Tag Finishing Strong

Don’t Start Unless You Have a Plan to Finish

Steve Keating Leave a comment

Starting a new project or task is easy…at least when compared to finishing it. I think the vast majority of people start a project or task with the full intention of finishing it. The problem is that the road to failure is paved with those full intentions. 

You don’t need any intention of finishing what you start if you have a plan to finish it before you start.

Step one in that plan should be a decision. The decision that no matter what, the project or task will be completed. If you’ve begun looking for excuses to delay the completion of something you started do not allow yourself to start anything else until what you’re working on is complete. The longer your list of things “in process” the harder it will be to complete any of them. 

Don’t be afraid of saying NO when someone asks you to start something new. Don’t be worried about saying NO to someone who asks for your help if you already have 12 balls in the air you’re trying to juggle. 

Remember, “NO” is a complete sentence. No explanation should be required.

The plan should include what actions you will take each day to move closer to the completion of your task. Even a huge task can be divided up into doable daily tasks. If you can only afford 15-30 minutes a day towards a task you are still making progress and building momentum towards completion. 

Be sure to block that time in your calendar and neither take or make any excuses for using that time for something else. 

Be sure your first 15-30 minute block of time begins immediately. Not tomorrow, not next week, begin immediately. If you’re not sure what I mean by immediately I mean begin in the second after you have made your plan. 

Add a completion date to your plan. You need to be realistic here. You can’t allow yourself 53 years to complete a task that should take a couple of weeks of focused effort. Put a “drop dead” date on your calendar and complete the task by that date. If you don’t then that task is likely as dead as your chances of success. 

Share your plan and progress with a mentor or an accountability partner. Nothing is more helpful in completing a difficult assignment or task as having someone hold you accountable for the commitment you’ve made to get it done. 

You must know that you have the ability to finish what you start. You can create within you the discipline required to do it. You can have tremendous success in all areas of your life as a result. 

The one question that only you can answer is….will you?

Slowing Down

Steve Keating Leave a comment

Ever heard of the saying “speed kills?” It is kind of a given that doing most anything too fast is not a good idea.

What isn’t mentioned often enough however is that going too slow can be just as bad.

I wanted to point that out because I’ve seen some slowing down of late. Many leaders and organizations entered into the current crisis doing a lot of the right things at just the right speed.

They made the proper efforts to keep their people engaged. They communicated appropriate information and didn’t over or under communicate.

I was also impressed with many of the individual efforts I’ve seen. From salespeople reaching out to try and help customers to moms and dads working together to school their kids at home. I was especially impressed with the effort I saw and heard about regarding people making sure to stay in touch with family and friends while pretty much stuck at home.

There have been many good things that have come about as a result of the situation we all find ourselves in. I hope at least some of those things outlast the current situation.

But I kinda feel like many of those efforts are already slowing down. Collectively we are taking our feet off the gas and beginning to drift.

Don’t drift!

Stay focused on how you began dealing with this situation. The things that worked well will work even better when this mess is over and life begins returning to something that feels normal.

Think of it this way… there is a reason the people say “speed up” and a reason they say “slow down.”

Slow apparently has do to with going down. I don’t want to go in that direction. I don’t want my success to go in that direction. I don’t want people thinking my effort, the quality of my work or the amount I care is going in that direction either. I also don’t think you want that.

Intentionally slowing down with a purpose in mind can be good. Allowing slowing down to unintentionally creep into your day is not so good.

Discipline and focus serve you well in good times and bad. Maintain the focus and discipline you had at the beginning of our unusual times. That will give you the opportunity to exit the unusual times better, faster, stronger and more prepared to succeed than when this whole thing started.

Lots of people start strong. The most successful people finish strong as well. Which one are you?

What Do You Mean…Urgent?

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ur·gent 

Function: adjective 

1 a : calling for immediate attention : PRESSING <urgent appeals> b : conveying a sense of urgency

2 : urging insistently : IMPORTUNATE

– ur·gent·ly adverb

     

Well, here is the definition from Webster’s.  I think I like the first one, but the second one isn’t too bad either.

     

I guess it really doesn’t really matter which one you prefer as long as you have one of these definitions that you can embrace as your own. 

     

Now when I say embrace I mean EMBRACE!  Really latch on to it and live the meaning of urgent, live it through your words and actions every single day.  I remember attending a Dale Carnegie™ Sales Conference about 25 years ago when one of the presenters was asked about his opinion on the most serious threat facing professional salespeople at the time.  I think his answer applies as much today as it did at the time: a lack of urgency. 

     

He believed, and I agree, that salespeople who go about their business as though a deal could wait another day are doomed to a career filled with limited successes and missed opportunities. 

     

Salespeople who lack a sense of urgency, whether it’s urgency regarding following up on a request for information, urgency to return a phone call, urgency to make that one additional sales call a day and urgency to do the things they know would make a difference, are what I call woulda, coulda, shoulda salespeople.  These are the salespeople who lament the poor business climate and challenging customers that the salespeople with a sense of urgency pursue, maximizing the market and reaping the rewards.

