Win The Day
15 Lessons For A New Martial Artist
February 17, 2020
The Three-Minute Magic Conversation: Upgrade Your Communication Skills To Inspire Daily
February 17, 2020
“The simple formula for success: a few disciplines repeated every day.” -Jim Rohn
The following three daily “Leadership Calisthenics” combine to form “The Leadership System That Never Fails”.
3 steps to Win The Day:
- IGNITE YOUR FIRE and prioritize your #1 Performance Enhancer.
- LOCK IN and have ONE Three-Minute Magic Conversation.
- THINK BIGGER and upgrade your expertise for 15 minutes.
Ask yourself at the end of the day if you did these three simple things.
If you did, it was a good day.
“Show me your day and I’ll show you your future.” -John C. Maxwell
IGNITE YOUR FIRE
Maximize your energy so you can energize others.
“Your health always comes first, because it drives your performance at everything else. Your friends and family come second, and work is a close third. Most people live according to the exact opposite order: work first, family and relationships second, and themselves dead last. The fact is, you will never be the worker, partner, parent or friend that you want to be if you don’t prioritize your own health and happiness.” -Dave Asprey
Know your #1 Performance Enhancer.
To figure out exactly what it is, ask yourself this simple question: What is the one thing, that if I don’t do it, my day is not good?
Eating, moving, or sleeping?
When you don’t do this ONE thing, you may feel:
- Cranky
- Irritable
- Brain fog
And you don’t make your best decisions.
Whatever your #1 Performance Enhancer is, prioritize it every day. If you miss one day, it’s not the end of the world. But DO NOT miss two days in a row. Progress over perfection.
“The most important thing in life is your energy. Without energy, you can’t do anything!” -Tony Robbins
If your #1 Performance Enhancer is eating, here are some examples of things you can prioritize:
- Eating foods that give you energy, and avoiding foods that drain your energy.
- Eating every three hours.
- Fasting for 16 hours a day.
- Eating a good breakfast.
- Reducing sugars and processed carbohydrates.
“Let go of foods that don’t serve you. Become more aware and be conscious of your body. After you eat a meal, you should feel very energized and have a ton of energy. If you don’t, that means the food might be holding you down.” -Aaron Doughty
If your #1 Performance Enhancer is movement:
Do what moves you. Find a type of exercise that you enjoy doing with people you enjoy doing it with. Examples: biking, swimming, basketball, soccer, yoga, resistance training, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, kickboxing, walking, hiking, running, etc.
- Prioritize 30 minutes of exercise before or after work.
- Go for a 30 minute walk during lunch.
- If your #1 Performance Enhancer is sleep:
- Prioritize 8 hours of quality sleep and guard that time religiously. In a landmark study of elite performers by K. Ander’s Ericsson, the best of the elite performers slept for 8 hours and 36 minutes on average; the average American gets just 6 hours and 36 minutes per night on weeknights.
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.
- Stop consuming caffeine at least eight hours before bedtime.
- Practice good sleep hygiene: eliminate all light, eliminate electronics, keep the room temperature around 66 degrees, invest in a good mattress.
- Set a “reverse alarm” to remind you when to go to sleep
“Diet, exercise, and work ethic don’t hold a candle to how sleep can revolutionize the way you live, love, parent, and lead.” -Dr. Brené Brown
Tom Brady goes to bed at 8:30pm
Mark Wahlberg goes to bed at 7:30.
Jeff Bezos gets 8 hours of sleep per night.
Sleep is the number one Performance Enhancer for most people. Quality sleep gives you the energy to exercise, it gives you willpower to stick to a nutrition plan, it improves your mood, and it increases your happiness.
If your sleep is already of good quality and duration, work on your nutrition or exercise.
Whichever one is most important to you having a high energy day.
A few additional simple tips to upgrade your energy:
Every morning, write down 3 things you’re grateful for from the last 24 hours.
Clean and organize your environment.
Go on a 30-day no social media, no news, or no negativity diet. Cut out scrolling the social media feeds. Cut out reading, watching, or listening to negative news. Or cut out making any negative statements.
The 30-day No Negativity Challenge: For 30 days, no complaining, gossiping, blaming, or condemning others. If you do, you have 10 seconds to change your words into something positive.
