Everyone who knows me knows that I enjoy learning something new every day. I’ve always got my nose in a book; mainly self-improvement and baseball books. But I love learning just about anything if it will help me or those around me.
Right now I am re-reading the 4-Hour Workweek written by Timothy Ferriss. In his book he discusses how important it is to focus our energy on the things that matter rather than wasting our valuable time working on things that don’t. It sounds simple and it really is! One of the things he says that really hit me hard tonight is, “Focus on being productive instead of busy.” Isn’t that the truth. I think of how many times I get caught in the “I need to work harder not smarter” mode.
How many times in baseball do players focus on what they cannot control? We see it all too often in sports. In fact, we heard Craig Manning speak of it in our latest interview with him last week.
Here is a perfect example of not focusing on being productive:
Johnny comes into practice one evening to throw 100 pitches. Great! That is good he’s going to throw 100 pitches. But what is his intent? Just to throw 100 pitches? What pitches is he going to throw? What is his focus? If he wants to be productive he’ll throw 50 pitches with the intent of hitting his target 80% of the time. Or throwing 50 pitches working on a specific function of throwing, like hip rotation.
Last week I went to St. George to see a great baseball tournament. It was fantastic to see over 295 teams involved from the ages of 8-15. What was really interesting is how each team prepared for the tournament. Of course the teams that have played together for three years or more typically outperformed the other teams. However, weeks before the tournament everyone began to train. Some harder than others. But, it seemed like the teams that were overly intense were focused on the wrong things. Their preparation consisted of taking some swings and throwing some pitches for the day. That’s good enough because they put their time in.
The teams that truly did well were very organized, structured teams, that had shorter practices, yet more efficient ones. Everyone had a job to do, even in practice, and it was short and sweet. They didn’t have one coach hitting a ball to one player at a time on the team while all of the other players sat around. The team had a purpose and they executed their practices perfectly and got out of there. They would focus on being productive instead of merely staying busy.
It is great to outwork someone or a team, but the team or individual that outperforms you or your team wins. The point: Focus on what is productive not just busy for the sake of being busy.