by Mandy Green, Busy Coach
One of the success habits that I do every morning is to listen to the Darren Daily message that gets emailed to me. I loved this message in particular so I wanted to share it with you all.
He sent one out about 4 weeks ago now that I wanted to share with you. I changed some of the wording to make it applicable to what we do every day as coaches.
Here is the key insight used by the super achiever coaches, athletes, and top performers in any business:
Winning is determined by what happens before the game even begins.
In our current work situation, we create so many tasks that we are in a constant state of doing, without enough contemplation and planning of what we want to do and how we want to do it effectively. I know some people who are constantly working and continuously executing, making them stressed out and frazzled because of it, and by the end of the week, month or year, their results don’t end up being much at all and they don’t seem to be getting better at what they are doing along the way.
Does that sound familiar? I hope not.
Well, I don’t want it to happen anymore. Don’t let that person be you.
In order to advance your life, further and faster, with less time and less effort, you need to learn to plan. Planning will give you a 10x greater chance to achieve your goals. If you reduce your wasted time and effort, while improving and maximizing results, your most likely going to win.
Like Henry Ford said, before anything else, getting ready is the secret to success.
The book, Learning to Think Strategically, explains how Japanese executives are actually required to block out 2 hours a day to do simply nothing but think. No phone calls, no computers, no interruptions, no exceptions. During this time, they are asked to stop their movement and think about the actions they are about to take over the next 90 days or the next 5 years. They are required to back up from the trees so they can see the whole forest. They plan and assess the strategic value of their actions and of the actions of their team and of the organization before moving forward.
This process allows them to constantly stay on strategy, dismiss distracting projects, and generally operate at the highest level possible.
So I want you to try this for yourself this week, and you will be surprised, I promise, at how the answers you come up with from your session of just sitting thinking and planning will give you the super boost you need to get you on the path of transformation.
Action for Today:
Today I want you to implement the strategy of planning.
If you cannot do this today, schedule a time on your calendar in which you can have an uninterrupted planning session.
If you are unable to block out two hours such as in the Japanese executives example, take at least 30 minutes to assess your goals, priorities and strategy.
Contemplate all the ways you and your organization can improve. You have to open a window for your creative intelligence to air itself out.
Some questions you may want to consider asking yourself are:
- Where do I (or my program) want to be in five years?
- What are my top three goals for this year?
- What do I have to achieve by the end of this month?
- What is the single most important accomplishment for this week?
- If I can only do one thing all day long, what’s most important to achieving the goal?
- What is working well that I need to do more of?
Do this, and you will be surprised at how the answers from your session will give you the super boost you needed on your path of transformation!
Hey, don’t just read/skim the questions, you have to do the work to get the results.
Even if you think it is hokey, do it anyway.
You just might surprise yourself with what comes out of you.
If you want to set up a call to talk with Mandy about this more, email her at mandy@dantudor.com.