Drink 16 ounces of water first thing when you wake up before you do, or in-jest, anything else.
Aim to drink at least half of your body weight in ounces of water each day. Example: a 150 pound person would drink 75 ounces of water per day.
Spend more time with people who energize you, and less time with people that drain your energy.
“You can change how you think by changing what your body is doing. To think more effectively, improve your fitness, diet, and sleeping. You have probably noticed how radically your thoughts can change after exercise and eating. And if you don’t get enough sleep, you know your thoughts take a different path than if you did. One of the most important conceptual shifts you can make is the realization that you can program your thoughts and your attitudes by taking care of your health and fitness.” -Scott Adams
“What’s the one thing I could do every single day, that a year from now, I would totally change my life?” -Aaron Doughty
The Three-Minute Magic Conversation
“Love and accountability are the two main ingredients of leadership.” Jon Gordon
Have one Three-Minute Magic Conversation daily. This is what it looks like in three simple steps:
STEP 1: Catch
“There are no rules without relationships.” -Mack Brown
STEP 2: Challenge/Coach
“A team of Stanford, Yale, and Columbia researchers discovered that on particular form of feedback boosted student effort on their written essays so immensely that they deemed it “magical feedback”. It consisted of one simple phrase: I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them. When you look more closely at the sentence, it contains three separate cues:
1. You are part of this group.
2. This group is special; we have high standards here.
3. I believe you can reach those standards.
These signals provide a clear message that lights up the unconscious brain: Here is a safe place to give effort.”
-Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code
STEP 3: Cross Examine
“You can be unbelievably demanding and challenging on people if they know how much you care.” -James Franklin
Have this simple conversation EVERY DAY at work with just ONE PERSON.
You can have these conversations in as little as 3 minutes a day, so there is no excuse not to do this.
If you miss one day, it’s not the end of the world. But DO NOT miss two days in a row.
Progress over perfection.
Don’t overthink this.
Just do it.
“Learn as much as you can and help as much as you can.” -Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Leaders are readers.
Leaders are learners.
“I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.” -Charlie Munger
Spend 15 minutes a day on upgrading your expertise.
Ways to do this:
Books.
Audiobooks.
Podcasts.
Articles.
Documentaries.
Time with a mentor or coach.
Figure out the best way you consume information and do that.
15 minutes a day.
Don’t miss two days in a row.
Don’t overthink this.
Just do it.
“Learn, learn, learn. The greatest competitive advantage is knowledge.” -Mark Cuban, billionaire
A list of eight world-class books to upgrade your expertise:
The Success Principles by Jack Canfield
The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane
15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management by Kevin Kruse
The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership by John C. Maxwell
The New Rules Of Lifting Supercharged by Alwyn Cosgrove
The 50th Law by Robert Greene
The One Thing by Gary Keller
The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle
“Imagine what is possible if you read a biography every day for 20 minutes of all the greatest people in history, learning from the masters, and what your life would look like in a year. Versus mindlessly scrolling through videos online.” -Jim Kwik
In summary:
“Be patient. As long as you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress. Someone walking forward in the middle of the night may not be able to see how far they’ve gone, but they are still making progress.” -Vernon Howard
3 steps to Win The Day:
1. IGNITE YOUR FIRE and prioritize your #1 Performance Enhancer.
2. LOCK IN and have ONE Three-Minute Magic Conversation.
3. THINK BIGGER and upgrade your expertise for 15 minutes.
If you commit to doing these THREE things every workday for 90 days (if you miss one day, that’s okay…just don’t miss two days in a row), you will be amazed by the dramatic improvement in the happiness and performance of yourself, your your team members, and your organization.
Keep it simple.
Three things.
Don’t overthink this.
Just do it.
“Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning “continuous improvement”. What I like so much about kaizen is that it does not require earth-shattering, completely revolutionary, industry-changing innovation. Instead, kaizen means finding a way to make things just 1 percent better every single day. I love kaizen so much because it does not seem daunting. I don’t have to be a genius or totally reinvent the way we do business. I just need to find one little thing that I can do better in my job, every single day.” -John Spence
