The January 2013 McKinsey Quarterly publication posted an article by Susie Cranston and Scott Keller called,Increasing the Meaning Quotient of Work. They argued that the most successful and best performing people have IQ (intellectual quotient), EQ (emotional quotient), and MQ (meaning quotient). 

“While IQ and EQ are absolutely necessary to create the conditions for peak performance, they are far from sufficient, the authors said. (When a business environment MQ is low, employees put less energy into their work and see it as (just a job) that gives them little more than a paycheck.

Executives interviewed in the study said that when employees and teams have IQ, EQ, and MQ, they are five times more productive. Furthermore, when asked to locate the bottlenecks to peak performance in organizations, more than 90% of them chose MQ related issues.

Let's compare these findings with a survey I'm conducting on my website, www.ci4life.org, where so far, almost 1,400 respondents have completed it. The survey's aim is to identify the habits and characteristics of the happiest and most effective people. You may find the parallels interesting.

Overall outcomes of the survey

My premise has always been that it is happiness – not productivity – that leads to a life of success. The survey identifies key findings, key outcomes, key characteristics, and the key habits for this group cohort. Here are the findings so far on those identified as happier people:

• Personal productivity: 14% higher
• Effective relationships at work: 20% higher
• Job satisfaction: 45% overall
• Income: Double for the happier group

It's important to note that the data is suggesting that the happiest group earn more income, but that not more money means more happiness. It's the characteristics and habits of the happiest that lead to more income – not the other way around.

This brings us to the next question: How and why does this happiness, productivity, and satisfaction happen? Let's break it down.

What are the characteristics of the happiest people?

I only mention a characteristic if it is a majority vote and if it is at least 25% greater than the comparison group:

• Forgive and let go: 43% higher
• Life purpose: 34% higher
• Let go of discouraging events more effectively: 45% better
• Content with life: 78% higher

For example: On the key question of comparing the very happiest to the below average in happiness, we find:

Seventy-eight percent of the happiest people have a life purpose, and the gap between the below-average happiness group is 34%. So, this means that the majority of the (above average) happiest people practice it, and this is greater than a 25% difference with the below-happiness group.

Personal habits of the happiest people

The same variable applies as above (a majority vote and if it is at least 25% greater than the comparison group of below-happiness people).

The personal habits of the happiest are as follows:

• Regular exercise: 27% higher
• Daily planning: 30%
• Reading for personal improvement: 27%
• Regular service to others: 26%
• Financial savings: 32%

All of the characteristics of purpose, forgiveness, letting go, and contentment are what the McKinsey article highlighted – emotional and meaning quotient items!

What can we learn from these findings and what should we do?

On a personal level:

1. Understand that it's a combination of habits that contribute to higher levels of happiness and improved life outcomes. It's not just one habit.
2. Pick one of these habits to start improving on. Set a goal, track it, share it, and improve it.

On an organizational level:

1. We need more emphasis on an emotional and meaning quotient in personal development if you want employees with higher job satisfaction and effectiveness. More training and development in both areas is essential for businesses.

Let me share with you two application ideas for businesses.

1. Leaders, when you pitch your vision, make sure you share the why. Make sure and share how this creates meaning to your employees and your community.

For example: 

My very first client as a young consultant was a sawmill supervisor named Greg. He was a great athlete and loved to compete and win. He and I spent a few night shifts at the plant trying to figure out how to advance performance there. Greg had worked at the plant for over 30 years and had advanced from supervisor to superintendent to plant manager. That plant went on to be one of the top performing sawmills of its category in North America. He did at least two things that were extraordinary: (1) He always had employee and management meetings. (2) He rarely skipped a weekly employee meeting and his monthly management business review in all those 30 plus years. Talk about consistency!

