The bare minimum for designing your future and tracking your progress is to make an inventory at the end of each year of what you got done that year.
- Did you have a good year?
- Which projects did you finish?
- What did you start but not finish?
Sailing is a ballet with each team member at his/ her precise position, with well-defined tasks. The skipper is the chief who monitors the moving parts — and there are a lot of those, and he gives instructions as to what needs to be done next.
As soon as the race starts, the skipper constantly checks the sails, the position of the boat, the direction and force of the wind. He needs to understand exactly where the competitors are and what their intentions may be. As the wind changes, he decides which sails to deploy or trim and these decisions can add or shave precious seconds, even minutes, off the race time. He must calculate the ideal sailing angles and turning points, again based on all these parameters.
What I’d like to add to this are 2 things:
- Urgency in execution
- Frequency of evaluation
In a race, the clarity of the finish line means that the team will sprint and focus with full and constant attention for the duration of the race. You may say that is all good and well for a race that lasts a few hours at the most, but you cannot sprint in your job all day long, right?
Well, take a long-distance race such as a round-the-world sailing race as an example then. We’re talking about several weeks or months of continuous racing. Whatever the conditions, the skipper needs to be on the ball, prepare what lies ahead and execute cleanly and quickly in the moment. His frequency of evaluation remains high.
Some of it may be automated, but the evaluation of where the boat is, what lies ahead, which parameters have changed or will soon be changing is constant.
So, as you progress through your day, you too should constantly look out for how you can a) infuse more urgency into your actions and b) adjust your priorities and evaluate your achievements with higher frequency.Do not just settle for a recap at the end of the day and then set the targets for tomorrow. Do not simply carry the to-dos over to the next day or next week and leave it at that.
For the skipper, any decision can mean the difference between advancing with precision and speed, or capsizing. He is constantly adjusting and re-evaluating. How could you build this way of thinking and executing into your daily activity? How can you set up your environment to allow you to move faster, with more clarity and sharper focus?
If you track your progress every hour, you become able to see how far you have come and what you still need to accomplish in the set time ahead. You can adjust your actions every hour towards your goals instead of just taking stock of what you got done, at the end of the day.
You will be surprised at how much you become able to achieve in the same amount of time.
One way to do this is to set an hourly chime on your phone. There are plenty of apps available for this. Download one and set your phone to beep every hour on the hour. When you hear the beep, take ten seconds, or more if you want, to quickly evaluate where you are.
Is what you are doing right now, this minute, the best way to be spending your time? What else could you or should you be doing in order to get to your goals?
Evaluate, decide, adjust or continue and then get back to work.
You’ll see that as you get used to this, as it becomes a habit, your execution becomes sharper. Your sense of urgency for keeping to your schedule becomes more immediate and you will be more present in the moment.
So, evaluate with greater frequency and execute with more urgency. Try it, it’s a game changer.