I grew up believing the hardest worker in the room goes the furthest. This principle carried me quite far but I began to lack direction, I was just working as hard as I could towards nothing in particular. This is when I came across Dan John a strength and conditioning coach with multiple books. He said if you want to get better at something do it every single day. My interpretation of this doesn't mean you have to max back squat every day or run your 10k as quick as possible every day. Instead take an action every day that will help achieving a greater back squat or faster 10k. Every single day. At first pass I didn't take the steps to fully implement this, it seems like a massive task, I was working towards 4/5 things so I didn't do anything about it. That was until I came across a podcast by Ben Bergeron (Chasing excellence). Here Ben discussed how to make your daily discipline accountable and achievable. He spoke of a max 3 goals to work on. Having listened to this podcast, I sat down and figured out what my top 3 priorities were. 1. Self development 2. Educating others 3. Training So I bought a wall calender with every day of the year on it and 3 different coloured pens. If I took action to improve one if those priorities the corresponding colour pen puts a cross for that day. An example would be spending an hour reading or listening to a podcast to expand my knowledge. The idea is to create a chain of crosses that remains unbroken. The wall chart is what holds you accountable, if the gaps creep in, the chain falls apart. Obviously most of us can't get every single
day, life is variable but small steps frequently will lead to big progress. It's similar to compound interest, one percent better today leaves you at 101% tomorrow, then its one percent of that 101%, over time huge improvement.
It starts with the question what can I do today to improve X tomorrow.
B.A.L
Building Athletic Lifestyles
Image:
Pixabay, agenda