2011 July | Be Your Best

Archive for July, 2011

Your Most Valuable Resource is Not Your Time…It’s Your Focused Time

by Todd Gifford on Jul.27, 2011, under Blog Posts

: Todd Gifford in Racing Simulator

Recently I went to a car show where a company that designs and manufactures very high end racing simulators was demonstrating one of their simulator units. I was looking on with some degree of curiosity and they asked me if I would like to give this thing a try. I have never raced on a track for real. This simulator was as close to the real deal as you are going to get without being in a real race car out on the track. I am not sure exactly what this piece of equipment costs, but it had a large number of 0’s in the price tag.

To give you an idea of how realistic this thing is, they have mapped with precision all the actual major race tracks across the United States and some from around the world, so you are driving at an actual race track of choice and seeing around you what you would see at the real track. Beyond the realism of the track and setting, the driving cockpit with all the equipment is patterned from real race cars, right down to the shifter, clutch system, brakes, steering wheel. And to go one step further, it has all the movement and feel of driving a race car (bumps, rattles, wheel spin, leaning, etc…). You can select the precise type of race car (Indy car, NASCAR type car, etc…). Couple this all with a screen that wraps around you so that you can see through your peripheral vision what is going on out to the sides…It is very realistic. This level of racing simulator is used by top professional race drivers to keep sharp and prep when they are not out in the actual race car.

Once I sat down and they had done a little bit of training with me for a few minutes, I was off racing. At first I thought I was going super fast — until they showed me that I was actually going pretty slow by race standards…so they helped my ability to increase speed on the track. It was so realistic that you actually feel nervous and scared to crash the car. You feel all the sensory affects that you would on a real track, so all this information coming at you tricks your mind into believing you are really out there. After about 5 minutes, I started to get a better feel for what the car could do on the track. And then…I do not remember anything but 100% racing on the track. I do not remember

anyone around me (and there was a big crowd of people watching), I don’t remember consciously sitting in this ‘game/simulator’ vs. it feeling as if I was sitting in a real car, and I don’t have a feel for how much time I was sitting there other than what they told me after I asked them. It was a lot longer than I thought it was. Simply put, I was in ‘the zone’ for about a 20 minute period (felt like 3-4 minutes max).

I relate this story about the race simulator not because of how enjoyable it was (although if you get a chance to try something like this — definitely try it), but rather to emphasize some key points about mental focus and concentration. My mental focus and concentration while driving this racing simulator was at an incredibly high level. Plenty of scientific research has shown that our productivity and capability to accomplish things is much higher when we are in these extreme concentration and focus ‘zones’ or states. In other words, you can accomplish significantly more in a shorter period of time when you are in a distraction-free, highly motivated mental ‘focus’ zone. It’s not so much about the time devoted towards creating the results, but the amount of focused time. Your focused and distraction-free time really is your most valuable asset, which is a small subset of your total time.

If you ever pay close attention to how much 100% focused, distraction-free time you create and utilize during a regular day — generally, you will be very disappointed. But the good news is that it does not take much of that kind of time to accomplish a lot.

This state of mental focus and extreme concentration (also linked to job/life happiness and satisfaction) is described as the state of “Flow” by a leading expert, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Mee-hi Cheek-sent-ma-hi-ee). Csikszentmihalyi identifies a few critical elements to achieve the state of “Flow”: the activity should have a sense of discovery and creativity, have a reasonable element of challenge to it, straddle the space between anxiety and boredom, and have dynamic or ever-changing complexity. Sounds a lot like doing the racing simulator!

The Flow zone, or maximum concentration and mental focus, can be achieved in your work and important projects vs. just the ‘fun’ stuff or hobbies. When you do get into that level of concentration and focus, you can accomplish a massive amount of quality work and results in less time, the time goes by much quicker, and your sense of satisfaction / accomplishment is higher.

