You have to do the small things to prepare yourself to win. If you’re going to be successful at anything, you must plan your work and then work your plan. My old football coach used to repeat Vince Lombardi’s famous quote that “The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.” Man, that was a timely quote when it was 100 degrees outside while we were doing sprints…

Plan, Act, Review

Yea, that simple- planning, acting and then reviewing. It’s how I do most anything in my life. If something works, I may change it a little or try to see how I can improve it. If it blows up, I’ll need more significant changes. Or maybe it was the wrong idea all along. But you’ll never know if you don’t give that idea a shot. So take a moment and make a plan, start acting on that plan and check out the results. Keep the parts that you won and change the parts where you didn. Repeat this process!

Intentional planning

Are you setting yourself up for success or failure? Are you being intentional in your planning phase? Are you really giving it your all? No matter what you do in life, you only get out what you put in. Whether that’s your job, relationships, workouts, charity, religion, or just a new routine. If you don’t dedicate yourself to planning, you will constantly fight an uphill battle to accomplish your goals.

Get this- for every 1 MINUTE of planning, you can save yourself 10-12 MINUTES on execution. Think about that for a second. 10 minutes on Sunday planning your week can save you up to two hours of work that upcoming week!

Action creates opportunity

To accomplish anything, you MUST act. The moment you finally take action, you are telling the universe that you want this thing. And the universe will respond. People will reach out, opportunities you didn’t know were right in front of you will appear plain as day. Research will connect dots you never knew existed. Things WILL start happening.

I see people all the time worrying about every minute details of their plans trying to make sure it’s perfect. Well, guess what? It’s probably not and you aren’t going to know if it will work or not if you’re jammed up in analysis paralysis and stalling. So start today. Not tomorrow, but today. Want to learn something? Want to get better at running? Want to plan a trip to Europe? Start today! 

AARs: After-Action Reports

So now that we made a great plan, we acted on it and didn’t really get the results we want, what do we do now? Firstly, I make AARs or after-action reports. I learned the finer details of these when I visited convenience stores for Kill Cliff in the very early days (UGH!). Each visit had a mini AAR until I figured out what worked and what didn’t. Everyone did this and we turned them in to see what worked for the team, made a new plan of attack for the next week and then got after it.

An AAR goes like this: What went well? List those things out. What when wrong? List them out. What could have gone better? List them out. Aggregate your notes, change the original plan to reflect everything learned, and then GO after it again! It sounds pretty straightforward, right? But this is where most people fail. And they fail not because they can’t do it, but they simply don’t. And then they make the same mistakes over and over again. Don’t be that person!

So ask yourself… what do you want from your life? And do you REALLY want it, or do you like the sound of it? If so, then no more holding yourself back. Start taking steps TODAY to get there! When it gets tough, and it will get tough, stick to your process. Keep improving and keep winning!

I’d love to hear any of your personal or work processes you use to stay on track. I’m always looking to learn and grow, so please shoot them over!

GO, DO, & GROW!