I have a lot more energy in the office today vs 10 or 15 years ago.

Yes, even though I'm almost the wrong side of 40 with a salt & pepper beard that would put George Clooney's to shame.

I can pinpoint exactly why I have this energy and where it’s come from.

Let’s take an example from the first iteration of my banking career.

I remember a committee where I was presenting a deal to 6 or 7 senior bods.

The deal was a £300m securitisation transaction.  And it wasn’t straightforward.  Securitisations are complex and this particular deal had a bunch of knotty details and thorny nuances.

In the 2 weeks leading up to the presentation, it was almost like my brain had a life of its own.  

It went into overdrive.

It ran endless rehearsals for the committee, predicting every possible question, pre-empting the responses to my responses, going into the worst-case scenarios and frantically trying to control a presentation which hadn’t even started yet.

Worst of all, my brain wasn’t just doing this in the office.

My monkey mind was still buzzing during weekday evenings while I pounded the treadmill in the gym and it was still going strong during a Sunday lunch with my family.

Compare this to today.

I still have piles of work, high stakes presentations and a stream of demanding deadlines.

But the way I approach this is different.

When I leave the office nowadays, I leave my work in the office too.

I don’t mean physically (even though I’m not carrying a dandy briefcase through the London hubbub as I saunter my way back to Casa Grundy).

I mean mentally.  I can drop my thoughts about work the moment I step onto the street outside my holy office.

The reason I can do this?

It doesn’t look like a good idea to take my work home with me anymore.  I know that crunching options and worries in my mind isn’t going to do the darndest bit of good when it comes to prepping or solving whatever challenge I’m facing.

In fact, not only will it do no good, but it’s highly likely to do a whole lot of harm instead.

Letting my thoughts spin out of control will wind me up, agitate me and stop me enjoying a dinner with a buddy or plonking myself on the sofa with the latest episode of Masterchef.

And what I’ve found is that spending less time crunching what-ifs in my head is a big source of energy.

Spinning a bunch of mental plates is exhausting.  It takes effort.

So when I let that go, more energy appears.

But that’s not all.

The clearer my mind and the more energy I have, the more often the answers appear too.

I know that might sound counterintuitive.

But in my experience, the less I'm in my head, the LESS stuck I become.

So it’s a win/win.  I have oodles more energy and it’s easier to make progress in the office too.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a banker like me working for a company with 70,000 employees, if you’re a copywriter or digital marketer and a merry band of one, or if you’re figuring out your next career step.  This works the exact same way for everyone.

If you like the idea of having more energy, finding more momentum, getting clearer on decisions or navigating work with more enthusiasm, you might like to check out my new group coaching programme.

The programme is called Subtraction Method Mastery.

It’s based on a set of workshops I ran for my colleagues at work earlier this year. 

(a good example – I wouldn’t have had the energy to run workshops like these in v1 of my banking career)

Once I'd finished the workshops, another team in the bank came a-knocking, asking if I’d like to run the workshops for them too.

Of course, I said yes.

That’s given me the chance to figure out which topics, explorations and exercises have the biggest impact when it comes to cutting through mental clutter.  And I’ve distilled this down into Subtraction Method Mastery.

The question we’re trying to answer?

How do we find more clarity, energy and fulfilment – not just at work, but in all parts of life. 

I’m closing the cart for Subtraction Method Mastery at 11am PST / 2pm EST / 7pm GMT on Tuesday 12^th November.

So the clock is ticking.

I’ve created a doc which contains all the programme details.

If you’re interested, hit reply.  In your reply, let me know a bit about who you are and what you’re looking to get from Subtraction Method Mastery.

In return, I’ll send you all the details.