5 Business Lessons I Learned From Working With a Nutritionist
The unexpected parallels between feeding your body and feeding your business and your life
I spent almost six months working with a nutritionist. I went in thinking I'd learn about food. I came out with lessons I want to carry with me forever; and most of them apply directly to business.
I have to add that when I finally reached out to the nutritionist, I was tired of my old ways. Tired of trying to throw things at the wall and nothing sticking. Tired of thinking I was doing all the right things when they might not have been so right for me at that age and time of my life. But most importantly, tired of thinking that I knew everything I needed to know about myself and nutrition. The first three months were spent working towards a goal and learning to build good habits in my daily life, testing and tweaking to learn how my body would react to the little changes. But at the end of the first three months nothing in me wanted to go through the daily tracking and weekly photos and journals; but I knew that I needed more time for the newly built habits to stick.
Lesson 1: You can't out-optimize a broken foundation. No amount of supplements or superfoods can fix fundamentally poor habits. Same with business; no fancy tool or strategy can compensate for a shaky foundation.
Lesson 2: Consistency beats intensity. A moderate approach you can sustain forever beats an extreme approach you abandon in a month. In business, boring and consistent almost always wins.
Lesson 3: Tracking is Eye Opening and you have to know what you're actually consuming. Tracking my food was eye-opening; I had no idea what I was actually eating. Worse of all, I was lying to myself and believing the lies I was feeding myself. Same goes for time, energy, and money in your business. Track it or stay blind. Every time I complain about how there are not enough hours in the day I time track and realize how many hours I am squandering on non-energy replenishing tasks.
Lesson 4: What works for someone else might not work for you. My body is different. My business is different. I knew I could not use my friends’ workout routine or nutrition plan; and I knew colleagues’ 5am habits were not an option for me.
Lesson 5: Momentum and actions beget more actions. I was set to walk 7700 steps a day. While I initially needed to shift my schedule around, or fit smaller portions of that in pockets throughout the day and downtime; that habit quickly made me realize how energy giving it became. The more I walked and got out for fresh air, the more I wanted to move about and get things done.
The body and the business aren't so different. Both need nourishment, consistency, momentum, rest, and the wisdom to know what actually works for you.