recovering: Injuries (which have become rarer) or overdoing it professionally.

• Being under a lot of pressure when I could achieve more with much less effort

• Being at my best when my “killer alter ego” was revealed, and for that to happen, my pride had to be pricked or I had to be pushed to the wall (I need challenge to switch to this identity in sport and business, I'll come back to that).

• Being quickly annoyed by personality types incompatible with my values.

So I decided to optimize all this over the summer!

What makes the difference in overcoming your demons?

As someone who's been talking about productivity and performance for over a decade, and who's played several competitive sports, I know very well that it all comes down to ..:

• Quality sleep

• Good nutrition

• Pleasant, regular training

• Lots of strengthening and mobility (to limit injuries)

• A more respectful pace of life with the ability to recuperate

I know how to discipline myself, so it's not a problem for me... But I've been challenged this summer !

So it was a good opportunity to “Level up” on what could still be “ruining my life”, since if we can't control the outside world, we can control our response 100%.

So I created a routine during the month of August and here's the result (I'll give you the applications I use below):

My routine that changed everything (more resilience, less stress and full of energy)

Routine is not about doing strict or precise activities, but about filling “gauges” including:

• Physical health

• Mental health

• Creativity and mental clarity

• Productivity (execution)

• Recovery and sleep

• Bonus: Social and entertainment

So here's the routine I followed throughout the month of August, which enabled me to find a great deal of resilience and reduce my stress:

• Start my day with cardiac coherence, meditation and free writing

• Don't check email or social networks within an hour of waking up (strict rule)

• Do a muscle-strengthening and mobility session lasting between 30 minutes and an hour

• Work and do my important tasks for the day

• Go to the gym before lunch (it varied between basketball, running, cycling, padel...)

• The afternoon was free, depending on my mood and the week's agenda (work, chill or social life).

• In the evening: Chill, films, series or video games, sometimes Olympic games when there were events that interested me.

• Before bed: Cardiac coherence and reading

If it's similar to my usual routine (being more relaxed and less busy during August), I've put a lot more emphasis on one practice, which is cardiac coherence and meditation, here's why...

Cultivate your best self and the “alter ego” that tears everything apart and boosts your confidence:

I've always had a tendency not to push myself too hard, especially when the challenge doesn't interest me and I'm at my ease.

At school, I was used to getting good marks (not necessarily excellent ones) with the classic “can do better” from my teachers!

In sport, I quickly got bored once I'd reached the right level and there wasn't much at stake.

In business, I need things to be “tense” and the stakes to be raised in order to excel.

Otherwise, I do the minimum!

I have this personality that needs to be pushed, poked and prodded to play at its best. So I'm very prideful:

A provocation, a criticism, a failure or a counter-performance will make me switch into “beast mode”. The problem is that operating solely on pride is not sustainable in the long term. It's fine in certain situations, but I wanted to be able to perform at a higher level without needing that pride or ego to be “pricked”.

So I did a lot of meditation, a form of meditation used in mental preparation:
I wrote this article on the art of visualitation, mental preparation and this concept last February/

With cardiac coherence, I learn to center myself and settle down, then I scan my body and visualize to be more aware of myself, my body and my “ideal identity” (that alter-ego who is at his best).

I ask myself the question “Who am I when I'm playing at my best?” And I visualize it to embody it naturally, peacefully.

This practice has been the most important part of my experimentation, where people think it's just a question of “discipline” in movement...

It has enabled me to be more composed, respond better to people and situations that destabilize me (which I talk about in the podcast above), improve my sleep and boost my performance. The impact is quite global!

How you can put it into practice and the applications I recommend:

This is a sharing of experience with my background and goals, you can just create your own routine with inspiration and above all experiment.

The ones I mainly used are :

• The Oura ring and app for measuring sleep, recovery and stress

• Grow, which centralizes all my health data for gamification purposes

• Méditopia for guided meditations or ambient sounds

• Day One for journaling (I import my handwritten notes from my Remarkable)

• RespiRelax for cardiac coherence

Well, that's all a bonus, your own feeling, a notebook and obersation will do 🙂

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