Watch any sport­ing event and what you will see is the results of what took place with the ath­lete or team in the weeks and months in advance.

Dur­ing the real per­for­mance, you will wit­ness the results of what most will never see — the count­less hours of train­ing, review­ing game or play tapes, the dis­ci­plined work­ing of the body and self-disciplined eat­ing and sleeping.

And then, look at some of our coun­tries best: our ser­vice men and women. Look at the count­less hours they invest in train­ing, prepar­ing, rehears­ing, and engag­ing in mock bat­tles. They plan for and rehearse unlike any others.

We had the ben­e­fit of hav­ing a Navy Seal trainer join us for one of our Build­ing Cham­pi­ons Master’s Coach events a few months back. I was blown away as I lis­tened to how intense their train­ing and prac­tice is. But of course it needs to be so intense; they are deal­ing with life and death sit­u­a­tions every day when they are deployed.

My ques­tion to you is this: How much time do you invest weekly into prac­tic­ing, rehears­ing and learning?

For most of us, our results are greatly impacted by each of the lit­tle 15 to 60-minute con­ver­sa­tions that we have with our team­mates, our clients, our ven­dors and our prospects. Are you like most who run from one meet­ing to the next with very lit­tle inten­tional plan­ning and rehears­ing time? Are you meet­ing with key clients and prospects with­out hav­ing mas­tered the basics? Are you attend­ing board meet­ings with­out hav­ing fully pre­pared for the ques­tions that will come your way?

I know what most of you are think­ing: “How do I fit in more time to prac­tice, to pre­pare, to rehearse? I am already maxed as it is.”

Here’s a sug­ges­tion: Work hard to iden­tify the things that are mak­ing their way on to your daily cal­en­dar that oth­ers could do — often with more excel­lence than you can. Under­stand the top 3 or so things that only you can do in order to add the most value to your com­pany. And then, fight with all of your might to get rid of the other 10 things that dilute your focus and dimin­ish your performance.

Be inten­tional about the time you free up, and prac­tice, prac­tice, prac­tice until you know you are ready to com­pete at a cham­pi­onship level.

Is it life and death for you, your com­pany, or even your family?

Maybe.

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Tags: Discipline, Learning and Development, Practice, Preparation, Time

This entry was posted on Friday, July 1st, 2011 at 10:43 am and is filed under Self-Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.