Blog by Peter Fletcher | Peter Fletcher

5 tips that will keep you performing at your peak

July 15, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Nutritionist and peak performance coach Julie Meek has the following simple tips that will help you to perform at your best.

1. Treat your life like a sprint, not a marathon. Put another way, keep the finish line in sight. Creating short-term, achievable goals helps to give today and tomorrow urgency and meaning.

2. Create cycles of intense effort. Rather than watching the clock for 8 hours divide your day into 90-minute segments. Make it your goal to go all out then have a break. Get up, walk around and reward yourself for a few minutes. Then get back to it for another 90 minutes of intense effort.

3. Get moving. Study after study have shown that people who are active are more productive. In fact, just 20 minutes of exercise every second day halves your chances of developing Alzheimer’s.

4. Take performance enhancing supplements. No, that doesn’t meta contacting the Essendon club doctor but it does mean taking some basic supplements including fish oil tablets (or eating more fish), a probiotic such as Yakult, and — this is my favourite — up to 3-4 cups of brewed coffee per day.

5. Take a break. Whether that’s a physical break such as a weekend off or deliberately quitting a project that’s not working it’s important that you continue to be the person with the hand on the steering wheel of your life.

31 things I’m grateful for – The internet

July 6, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

I’m grateful for the internet

In 2006 I sold my real estate business. Most of my friends wanted to know what I was going to do next. The truth was I had no real idea.

One evening, shortly after the sale contract was signed, I was out for dinner in Fremantle. Quite by chance I got talking to a young man from Holland who was in Perth for an Ultimate Frisbee competition. He told me that he owned a web design firm.

“Do you have someone looking after it while you’re away?” I asked naively.

He appeared bemused.

“No,” he explained patiently, “it’s an internet design firm. It’s based on the internet. I can run it from wherever I can get an internet connection.”

It took a moment for what he said to sink in.

“Wow, that’s it! How awesome would it be to have a job that allowed me to travel. Now that’s freedom!” I thought.

Right there I knew I’d found the direction for my career.

Over the days that followed I came up with a recipe for my next job or business. First, it would nod it’s head to the past but embrace something new. For me, that meant being associated with real estate but involved with new technology. Second, it should allow me the freedom to travel.

Armed with that formula I began to look for opportunities. The principal of a large real estate firm called to offer me the job of running a large team of property managers. I politely declined. And, just when it seemed that nothing would come my way, I read an ad in, of all places, the newspaper. It was for a new course in internet studies being offered by Curtin Uni. This was my opportunity to add the technology ingredient to my career recipe.

Within weeks I was enrolled.

Over the next two years I experienced the joy of laying under the pine trees at Curtin reading the works of Deleuze and Foucault. I started a blog and began to tweet. I wrote a 20,000 word honours dissertation. And I came to understand the way the internet both shaped and was shaped by society. At the end of my studies, the internet was no longer just wires and routers but a means by which I could reshape who I was.

Today, there’s very little of my life that’s not connected with the web. I use it to get my news, my music, and the movies I watch. I use it to connect with new people, communicate with my friends, and market myself and my businesses.

For me, the internet means freedom and free expression and I’ll always be thankful to have it in my life.

Image: Kristina Alexanderson

I’m grateful for email

July 4, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

I don’t recall when I sent my first email. It wasn’t earth shattering or life changing. If anything it probably felt like a gimmick, like CB radios from the seventies. They were great for truckies and tradies but didn’t make for great business tools.

But if that’s what I thought about email, I was wrong. Since then I’ve sent thousands of emails and it’s become an essential business tool. I use it to communicate with colleagues and competitors, prospects and past clients. If ever business had a Swiss Army knife, email is it. Quite literally, if my email stopped working I would struggle to get anything done.

So I’m grateful to the people who had a hand in inventing email. I’m grateful that provides me with such a powerful communication tool. And I’m grateful that it allows me to leverage my time.

31 things I’m grateful for — the tap in my shower

July 3, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Every morning, the tap in my shower gives me a choice. Push it to the left and enjoy a hot shower, push it to the right and endure the sting of cold.

It’s a choice that reminds me of the power of removing options. Options cloud our judgement and turn yes or no into maybe. In business and in life, making swift, meaningful decisions create purpose and direction. Yes or no? On or off? In or out?

