Be Your Best

Todd Gifford – Success Coach

Not sure about you, but there are some days where my very short list of key priority goals for that day for whatever reason do not get done.  At the end of the day I am reviewing the list, and not even a single one of them was completed.  I set my goals for the day, I wrote a ‘do-able’ number of key objectives down and kept these separated from the larger task list to keep focus on them…still none of them were completed.

When I review this situation and look for root causes, the first things that surface are the fire drills, got-a-minute interruptions, unplanned meetings, etc…  But these are all just events or symptoms.  In every case, I can choose to respond differently to get the outcome I am trying to achieve.  After analyzing it, the real root cause has a lot to do simply with the ability and discipline to concentrate, and more importantly concentrate single-mindedly.

It is well documented that most all geniuses developed or naturally had the ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time — huge focus and laser beam attention on one single thing for periods of time.  The simple concept of concentration on a single task is linked over and over in past history to success of whatever endeavor was undertaken.

It stands to reason that this principle can apply to me (and possibly you), even though I am obviously not building a rocket to go to the moon or inventing a new source of green energy.

I reflect back to high school (this story will get somewhere meaningful if you stick with it, I promise), when at the end of my Junior year, a friend of mine said “Giff (my nickname), you should go out for kicker on the Varsity Football team.”  Although I had played some Soccer, I had never kicked a football in my entire life.  However, the thought of being on the Varsity Football team as a starter sounded pretty good to me, so I decided to go for it.  First thing I did was go to the head coach’s house and told him “I am going to be your starting kicker next year, and I need some footballs to practice with.”  He was pretty amused, but gave me a sack of 9 beat-up footballs anyway.  I did not have anyone to hold for me to practice field goals, so I fabricated a piece of iron rod to ’hold’ my ball in place.  I proceeded to go to the practice field every day during that summer to practice kicking field goals.  For whatever reason, I decided that I needed to kick about 250 balls every day in order to get good enough to be the starter.  So that is what I did.  250 kicks/day x 94 days until the first official tryout practices = 23,500 field goal kicks.  With 9 balls in my bag, that was 28 sets of kicks/day and then shagging up the balls each time.  No matter how long it took or how bad the weather was, I got my 250 kicks in one way or another.  By September, I could kick field goals blind folded.  I became starting kicker on the Varsity team, received All-State kicker honors, and set a school record perfect 100% point-after-touchdown season conversions.

I reflect on this old ‘glory story’ because key principles from it apply heavily today.  Unknowingly at the time (a) The Law of Practice and (b) single-minded concentration were what created the successful outcome for me.

Single-minded Concentration: the ability to focus, without distraction, on one single goal, task, or project, for a certain period of time, is what facilitates peak performance and successful outcomes.  Even a brilliant person who cannot concentrate and focus will achieve only mediocre results.  There are lots of techniques to aid us on concentration, but a big one is called ‘clearing the calculator’.  This technique is described in the book Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz.  It simply means that you want to take the time to clear your mind before focusing on each task/goal just like a calculator is “cleared” before each calculation.  A big aspect of successful focus is not having multiple issues on your mind while you are trying to focus. A subtle point to be aware of, but a big one.

The Law of Practice:  even developing good concentration skills takes practice.  Most of us, including me, do not think about practicing single-minded concentration.  I used to think of concentration as a built-in skill everyone does the same.  Not true.  The Law of Practice basically says that there is a direct straight line correlation between skill level and practice repetition.  In martial arts if you do a move 1,000 times/day every day, you will master it.  To become legendary —10,000 hours of practice.  To ‘master’ single-minded concentration, you have to practice it.  It’s challenging to focus only on one single thing for more than a few minutes at work.  Try it.  It’s not about positive thinking, it’s about positive doing.

Todd Gifford
President
Dee Electronics