Week 3: Getting into the groove

My final week of all-week travel has come to a close and I faired reasonably well in achieving 63 out of 79 points (80%), particularly since I had very little control of my schedule that went from early morning to late nights at a corporate management seminar.  The effort required achieving my points decreased considerably this week as I began to establish the mental groove.

For the coming week, I need to execute 100% of my points, which is very possible now that I enter normal rhythm for weekly travel.  This is also important because it puts me in position to hit my intermittent reward for achieving 90% of points in the first 30 days.  If I hit that 90% target for the first 30 days, the remaining 60 days should be downhill.  Of course, there is little margin for error this week, and I am spending time tonight ”deep time blocking” the week to create the space for me to execute flawlessly.  This reward will be fun for my entire family, so I must not let them down.

A quick review of last week:

Good:  No patterns to the misses.  Workout groove coming back.  Meditation continuing to yield benefits every day, and transforming my perceptive capabilities during interactions.  Had a tremendous week extending my professional network with five high quality additions, each of whom I also took time to send a personal, handwritten card.  Additionally, found and enlisted two new coaches in areas of importance to me.

Opportunity:  Missed golf this week as expected.  Had planned to create points for a different activity since access to a course and my clubs was not going to be an option, but failed to follow through in creating an alternate point system to manage this week.  I need to double up my golf efforts this week to get back on track.  I also need to begin tackling the laundry list of goals for the 90 days by identifying 3-5 side projects I will get done across my focal areas each week.

As the end of this coming week should prove, the achievement of my weekly points will become more automatic, allowing me to focus my energies on improving my awareness throughout the day as well as working on inner exploration around energy conservation and achieving my potential.

1 comment July 29th, 2007 Z Man

Week 2 - Still grinding

The abnormal schedule continued this week, and I have one more week to go as I will be in all day management seminar this coming week.  I was hoping to grease the skids on these new behaviors before getting to this upcoming week, but alas that did not happen.  This week was even tougher than week one and required brute force to pull out of misses in the early days of the week.  For this last week, I achieved 60 out of 70 points (86%), short of my goal and also not the manner in which I hoped to get there.

An assessment of the week showed two patterns to the misses in the focal aspect of health.  I was unable to hit three days of my workout and also consistently missed prepping my meals the night before to ensure I have quality meals available throughout the following day. 

The misses in these areas were driven by two separate root causes.   For the workouts, I have a very morning intensive Game, and any late start to my day, creates issues for me accomplishing all the items I have timeblocked in before work.  When this occurs, I chose to pursue other items in my Game which yielded more points for the same physical time invested.  For the meals, being on the road accounted for three of the misses, and I need to either substitute this meal prep, which is not applicable on the road, for another item during travel days.  I need to develop an alternative action tonight or tomorrow morning to substitute in these situations, particularly since I am on the road all this week again.

Good:  Character demonstrated in recovering from the early misses to post a respectable performance across my game focal areas.  Meditation morning and night as well as doing a 60+ min “long sit” on Saturday have already demonstrated meaningful differences in my attention to activities and in interactions with others.  Mind dumping is consistently solid, but still only time blocking a day in advance vs. for the week.  Speed reading up to 800 wpm.   I am beginning to think my goal of 1,000 wpm was too conservative, but I also recognize that I am still uncomfortable with the pacing and rhythm required to read for longer periods of time as my practice session are only 15 min.

Opportunity: Biggest item I need to address besides health items listed above is to completely time block the entire week.  By not doing this, I am making the Game more difficult than it needs to be, and occasionally putting myself in a space where I am not appropriately dedicated to the point I am trying to achieve because I am scrambling to close gaps.  I missed my point for 3 golf practice session this week, and will have to develop an alternative way to practice this week given not having my clubs as well as anticipated time commitments.  I need to be engaged in working on golf consistently (i.e. every week without fail) to achieve my aggressive improvement goal. 

I am also making one change to my points to more accurately reflect the occurrences where points are earned.  This change will increase my weekly point total by reflecting the actual number of times a behavior in the weekly game occurs.  So, previously I have only earned a point only if I practiced golf three times during the week, but will now earn a point for each individual occurrence vs. not receiving a point if I did not execute three times.  This will more accurately reflect the amount of work I am doing.
 

The Game is definitely on!

Add comment July 22nd, 2007 Z Man

One Heck of a First Week…Game 36

Okay, so I got 5 points yesterday and that was largely because my partner Mitchell has now resulted to threats on my life…talk about compassion.  Any how, our mutual harrassing of each other has gotten him to ask for referrals and me to massage my wife so it ain’t all bad.

I ended up taking a detour in my week and realized that I was meeting with a managment consulting team to review an “Interim” CEO/manager for the current business (so I can stop trying to pretend like I am a manager) and to assist in the search for the new CEO to be located in New York…the only thing I forgot is that an operational plan would probably be a good thing before paying a guy to do a job you haven’t documented.  Hence, the detour of spending an unplanned for not Time Blocked 5-6 hours writing something I should of written years ago.

Nothing like a deadline to make a boy sweat, anyway at least I am prepared…next week is a tough one.  I need to hit my points, fend off Mitchell, interview my Interim CEO, launch the start of getting my PPM completed, fly to New York to hand over “5 pages” to explain my life’s work to one of the top 5 most innovative investment bankers in the world (if I am clear he has committed to getting me funded within 90 days and the guy has done $100 billion in deals in his career).  I have to and I repeat have to finish the final draft of my corporate business plan, my foundation plan and write the movie trailer…this week!!!

 My screenplay coach is about to fire me (and we have only been working together for about 3 weeks and already I face termination).  In the midst of all of this I am concerned about my wife’s stress, the baby was a little on the light side weight wise with only 7 weeks to go and the reason is likely stress…mine!

I am giving myself one last week to get the plans finished up, bring in the outside talent and go back to the part of the job that is the least stressful for me speaking and coaching.  One week, that’s a promise!  (I can hear Mitchell giving me crap already).  I have got to get my attention on Brooke and Gracie…always hard when you have to do a ramp up and you have a hard time shifting gears….Peace

1 comment July 14th, 2007 Sarano Kelley

Add comment July 13th, 2007 Sarano Kelley

Off to the races….kinda…

2 comments July 11th, 2007 Sarano Kelley

Sarano’s Game of Grace - Game 36

Today kicked off my “Game of Grace”, Game 36 and the Game I get to play with my personal team.

Our FANS call was nothing short of amazing and only afterwards was I able to realize how many close friends and family showed up - and it wasn’t even for me!

I must admit I was suprised to hear that Clara was on, Randy was on and Todd was on even though he was sick after eating jumbo shrimp while shooting on location in Mexico. I told him while in Mexico to avoid the water but I guess I didn’t cover all the bases.

Most of my games have had some imaginary deadline, but on the otherside of this deadline I turn 45, I will be once again a father and yet again the Game has begun in earnest and since I can’t go back, I might as well go forward - LET’S PLAY!

Sarano

2 comments July 9th, 2007 Sarano Kelley