     

Which one are you?  Do you have that sense of urgency?  Or, do you “leave a little business for tomorrow?”  If you’re a woulda, coulda, shoulda salesperson, you had better hope your competition is too!  As of the date of this post there are only 27 or 28 selling days (depends on if you work December 26th) left in 2017. Will you press on with urgency or will you coast into 2018?

     

That’s not a question about your ability, that’s a question about your attitude. Successful people know that a fast start is important but the most successful people know that how well you finish what you started is the real key to continual success. 

Don’t Slow Down

Steve Keating Leave a comment

The New Year will soon be upon us. For some people 2015 can’t end soon enough, nothing seemed to go as planned and they are hoping for a fresh start in 2016.

Others wish this year would never end; they are basking in the glow of a very successful year and they are wishing it could last forever. Whichever group you find yourself in I have a message for you…. don’t slow down. Don’t slow jam your way to the end of the year. 

This is not the time of the year to take your foot off the gas. No matter what kind of year you’ve had so far remember, it’s only “so far.” You have another whole month to build yourself a foundation for a successful New Year. 

If you’ve had a great 2015 and decide to rest the remainder of the year it likely will take you a good while to get back up to speed as the New Year begins. Don’t waste the powerful momentum you’ve built for yourself by finishing your successful year on auto-pilot. Whatever you did to succeed in 2015 continue to execute in the same way throughout the month of December. While the prospect of some well deserved extra rest is enticing you’ll be glad you didn’t take the bait. You’ll begin the year with the kind of momentum that builds true success, the repeatable kind of success.

If 2015 wasn’t exactly the year you had in mind 11 months ago then stop only long enough to determine what went wrong. Take a long look at your plan…by the way if you don’t have a 2015 plan to look at I’d HIGHLY recommend you invest some time in December making sure that you have a realistic, executable plan for 2016 before January rolls around.

Assuming you had a plan examine it closely to see where it went off track. Did you remember to include a backup plan for when the inevitable unexpected and uncontrollable circumstances made your original plan unworkable? Stuff happens and you should plan on it happening to you. 

If 2015 didn’t go according to your plan did you remember to ask for help? Successful people are not afraid or embarrassed to ask for help. They identify well in advance the source of their help just in case it’s needed. Literally list the names of the people you’ll ask for help with your plan should it be required. 

One purpose of a good plan is to eliminate the “wonder” from your year. Successful people don’t “wonder” what they should do, who they should ask or where they should look for help. They “know” because they have prepared for the unexpected. If you found yourself hesitating when things went off course in 2015 it’s possibly because you were missing that key element of your plan. 

Don’t hope for a better 2016, plan on it! 

Successful people treat December as the last month of the year. The most successful people treat December as the first month of the New Year. Which would you like to be? 

Make the choice to finish 2015 strong and it may be the last great choice you make in 2015 …. or it just might be your first great choice for the New Year ahead. 

Don’t See the End Too Soon

Steve Keating 5 Comments

I make a lot of mistakes when I play golf. So many in fact that there are days I wonder why I play the game at all. People who play with me would tell you that the biggest mistake I make is that at some point during a round my swing gets too fast and I lose all control over what I’m doing. That’s not entirely true, sometimes my swing is too fast right from the start and never slows down.

That is indeed a big mistake, but it’s not my biggest one. When my swing gets fast my score goes up, the round is pretty much over and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it. At least it seems like I can’t.

I think my biggest mistake on the golf course is seeing the end too soon. Here’s what I mean by that. There are days when I play well, at least by my standards. Everything seems to work and I even seem to catch a few breaks. Then I look at the scorecard and start to think….Geez, if I can par the last two holes, or even just bogey them this will be an awesome score.

I instantly stop doing whatever I was doing and boom, the last two holes are double or triple bogeys… or worse. I saw the end too soon and just stopped doing the things I needed to do to successfully complete my round.

One of my mentors once told me that as important as it is to start well, it’s even more important to finish well. I’ve come to learn that’s true, not only in golf, but in most parts of life.

As I publish this post we have about 10 days left in 2014. 10 days left to finish well. These are the days when most people take their foot off the gas and kind of cruise to the end. They are seeing the end of 2014 just a bit too soon.

When I was a high school student, a former Vice-President of the United States came to my school to speak. He had recently lost the presidential election to Richard Nixon. He gave us some advice that I have never forgotten. He said to be careful what you say in your concession speech because it’s really not the last speech of your campaign, it is actually the first speech of your next one.

These final days of 2014 can either be the end of this year or you can choose to use them as a springboard to a successful 2015. You can slow down or you can hit next year running. If your goal is to lose 15 pounds in 2015 you could lose 1 by the end of 2014 and have only 14 left to lose in 2015. You could be 1/15 of the way to your goal before the year even begins.

Here’s the point, you can make all of 2015 better, easier, more productive, and more prosperous by finishing 2014 strong.

As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over til it’s over.” Don’t let your 2014 be over even one day too soon!