So what if I wasted 30 minutes today? There’s always tomorrow. Don’t look at lost time (minutes or hours) on any given day. Visualize wasting 30 minutes a day for the entire year. In 30 Days that’s approximately 15 hours of lost time or that’s 180 hours a year taken away from your life. How do feel about flushing so many days down the toilet?
I’m too busy at work – there’s never enough time to exercise…
For most people their job, career or business is their top priority and rightly so – especially with this economically challenged global marketplace. In the era of doing more with less many of you are working 10+ hours a day plus weekends just to keep up. Some days you feel fine – some days you do not. For those of you who want to exercise consistently it’s very challenging especially trying to go after work – besides being mentally and physically fatigued, you might have:
• Family obligations
• Projects with unrealistic deadlines
• Errands to run
• Dinner appointments, etc…
… and gyms are typically packed with people during primetime hours (5PM-7PM). Your odds of accomplishing your health-related goals aren’t very good.
Train your mind to believe that your workday starts 30 minutes prior to your actual start time. If you typically start work at 9AM – then train your mind to believe that work actually starts at 8:30AM. Keep telling yourself repeatedly that work starts at 8:30. Before going to work EXERCISE – go to the gym or walk around the block. Health is part of your career, without good health there is no career. Health and work go hand-in-hand. One may argue that health comes before career. Actually career and health are interchangeable – they are both #1. You need to focus on both areas to have a rewarding, productive and most importantly a healthy life. This one there is no bargaining chip – you need to exercise consistently – PERIOD!
One of a leader’s top priorities is to build the right team to implement their strategies! Without the right players and a good roadmap this endeavor could be futile. To implement a roadmap in a timely manner it’s important to propagate discipline (i.e., sense of urgency, focus, effective goal management and time management) throughout the organization. In this era of making more money with the employees you have discipline is the key ingredient for success.
The first step to build an efficient and highly productive staff is to determine the caliber of talent in your organization. It’s not how large your team is; success is based primarily on the shoulders of your most talented employees.
Let’s say you have an organization of 20 people. Currently the mixture of Superior, Above average and average employees looks like:
• Superior Employees = 10%
• Above Average Employees = 30%
• Average Employees = 60%
Ideally the minimum mixture for success should be:
• Superior Employees = 40%
• Above Average Employees = 40%
• Average Employees = 20%
The only way to transform your mediocre running organization into a highly efficient and productive orgnaization is to instill discipline. Please see www.disciplinetheorganization.com.
Not just formal education that you get by going to school. I’m talking about after high school and college and beyond.
I mean those everyday experiences and challenges we all face. Whether it comes from traveling (cultures, languages, etc.), understanding your body’s physical limitations, or completing a huge project at work; keep on learning.
Story: The Continuous Thirst For Knowledge
I was on assignment in Washington, D.C., the home of politics – the most dreadful word (in my opinion) to ever come out of Webster’s Dictionary. “Politics.” God, I hate that word – always have, until recently. I felt that politics was for people who cannot accomplish anything and politicians were spineless weasels. (As you can tell, I have a very negative outlook in this area.).
I was facilitating a week long strategy workshop at a very large and profitable corporation in the DC area. The first day was miserable. I felt sick: my frustration level was at an all–time high.
In attendance were Vice Presidents and Directors. By the end of the first day, it was apparent that very little would be accomplished because of all the hidden political agendas. I was ready to burst. I made a comment to the attendees: “You guys are lucky that this company is so profitable. I don’t understand how things get done.” Up till then, my fixed idea had blocked me from seeing any usefulness to politics and the political way.
However, things get done even in their own bureaucratic, entangled way. I started to see that even in the midst of all these agendas, things could get done. Unbelievably, by the middle of the second day, I wanted to learn how they did it. I had become curious.
Something that I had felt so strongly against was now something I wanted to learn about. I had an incredible thirst to understand politics, agendas and how to weave in and out of them to accomplish an objective; and by the end of the week, it made sense. With politics, especially the D.C. type – you learn not to fight it but work within the system.