By choosing to have cold showers I’ve removed the options. There’s no question about which direction to push the lever. There’s no wondering about how much hot water to add. There’s just cold, only cold, no questions.

My shower tap also teaches me that the choice is mine. I can choose the warmth and comfort of the easy road that always gets bumpy or I can choose the hard road that ends up smooth and scenic. That moment of choice defines who I’ll be for the rest of the day.

My shower tap also teaches me to lean into the pain. The secret to enjoying a cold shower is to be fully present to the sharp slap of cold water. By focussing on the the icy sensation the pain goes away. Soon the cold turns into something that’s indistinguishable from warmth.

That experience helps me to lean into the pain during the day. Sometimes business can be painful. Things don’t go to plan and relationships can become strained. But leaning into the pain helps me to remain engaged during uncomfortable moments and to keep my focus when I’d like to retreat to a more comfortable place.

And those are the reasons why I appreciate the tap in my shower.

31 things I’m grateful for – My Eddy Merckx bike

July 1, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

This bike helped change my life

When Rita bought a flash new Eddy Merckx bike for my 40th birthday in 2003 I never imagined how much it would change my life.

At the time I was riding a lot but then, in 2004, I set myself a challenge to ride from Kalgoorlie to Perth in under 24 hours. Except for my best mate Russell, none of my fellow riders thought I could do it. A lot said that I’d do the ride in a single effort but none thought I’d be able to do it in less than 24 hours.

So, at 12 noon on March 5 2006, Russell, myself and John Harmsen set off from Hannan Street Kalgoorlie. 19 hours 6 minutes later we arrived at the Paddy Hannah statue in Burswood. We’d done it, with hours to spare.

That ride gave me a direct experience of my power and determination – an experience that has continued to serve me to this day. Up to that point I’d been married – enslaved even – to my business. After the ride I felt a sense of freedom and possibility about my life that I’d never experienced before. 12 months later my business was sold and I’d set off on a new adventure that took me back to university full time.

That event will always be a defining moment in my life. And it was this bike that carried me through the journey. For that, I’m grateful.

31 things I’m grateful to have in my life

June 30, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Tomorrow is the start of a new series of blog posts called 31 things I’m grateful to have in my life. 31 is the number of days in July. When I refer to ‘things’ I mean inanimate objects. People and pets don’t count. Technologies, art and possessions do. Spaces don’t count. I love Jacobs Ladder and San Francisco but they’re not objects.

Each post will explain how the object has changed my life and why I’m grateful to have it.

Here’s the start of my list.

My Eddie Merckx bicycle,
The cold tap in my shower,
Email,
The internet,
Facebook,
Twitter,
WordPress,
My wedding ring,
My Cliff Street sign,
My barbecue (even though it’s the worst designed barbecue in the world),
My passport,
An autographed poster of Jen Hawkins,
A book called I Only Love You,
Uncle Will’s military saddle,
My joggers,
Our gas heater,
My iPhone, and
My house key.

OK, that’s not 31 but it’s 18 and that will get me a start. I’m sure as the month goes by I’ll come up with new ideas. If you can think of something that I’ve forgotten, let me know.

The theme for my blog posts for the rest of 2014

June 29, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

So far this year I’ve written approximately 180 blog posts. As best as I can figure it I’m about 2 off the pace of a post per day, a challenge I set myself at the start of the year. So far, so good.

But there’s a problem. There’s no single, unifying theme to my posts. Possibly there’s a general theme of commitment but it’s more inferred than explicit.

So it occurred to me last night that I could use the theme of gratitude for the last 6 months of the year. The posts would create a series called 184 Things I’m Grateful For. When I write about a person I’m not writing about a thing, so I’d need to change that to 184 People I’m Grateful For.

It seemed like a plausible idea but then I started listing the people I’d put on my list. I got to 17. That’s a long way short of 184.

Rather than make it such a daunting task I could break the last 6 months into two. The first 90 days could use the Grateful theme and the last 90 days could be something else.

I could even beak the last six months into monthly chunks. July could be the 31 Things I’m Grateful For. August could be 31 People Who Inspire Me. September…that’s ages away.

So that’s it. The rest of the year will have six different themes starting with gratitude.