Everybody is always trying to create some stability and sustainability for performance in their business. Try learning this lesson from Greg. Never skip a performance review and business discussion. Become a great communicator on multiple levels of meaning (MQ). Greg talked to his employees about things that would draw them into the business and care about its performance. He shared the details of financial and production performance to the union employees on a weekly basis. As a result, the plant took great pride and meaning in trying to become the best sawmill. He tied in customer feedback into his meetings. He shared the good and the bad. He built pride, meaning, and loyalty to the site. I think it was one of the reasons he never left despite being offered other positions at other plants. My favorite line he ever said was in a weekly employee meeting when he passionately shared with his employees that they don't just make lumber. They provided shelter for those less fortunate and he would talk about progress with the Habitat for Humanity project in the local town that the company donated to. He talked about how their product helped people live their dreams of being a homeowner. Greg established a culture of meaning and pride by connecting the company's product to how it benefited society, the customers, and themselves.

• Hire leaders with emotional intelligence. At RLG International, we do a lot of work with capital projects. All of our research including within the benchmarking firms called IPA (Independent Project Analysis) suggest we need more leaders with emotional intelligence to lead our large mega capital projects.  The track record for mega construction projects is not good. Research is pointing to the difference leadership makes, and particularly leaders who have emotional intelligence – those who are open and listening to all stakeholders' concerns. Some of these senior project directors are running projects with 20-40 billion-dollar budgets. They have thousands of contractors working the projects. 

In one IPA study of 56 mega capital projects, only seven of the projects met project goals.  Of the seven key characteristics listed in those projects was great leadership. One of the key characteristics of great leadership was emotional intelligence. You can imagine when you're working with seven to 12 different organizations and thousands of employees how much emotional intelligence weighs in. You have to be able to listen to various concerns and worries and deal with it in a mature and open way. But I know there are applications to all sectors and business, not just capital projects. The truth though is that we need more leaders from all facets of business with emotional intelligence.

I hope this has given you a few ideas on what you can do to work on your personal and professional meaning quotient and emotional quotient. Thank you to all of the respondents, and I'd love to get to 1,500 respondents and beyond. If you value this knowledge, please go to the website and fill out the survey. So far, the respondents have shared that taking the survey has given them ideas for their own personal development journeys.

Additionally, on September 15, 2020, my book, Live Your Purpose – A Step-By-Step Guide to Enhance Your Meaning, Purpose, Fulfillment, And Happiness will be online for sale at Amazon.com. Please go to my website to subscribe, and I'll send you a link to download the book for free.

Until next time, live a life of sustainable Continuous Improvement.

Practices to reset when stressed by your high performance lifestyle

Change, even good change, takes its toll.

In a recent coaching session I had with a client, he expressed that a recent job change had introduced newfound and unwelcome anxiety in his life.

Overall the change was good—he was excited about a new opportunity that would help him achieve his professional goals. However, despite the excitement, he found himself dealing with an uncomfortable amount of stress in his new role.

His experience likely sounds familiar. Change, whether small or large, and even when that change is positive, brings excitement and stress, both of which can be exhausting. Working through his issue, we spent most of the coaching time talking about the importance of the principles of sustainable renewal to manage anxiety and uncertainty.

Sustainable renewal is the final step of what I refer to as Sustainable Performance Excellence (SPE).

SPE is an approach for achieving long-term, sustainable performance and it involves:

1. Dreaming big with purpose
2. Planning small steps 
3. Engaging in renewal practices

Learn more about Sustainable Performance Excellence

My client was doing fantastic on the first two elements: dreaming big and taking small steps towards big goals. Unfortunately, he wasn't taking the time out to practice renewal and found his mind harboring anxiety throughout his day.

Staying present despite anxiety

If left unchecked, the mind will often race on both the excitement and the fear of an uncertain future. 

My client was suffering from both elements of excitement and fear. During our discussion, he framed his concern as follows: How do I stop my mind from racing?

The answer: Mindfulness through sustainable renewal practices.

What is mindfulness?

This term has gained popularity over the last few years, though the concept is by no means new.

