Keeping You In The Race Every Day

As a professional you are always in the race. The bad guys are running hard. Your competitors are innovating. You're getting bogged down in administrivia, your costs are soaring, and your fellow employees see you as the captain of the no-fun team.

How do you keep your focus?

We saw this piece, "The mile world record holder can teach you about more than just running," recently on The Athletic (behind paywall). The story is about how Josh Kerr, who recently broke the men's world record time in the mile run at 3 minutes 42.66 seconds (which is nuts), keeps his head in the game. It seemed like something you could benefit from.

One reason you could learn from Kerr is that his approach is simple, and simple is best, because you need to keep your head in the game too.

1. Write out your perfect day.

That one caught my attention also. What about you? Are you able to write out what your perfect day is? (Presume we keep it in the realm of work- or profession-related.) Are you an in-bed-by-8pm person so that you can hit the gym by 6am? Are you a meditator? Do you need to eat lunch with others or go to AA meetings?

What is perfection to you, and how close can you come each day?

If you don't know then anything will do and you're probably out of focus.

2. Do it even when it's bad.

There are days when Kerr's run is bad. He accepts it and moves on. As they put it in basketball, Next Play Next Play Next Play. Don't dwell. Here is an extended quotation:

Kerr said there have been more than 30 times this year when he has run an 8-minute or 8-minute-and-30-second pace. On those days, he thinks: I’m really bad at this.

But he knows those days matter, too. When Kerr talks about his mile record and what led up to it, he does so in almost boring terms.

He doesn’t run double sessions (twice a day). He doesn’t run 100 miles a week (he believes any more than 73 miles a week leads to issues for him). And he takes Saturdays completely off.

“I’m not doing things that could get me there quicker,” he said. “I’ve just been doing the same things for almost 10 years now.”

So even when he’s slow and feels awful, he knows those days are part of a long-term investment plan. They add up just the same.

“If you looked at your investment account every day, you’d probably be pretty depressed,” he said. “But if you leave it in there for 30 years, you’re like, ‘Oh, this looks great.’ Sometimes you just really don’t need to make a direct analysis of where you’re at.”

If you don't do it then you are starting to lose. Get back into it because you want to win.

3. Effort only takes respect.

It's a bit of Zen but it's here:

Effort is the only thing you can bring, man. Effort doesn’t take talent. It doesn’t take anything other than respect. I have a lot of respect for my own time and for the people that work hard for me. The biggest disrespect that you can give a coach or a team of people is just a lack of effort. That’s what I try to show up and do every day. It’s hard. It’s very hard. But it’s the least I can do on my end.”

To his point about bad days in the previous section, Kerr tries not to overanalyze his feelings and emotions. “What I try to do is flow through emotions as much as I can,” he said.

Look, some days at work stink. Your boss is a (fill in the blank). You weren't at your best. There were mistakes. People got on your nerves. They don't pay you enough for this.

Ask yourself this. Can you say, as Kerr does here, that "I have a lot of respect for my own time and for the people that work hard for me. The biggest disrespect that you can give a coach or a team of people is just a lack of effort. That’s what I try to show up and do every day. It’s hard. It’s very hard. But it’s the least I can do on my end.”

Do you have respect for your team? Do you have a lot of respect for your fellow leaders? Do you have a lot of respect for your customers?

After you put in the work, do they have a lot of respect for you? If so, why? If not, why not?

Ask us how we can help you perform at your best.

(image credit: John o’ Groats: start/finish line by Chris Downer, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)