I’m not saying don’t be hopeful – I pray every day for good things to happen to my friends and family. All I’m saying is to put more effort into strategizing and execution vs. sitting around waiting for good things to happen. Extensive hoping utilizes valuable cycles from actually accomplishing things.
We’re all on this planet for one time and one time only. There are no second chances. I continually ask myself; why are millions of people wasting so much time everyday?
I can’t imagine not accomplishing one goal after another until the day I drop. If there are no accomplishments, there is no life, or at best it’s an unfulfilled life.
There is no purpose for living. You may exist, but that’s not living. Living is progressing, becoming more aware, more ethical, more able to enjoy things, more able to get things done.
There is no greater feeling in the world than accomplishing a major goal. Once you complete a goal you will never forget it.
It’s hard to describe in mere words what the feeling is like. It’s a kind of euphoria that not only makes you feel invincible, but is extremely addictive as well.
The level of intensity is relative to the difficulty of the goal. The harder the goal, the stronger the “feeling of accomplishment” will be. You can take my word for it. I still remember each and every goal, even the ones I accomplished over 30 years ago.
To me, life is about accomplishments and feeling on top of the world each time you achieve one. What a rush, one after another, like no other feeling. Those are REAL highs.
It’s a self-inflicted adrenaline rush that you can’t get out of your system once you’ve experienced it. The more you accomplish, the more you crave more accomplishments for yourself. You will never be satisfied.
What a feeling it is to always want more and have that hunger to take on new challenges and to accomplish more year after year. Life now has purpose. You don’t need to worry about boredom.
Discipline opens the door to accomplishment and greatness.
80% complete is better than another missed or failed project. Accomplishments are addicting. Remember the last time you were proud of yourself for achieving something. What was your mood? Get that feeling back.
Put a stake in the ground and bring projects to fruition. Once version 1.0 of your project is complete you can always re-visit it to make improvements.
Perfection is something we all desire. However, it’s something no one will ever achieve, but you should always keep trying! By acquiring discipline you WILL always keep trying. Your mind is being trained to improve and achieve every day.
Imagine for a moment that you have just started your own business. You are really excited and determined to make your dream come true. You don’t mind working long hours because it is yours.
You are thinking 24/7 about how to make it work. Your computer is totally programmed and focused on building your business. You see an ad on TV, you read an article in the newspaper, it doesn’t matter what it is, and you are relating the information to your start up and how to make it go.
I am suggesting you take that attitude and apply it to improving your life and applying these principles.
Make your goals of vital importance. Not something that would be nice to do, but something that is essential.
It’s my job to coach executives and organizations on how to be efficient. This means focusing on people, process and performance issues. Executives have very little time, bandwidth, and almost no patience. I needed something visual that they could grasp easily. I needed to synthesize the key points without watering them down. After some days, I came up with a Maturity Model.
After years of coaching others on the subject of discipline, I realized that discipline was not static but that it existed on a spectrum that went from unproductive at the bottom to super productive at the top. I also noticed that while a person might have discipline at work they might be falling down in their personal life. I wanted something that would show me at a glance where I or someone else was at on this spectrum and could serve as a reminder, a kick in the ass if you will, to stay on track. There are 5 Levels. Starting from the bottom and working your way up:
1. Unproductive Level: You’re moving backwards in life. You lack focus, have severe procrastination, unmotivated and you rarely accomplish any of your goals.
2. Adequate Level: You’re doing the bare minimum to get by. Typically you have little motivation. You have no sense of urgency and managing time effectively is still a struggle.
3. Structured Level: You’re starting to acquire some level of discipline. You’re managing time effectively; you’re organized, focused on your priorities and accomplishing your daily milestones.
4. Disciplined Level: You’re confident, self-motivated, future-focused, resilient to complacency, possess a sense of urgency and you treat everyday equally.
5. Mastery Level: You’re a visionary, you have total awareness, you manage sleep optimally, and you have wisdom and power. And – oh by the way you’re leaving a legacy behind.