The definition of mindfulness I most prefer is:

A mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

Mindfulness sounds like a great place to arrive, but the key concern remains: How do you reach mindfulness when your mind is racing? How do you focus on the present moment when your mind just won't let you?

To achieve mindfulness, you need to engage in regular renewal practices.

Regular Renewal Practices for Sustainable Performance

On our call, I coached my client on 4 practices of sustainable renewal to manage the anxieties he was facing due to the uncertainty of the future. Here they are:

• Write a gratitude list daily
• Exercise regularly
• Pray and ponder inspired literature 
• Meditate daily

Write a gratitude list daily

Starting each day with an attitude of gratitude is a great way to teach the mind to stay focused on what is going right vs. what you feel is missing or going wrong in your life.

Amy Morin, the author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Do (which I highly recommend), shared in Psychology Today seven proven scientific benefits of gratitude:

• More and stronger relationships
• Better physical health
• Better psychological health
• Greater empathy and reduced aggression
• Better sleep
• Better self-esteem
• Improved mental strength

High achievers often have the bad habit of focusing excessively on what needs to change. Writing a daily gratitude list of 3-5 things is a great way to remind yourself of what about your life is already good and that you should celebrate.

See my podcast for additional research and practical tips on enhancing gratitude.

Exercise regularly

What's the most transformative thing that you can do for your brain today? According to neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki, exercise! 

In her Ted Talk, Suzuki discusses the science of how working out boosts your mood and memory—and even protects your brain against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. 

Exercise is a keystone habit as Charles Duhigg suggests in his book The Power of Habit:

“Typically, people who exercise start eating better and become more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.”

Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

Here are my thoughts on exercise and keystone habits:

Pray and ponder inspired literature

Together with prayer, studying inspired literature like scripture has been proven to quiet the mind and slow down (mind racing,) among other mental health benefits.

According to Marilyn Schlitz, Ph.D., a lecturer at Harvard:

“It's clear from the correlational studies within the epidemiology data that positive relationships exist between religious and spiritual practice and health outcomes on a variety of different conditions.

According to the Heritage Foundation:

“We have a logical reason why religion might influence physical health through mental health, through enhancing social support, through influencing health behaviors, all affecting physical health outcomes.”

Taking time to read and pray can get your mind more focused on something big than yourself and your life and put things into perspective.

Meditate daily

In 2017, Dr. Matthew Thorpe, MD, PhD, wrote a great article on the 12 science-based benefits of meditation, talking about how meditation can help:

• Reduce stress
• Control anxiety
• Promote emotional health
• Lengthen attention span
• Potentially reduce age-related memory loss
• Improve sleep
• Improve kindness
• And more

I have recently found the benefits of short meditations to be quite powerful in managing anxiety.  When your mind is racing because of uncertainty or a setback in your daily or life goals, try doing a short 10-minute meditation from the Ten Percent Happier app. Meditation works.

Consistency Brings Capacity

None of these activities stands alone—each one needs to be done regularly with the others to manage a high-performance lifestyle.

There is power in building capacity to manage your mind. When building muscles in your body, you know you have to do regular muscle building activities. Otherwise the muscle weakens.  

The same principles apply to achieving mindfulness: You need regular practice to quiet your mind and stay focused on your goals and dreams.

Start practicing these 4 elements of sustainable-renewal today and start enjoying the journey towards sustainable performance excellence.

Finding Sustained Happiness and Success

Have you ever met a person who is rich, maybe even famous, and not happy?

Have you ever met a person who is chill, seemingly happy, and not able to really achieve success in their chosen field?

Can we be both productive, successful, and happy?

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

Let's talk about the ROOT, the complete solution for a happy and successful life.

Some well-meaning, high-performance experts bring part of the solution, while few bring the whole and sustainable model for excellence.

