Step 3: Success Unexpected in Common Hours

“If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams and endeavors to lead a life which they have imagined, they will meet with success unexpected in common hours.”
Henry David Thoreau
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Success seems to be a constant struggle in every endeavor we take up. I was with a friend the other day who, in frustration said “Why is it that I have to work so hard just to stay even, it seems like I can never get ahead!” I’ve asked myself that question often, “why can’t things be easy – just once.” We sometimes get the feeling that the more effort we put into an important task, the rougher and tougher it is.

We often look at others who have had great success, and it seems so easy for them. In Step 1, you set up an appointment, (I KNOW YOU DID THIS – RIGHT!), to meet with such a person. After the meeting I hope you walked away and realized that people who are doing what you want to do, or are in a position or place in life that you want to be in, had trials and tribulations just like you have experienced. The difference is they kept working through the hard times until the effort led them to success. Maybe they found a better way to do something, a more efficient way to get a task done, or they were able to delegate the things they didn’t do well and focus hard on what they excelled at.

Michelangelo, the great Italian painter and sculptor, said if people knew how hard he had to work to gain his mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all. Experts say to become a “master” at something, to be the elite in your field, you need to put in 10,000 hours of time in that endeavor. The speed and duration of the effort to put in those hours is up to you – you might put in an hour a week for 10,000 weeks (in which case you would need to live to be over 177 years old to become a master!). Even putting in 40 hours a week, 52 weeks every year, never taking a day off for vacation or because of sickness, it would take close to five years to be one of the top experts in your field!

These numbers frighten a few of us. We find it hard to imagine working five years straight without time off, a holiday, or time for “other things”. My question to you is this: how much time would you be willing to give to yourself to accomplish that dream, that goal you set for yourself in Step 1? One hour a week, five hours a week, 10 hours a week, maybe more? If you put in just one hour a week (that’s less than 10 minutes a day!), where do you think you would be a year from now?

We need to take time to make time to gain and master that which we desire. We might be surprised at the Performance Edge we’ve obtained in what we thought were everyday, common moments. We might even meet with success unexpected in those common hours!

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This week, start to add to your area of Performance Improvement.

Sit down and write out your weekly calendar. Put down everything; sleep, eating, time with the kids, work, watching TV, doing nothing. Maybe you even have on your schedule time to deal with your area of Performance Improvement! Now what I want you to do is put down EXTRA time that you can spend in your area. For instance, with the physical component, maybe it’s not more time at the gym, but reading information on diet or programs that will help you out when you get to the gym. In the social organization, it might not be going to another meeting, but finding out if donating a few minutes a week to make calls to others would help out, or perhaps volunteering to organizing a future activity that would benefit the group. Find your extra time and use that time to better yourself in your Performance Improvement area.

Mark the time on your calendar and/or schedule and follow through during this next week. At the end of the week, go back and review. Did something not get done that you normally do? In one of those other areas, was your performance hindered or your effort less than what it normally is? My guess is that it wasn’t. I bet you were able to use this “found time”, get more accomplished in the area you WANT to work in, and still met the challenges of in the areas you NEEDED to work at! Keep this up for the rest of the year (you might even find more time to do those WANT TO’s) and you’ll be amazed at the level of success you achieved!

– Coach Rozy