Try Standing on Your Head

Posted 10.15.2008

Yoga Looking for some new ideas on how to keep your leadership wits about you in challenging times?  Try standing on your head.  Hey, it works for Bill Gross, legendary investor and head of the Pacific Investment Management Company.  In a recent Washington Post profile, Gross explains that he gets his best ideas during his daily morning routine of yoga and meditation.  Standing on his head is one of his favorite yoga positions.  As the Post reports:

The other day he was on his mat when he decided to unload U.S. Treasury bonds. He reasoned that the market will be flooded with them to pay for the government's $700 billion bank bailout, meaning prices might fall. He e-mailed his team when he got back to his office.

"The best ideas come when the endorphins are maxed out and they are really maxed out with meditation or exercise," Gross said, post-yoga. "So, yes, that's a very productive time for me, I would say."

So, the point here is not to get you to invert your posture.  The point is to encourage you to incorporate some sort of routine in your day that allows your brain to focus on something other than work.  As Bill Gross would attest, the irony is that your best ideas will come when you’re not really thinking.

Later this month, The Eblin Group will release a white paper based on some new research on what rising executives need to do to sustain their success.  One of the key findings is that pacing oneself by building in regular breaks from work is the biggest opportunity facing the executives in our study.  To learn more, contact us to receive a copy of the study when it’s available.