Power Hour

Sharing my learnings from the book, Power Hour by Adrienne Herbert.

Power Hour by Adrienne Herbert

Power Hour will show you how to harness the first hour of your day in order to achieve your goals – whether those are writing a book, getting fit or pursuing your passion – before the rest of the world wakes up and starts competing for your attention. From the importance of developing a growth mindset to creating powerful habits and the significance of daily movement, it will help you reclaim your time and unlock your full potential. Most importantly, it will make you realise that there is no better time than now to make a change and create a life you love.

• carrying around a growing mental list of deferred goals is tiring and deeply discouraging. At some point, you have to ask yourself, is this something I care about enough to make time for?
• All you’ve got to do is devote the first hour of every day to a specific goal or passion and you can make your goals a reality
• By deferring action, we shrink responsibility for our own happiness & success. Let’s do Power Hour – one hour at a time, you can pursue passions and achieve goals!
• Don’t view past circumstances as fixed limitations. When you do that, you’re telling yourself that because of your social class, gender, ethnicity or past experiences, you can’t be successful in some endeavor. Instead of considering your creative abilities, skills and even character as immutable, it’s best to abandon this fixed mindset for its opposite: the growth mindset. Adopting a growth mindset helps you to see failure as an opportunity to improve, rather than triggering long-term discouragement.
• We encounter thousands of decisions each day. To help us navigate all this decision-making, we develop habits. For better or for worse, habit usually trumps willpower. This is where powerful habits come in.
• a powerful habit is any habit that makes a reliable, positive contribution to your daily life.
  • step one: determine which current habits are useful and which are not.
  • step two: adapt or replace current habits with better habits
  • step three: add friction to make it more difficult to resort to your bad habits.
• no matter your age or ability, moving your body in some way will have positive impact on your mind & overall health. One of the best things you can do to counteract the effects of eternal sitting is to incorporate movement into your Power Hour.
• three main types of movement
  • low intensity or low impact movement – e.g., yoga or planks
  • strength training – e.g., weight lifting
  • cardiovascular movement – e.g., walking, running & cycling
• quality sleep is a crucial part of overall health. Sleep improves your emotional well being and restores your brain health, which helps with concentration and decision making. Prioritize sleep.
• how we live and interact with others is just as important to our health as other factors like diet and exercise. You need support & encouragement to achieve your goals, including those you focus on in your Power Hour. Nobody succeeds alone, even if some people say they do.
• Most people either feel that they don’t have enough time or money to pursue their passions or they’re held back by fear. The best way to overcome these hurdles is to address them directly
  • time – there’s a difference between having time & making time. If something or someone is truly valuable to us, we’ll make time for it, or them, no matter how much we have on our plates
  • money – you could use your Power Hour to acquire funding or create a side hustle that you could turn into a main hustle in 6 months. Another option is to create a business that matches your life purpose and use that to fund your project
  • fear – you can improve your fear response by fear rehearsing. By rehearsing how to respond to a frightening situation, you can minimize the paralyzing effect of sudden anxiety, remain calm and take control of the situation
• commit to a power hour each day to reclaim your time and create the life you want to live. It has to be the very first hour of your day and it has to be early, preferably 6am.
• five rules in setting a goal for the Power Hour
  • your goal should be specific
  • pick an exact deadline
  • tell someone who wants you to succeed about your plans and explain why
  • evaluate your process and progress every so often
  • ask for help.
• you can’t get lost time back. But by committing to one hour a day, you can make the most of your future, pursue your passions and create a life you love.