Get it Before It's Gone

Like any natural planner, I like to keep an eye on the whirling calendar pages to make sure I don’t miss an opportunity to maximize life. Things like a year-end review, and a new-year-strategy session are treats I look forward to, making space for ritual and rigor alike. I’ll probably wear my favorite graphic tee from my last trip to the Grand Canyon, hiking socks as another wink at adventures to come, and cuddle tea or coffee while I spread out notebooks and time tracking printouts, and break in a brand new legal pad for analysis. 

But, it’s not year-end yet. In fact there’s a huge scoop of the year waiting to be eaten up by the relentless munch of time, and it’ll be gone whether you taste it or not. 

I bite back by planning one last sprint to end the year. Whether I slay my goal or learn through failing, I’ll taste every last bite of this year. Seems like a 12-week sprint is long enough to tackle a more substantial goal, but short enough that I feel the deadline egging me on each step of the way. It taunts me in the best way, chasing off delusions that hard work can wait.

Sometimes all we need is a wakeup call, a reminder that NOW’S THE TIME.

If you’re going to do something with this year, now’s the time. 

What had you hoped for this year? Trying to reduce credit card debt, or get a better job? Hoped you’d find a romantic partner, or learn to enjoy being with the one you’ve already got? You don’t need a whole year to make progress; sometimes you just need to sprint.

Maybe when I say “sprint” or “90 days to maximize” you feel flashbacks of previous disappointments. Just setting a goal or wanting things to change isn’t enough, and we all (especially me) have tried hard at things that never materialized. 

Worse, sometimes we didn’t try hard enough, and we know it. Worse than not achieving what we wish we could do, we end up avoiding trying because of the sick feeling of how we let ourselves down before.

If this is you, maybe you’ll like some of the hacks that can hedge your bet. In fact, even failing spectacularly short of your goal can still help you reach more of your potential if you leverage these hacks!

Sprint Hack #1: Set a Process Goal

Process is how we go about things. Process includes things like habits, and the ways we tackle an activity or situation.* It includes choices like whether we plan to go to a gym with self-selected fitness classes or to hire a personal trainer to meet with. Depending on our personality, one may drastically change our success at “working out” than the other does. 

Process could mean buying frozen, ready-to-steam broccoli, eliminating the steps necessary before we can “eat more vegetables” like we intend. 

If your aim is simply to lose weight, even a specific weight loss goal will not have the same power to help you fulfill your potential as a goal that includes your process. Aim to engage intermittent fasting (a process of when you eat that follows a strategy), or developing a running habit (a process that you can stink at for the entire 90 days, and still have a durable impact on your well being, strength, endurance, and resting metabolic rate. All of which will likely improve your weight in a lasting way.)

90 days of strategic focus will always improve and sharpen a process. So if you use the last quarter to improve some meaningful process in your life, your ability to fail is minimized automatically. 

Sprint Hack #2: Be Embarrassingly Simple

We get ourselves in trouble when we try to do too much with a sprint. For me this looks like playing catch up: instead of setting a real 90-day goal, I set a goal for the next 90 days that also includes things I had hoped to get done in the previous 90 days. Don’t do that. It’s never worked for me in the past (any of the hundred times I've done it to myself).

For other people, doing too much with a sprint happens because “making space” is inconvenient. So “if we’re going to the trouble anyway, we may as well go for it.” When we think this way we’re right about one thing: Change takes energy. Successful self-changers studied by some of the best behavior change experts were characterized by allowing bandwidth, seeking relational support from others, and making other emotional allowances for themselves in regard to the change.** 

If we’re going to tell people around us we’re doing something for the next 90 days that needs extra energy and focus, it’s fine if it’s something huge and impressive. “I’m training for a marathon and have a long run tomorrow” may sound like a valid excuse for skipping late drinks and junk food with coworkers. We’d feel unembarrassed to do something big like that. 

But most of us aren’t ready for a long run tomorrow. Our next goal is not the marathon, but probably something much less seemingly impressive. In reality the most impressive thing you could do is make progress on the actual next step. 

The Right Small Change will always pack a larger punch than something that just sounds impressive. Make sure you can wrap your hands around your sprint before you get to work.

Sprint Hack #3: Use the Buddy System

Whether you call it social learning, peer pressure, or a support system, doing something together has an amplifying effect on our motivation. Whether you connect with someone who shares your same third quarter goal, or simply a friend you respect who wants to accomplish something completely different from you; you can draft energy from one another and get farther than you would alone.

Think about it... 

When’s the last time you worked toward a goal with a friend or colleague? Did you notice yourself resist the urge to quit a bit longer because you didn’t want to let them down? Did you feel a positive sense of competition that if he can manage that much I bet I can do at least one more? 

We see this all the time with athletes and academic superstars: a couple of best friends are also each other’s most brutal rivals. Sisters like Venus and Serena Williams who are fierce as a team have competed against one another at the most elite level over the years. You watch them chase each other and in the process, hone each other’s strengths. It’s like Shawn Achor says that we can all be superstars; we just can’t do it alone.***

Sometimes the buddy system is super friendly; sometimes it sizzles with conflicting ways of doing things. Either way, it can be the difference between making the most of this last quarter, and seeing no progress at all.

Once again this blog became longer than I meant it to be. Feel free to give me a hard time if you think I should try harder to shorten things. Thankfully, my 3rd quarter goal around writing is aimed at my processes, is embarrassingly simple, and definitely leverages the buddy system.

Chances are, these blogs will improve. Eventually.