The trick is to create this high focus, distraction-free, ‘Flow’ state in order to get more done. Not an easy task with all the distractions coming at you in today’s world. Creating high focus, distraction-free zones of time requires effort and practice. The first step is simply to assess how non-focused your time currently is, and identify the causes of distractions. Just doing this first step will put you way ahead of the pack.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford

It’s Not About The Single Thing…It’s About the Next Single Thing

by Todd Gifford on Jul.19, 2011, under Blog Posts

Bet you can’t guess who this photo is of? Correct! that’s me when I was 6 or 7 years old playing in my first year of organized hockey. Why do I choose to embarrass myself by showing you this photo that I ran across the other day?

This photo reminds me of an important principle that I think most of us tend to forget about in our day-to-day lives — amidst the daily rat race. That principle is how big of an impact one single little thing can make in our lives or others’ lives — but, more importantly, that you always want to be looking for the ‘next’ little single thing that will make another big difference. And then the next. It is about the journey of ‘next things’ that make the major impact and create massive positive outcomes. It’s about continuous learning and continuous development. It’s about: What’s next?

Using my hockey story as an example — I remember seeing a book about hockey when I was about 6 years old. Lots of very cool action photographs of game situations with the NHL’s best players of that time. It was in that single moment, which probably lasted about 5 minutes as I flipped through the book, that I decided I wanted to play hockey. That one little incident with that book then set off in motion another next little action — telling my parents. And then on from there. I played hockey through high school and college, and still play today in men’s league. Just that one moment with the book when I was 6, set in motion what turned out to be a life long journey of next actions.

More recently, I am in week 7 of training for another Triathlon event in early September. Last year, I really struggled with the Swim portion of my event. I trained hard, but the swim is just something that I obviously needed improvement on. In my mind, I was convinced it was a conditioning issue. This year, I decided to pick up a book specifically about Triathlon distance swimming and see if there was anything that might help me. The book mentioned to swim with nearly your entire head beneath the water surface in order to reduce drag and position your body to ‘float’ better. Sounded interesting so I tried it in my next swim workout. That one little change made a massive difference! It seemed almost too good to be true, but just this slight adjustment made my efficiency go up by at least 25%. What’s the next single thing?? Needless to say, I am continuing reading for the next single thing I can do to help my swimming another 25%!

Jim Collins, in his best seller book “Good to Great” has a concept he calls the ‘Flywheel’. His business improvement focused analogy (but it applies to us at the personal level as well) is imagining there is a huge steel and concrete wheel suspended on an axle. If you try to spin it by hand, your first push of the wheel does not move it very much. But your second push moves it a little bit more, then your third and fourth, etc… Pretty soon the wheel is turning at a good clip. He then asks the question: “Which push made the flywheel turn fast?” The ultimate answer is “all of the pushes.” No one single push of the flywheel was much more or less important than the others. The wheel got spinning consistently because of all the pushes. It’s not about the single thing — it’s about that thing, the next thing, and the next thing and the next.

So many times we get wrapped up on THE one single thing that is so important to us vs. looking at each event as one of many along the overall journey. We tend to beat ourselves up for a failure or mistake. We need to remember it is always about the ‘next thing’ we can do to improve, develop, or help others improve and develop. The “journey” is never about a single thing.

And speaking of “books” as referenced at least three times in this article — I believe this is where most continuous learning and development comes from. Reading books challenges your mind, creates creative thinking, provides images of what may be possible, and gives you confidence and ideas to teach and test yourself. Watching and learning from others is valuable, but reading books (for whatever interests you) and teaching yourself is extremely powerful. Admittedly, I did not enjoy reading much growing up. But today, I am consistently reading 3-4 books at a time, print, digital, and audio. I know that the ‘next thing’ is likely sparked from those books, so I want to get to it asap! Like Ambrose Bierce famously said: “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don’t know.”

Look for that ‘next single thing’ in your journey and see where that takes you. And then look for the next!

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford