Forethought-
Great goals are well-defined and focused. A goal without a measurable outcome is like a sports competition without a scoreboard or scorekeeper. Dream big and aim for the stars but keep one foot firmly based in reality. Business goals and objectives just don’t get done when there’s no time frame tied to the goal-setting process. This is our thought process here at Fit-Pros Academy. Let us clarify a few words of wisdom that will make you think intuitively as you move forward in your new career.
Nobody is great without work
It’s nice to believe that if you find the field where you’re naturally gifted, you’ll be great from day one but it doesn’t happen.
There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.
Reinforcing that no-free-lunch finding is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need about ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established that researchers call it the ten-year rule.
What about Bobby Fischer, who became a chess grandmaster at 16? Turns out the rule holds: He’d had nine years of intensive study. The ten-year rule represents a very rough estimate, and most researchers regard it as a minimum, not an average. In many fields (music, literature) elite performers need 10 or 20 years’ experience before hitting their zenith.
So greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn’t enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What’s missing?
The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call “deliberate practice.” It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, which reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.
For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day – now that’s deliberate practice.
Consistency is crucial. Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends.
The Skeptics
Not all researchers are totally on board with the myth-of-talent hypothesis, though their objections go to its edges rather than its center. For one thing, there are the intangibles. Two athletes might work equally hard, but what explains the ability of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to perform at a higher level in the last two minutes of a game?
Certainly some important traits are partly inherited, such as physical size and particular measures of intelligence, but those influence what a person doesn’t do more than what he does: Some international chess masters have IQs in the 90s. The more research that’s done, the more solid the deliberate practice model becomes.
Real-World Examples
All this scholarly research is simply evidence for what great performers have been showing us for years. To take a handful of examples: Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century’s greatest orators, practiced his speeches compulsively. Vladimir Horowitz supposedly said, “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don’t practice for three days, the world knows it.” He was certainly a demon “practicer,” but the same quote has been attributed to world-class musicians like Luciano Pavarotti.
Many great athletes are legendary for the brutal discipline of their practice routines. In basketball, Michael Jordan practiced intensely beyond the already punishing team practices. (Had Jordan possessed some mammoth natural gift specifically for basketball, it seems unlikely he’d have been cut from his high school team.)
Tiger Woods is a textbook example of what the research shows. Because his father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age-18 months-and encouraged him to practice intensively, Woods had racked up at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to conditioning and practice, even remaking his swing twice because that’s what it took to get even better.
The evidence, scientific as well as anecdotal, seems overwhelmingly in favor of deliberate practice as the source of great performance. Just one problem: How do you practice business I never did, this was a huge, no astronomical mistake! Many elements of business, in fact, are directly practicable. Presenting, negotiating, delivering evaluations… you can practice them all.
Still, they aren’t the essence of great managerial performance. That requires making judgments and decisions with imperfect information in an uncertain environment, interacting with people, seeking information-can you practice those things too?
It’s all about how you do what you’re already doing… you create the practice in your work, which requires a few critical changes. The first is going at any task with a new goal: Instead of merely trying to get it done, you aim to get better at it.
Another mistake was never realizing business needs my total attention, every detail analyzing it, presenting it, teaching it, and observing it… and observing it… and observing it! (Did I say to observe it?) Anything that you do at work, from the most basic task to the most exalted, is an improvable skill. When you take service beyond the workplace and follow-up with your client, you take your reputation to a whole new level.
Adopting a New Mindset
Arm yourself with a new mindset; go at your job in a new way. You aaren’tjust doing the job; you’re explicitly trying to get better at it in the larger sense. Research shows you will process information more deeply and retain it longer. You will want more information on what you’re doing and seek other perspectives. You will adopt a longer-term point of view. A positive mindset persists and remains creative and clear.
Again, research shows that this difference in mental approach is vital. For example, when amateur singers take a singing lesson, they experience it as fun, a release of tension. But for professional singers, it’s the opposite: They increase their concentration and focus on improving their performance during the lesson. Same activity, different mindset.
Feedback is crucial, and getting it should be no problem in business. Yet most people don’t seek it; they just wait for it, half hoping it won’t come. Without it, as Goldman Sachs leadership-development chief Steve Kerr says, “it’s as if you’re bowling through a curtain that comes down to knee level. If you don’t know how successful you are, two things happen: One, you don’t get any better, and two, you stop caring.” In some companies, like General Electric, frequent feedback is part of the culture. If you aren’t lucky enough to get that, seek it out.
Be the Ball
Through the whole process, one of your goals is to build what the researchers call “mental models of your business,” mental pictures of how the elements fit together. I call it “a preview of coming attractions” and how they influence one another. The more you work on it, the larger your mental models will become and the better your “performance attitude” will grow. (Positive self talk…)
As a professional I started to realize the hype, and false truths in our industry. Here’s what we realized, regardless of what modalities we choose to do ie: yoga, strength, cross- fit, zumba, boot camp, running, or competitive bodybuilding, if we use it as a business realize there are major liabilities to deal with. As an example just go to youtube.com and pull up a cross-fit pull up routine, (Mr. Ballistic being timed- with form secondary to “Just do it”) if I did that with my clients I would be best friends with the judicial system! We pick and choose our weapons of destruction, choose wisely, and remember who your client is, and the goal at hand. It’s not a one size fits all exercise. It may look cool but does it make sense artho-kinematically. (that’s my word)
I promise when you get done with this course- you will be far better advanced then the personal who is taking their test on-line with the book in front of them!
Dave Parise CPT MES FPTA
www.fixmyfitnessclub.com
