Improving Task Completion with One Simple Rule

If you’re someone that tends to check your email (read: play) on your phone while training – this one’s for you. 

That’s right, you – you who thinks your coach can’t see you sending messages from out-stretched hands inside the cubbies where the water bottles & bags lie – as if “out-of-sight” was fooling anyone… you with the casual IG scroll between every set, because “gotta rest anyway, might as well, amirite?”… or even you, the can’t-blame-me-I’m-running-errands(!) type – making an appointment for your next oil change, ordering groceries, refilling a prescription, booking your flight for that wedding 3 months from now – all during approximately 116 seconds of transition time between strength and accessory pieces… look, I noticed. I’m mostly impressed. Also! Ever consider how much better your training could be without the compulsive multi-tasking?!

While I’m not necessarily encouraging you to avoid multitasking entirely, I would like to present you with an alternative approach for task completion, one that offers the opportunity to get better work done.

Introducing…. renowned writer Neil Gaiman’s most important rule for writing:

You can sit here and write or you can sit here and do nothing, but you can’t sit here and do anything else.

Apply this to training – you can show up and do every rep asked of you that day with the utmost attention, or you can sit there and look around. But you can’t dilly dally in menial tasks during training time – physically or intellectually. Because not just hypothetically, but actually – doing so will diminish your fullest expression for training.

This goes without saying… please apply the same concept to your life, well beyond training, too. 

Virtuosity, baby. #HoldTheStandard