1. Dream Big with a Clear Purpose

Robert Fritz, the author of The Path of Least Resistance, authored, “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”

Deepak Chopra, the author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success says, “You must find a place in yourself where nothing is impossible.”

Additional authors such as Jack Canfield, who wrote Success Principles, and Tony Robbins author of, Awaken the Giant Within, all preach about dreaming big and setting lofty goals for life.

What happens on the days, weeks, months, and years when you are not making progress towards your big goals and aspirations? 

Studies have shown that less than 25% of people actually stay committed to their resolutions after just 30 days, and only 8% accomplish them. Don't be a part of that statistic.

Are the big dreams and big goals a false paradigm? Do big goals only set you up for discouragement? Is there more to the formula? How do you really know what goals to set? How do you find the clarity and motivation to accomplish your goals?

It Starts by Defining your Purpose

Victor Frankl, the author of Man's Search for Meaning, said,  “Everyone has his (or her) own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated; thus, everyone's task is unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”

What is your unique calling? What are your specific strengths? What are your areas of passion and interest?  If you can thoughtfully answer these questions, you can unlock your genius; you can unlock your energy.  The answers to these questions may not tell you the specific job you should have, but it will give you insights on what career path to follow. 

Have you ever been around somebody that works with a sense of purpose?  How confident are they?  How passionate are they?  When you are clear on your purpose, you are clear on what to say yes to and what to say no to, in essence you are clear on your priorities.

Stephen R. Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote, “Creating a mission statement is not something you do overnight. It takes deep introspection, careful analysis, thoughtful expression, and often many rewrites to produce its final form. It may take you several weeks or even months before you feel really comfortable with your mission statement, before you feel it is complete and a concise expression of your innermost values and directions. Even then, you will want to review it regularly and make minor changes as the years bring additional insights or changing circumstances.”

This link will give you a step-by-step guide on how to develop your own purpose and start driving clarity and energy into your life. Learn more about the importance of defining your purpose. Listen to this podcast episode on how I defined my mission.

Measurement and Accountability System

“When performance is measured performance improves. When performance is measured and reported performance accelerates.”

Thomas S. Monson

When we set big goals for our life it is also important to have accountability and measurement systems to help us accomplish them.  Set up a spreadsheet or buy an app that will help you set and track your goals.  As you share those goals, and their progress with friends and trusted advisors, you will find increased motivation and desire to accomplish your goals, and you will develop new actions and behaviors to accomplish those goals. Learn how to set up your whole life goal setting systems.

2. Small Steps Planning System

Dr. Robert Maurer Ph.D., a recent guest on my podcast, (find the episode here), wrote a book called, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. This book shows research on how your brain reacts very positively to small steps towards a goal rather than bigger steps. He writes, “All changes, even positive ones are scary.  Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of Kaizen disarm the brain's fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.”

Dr. Maurer was struggling to help interns and patients in his training medical practice at a large hospital.  By good fortune, he read an article on Edward Deming and what the Japanese did with Deming's philosophy on continuous improvement and Kaizen. Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement for personal and corporate efficiency. Dr. Maurer's breakthrough happened when he had a stressed out patient in his office again with no change to her personal health practices.  She was supposed to start exercising and losing weight to improve her heart conditions and general health.  Check-up after check-up the patient wasn't changing her behaviors that would lead to better health. Dr. Maurer on the next visit asked her if she watched TV at night to relax after the kids went to bed.  She did.  Dr. Maurer then asked her if she should walk in place during the commercials of her favorite show each night.  She said she would, and she did.  On the next visit the patient reported success, then Dr. Maurer asked her if she could do a little more and she said she could.  In a few months she was running and lost, and kept off 20 lbs. and vastly improved her health.  With small steps, she developed new habits that changed her life.

In my blog post from June 1^st of 2019, By small and simple HABITS, great things come to pass, I wrote, “For every long-term goal, there's a daily habit you can develop to take action today towards that goal. Of course, consistency and discipline are key to success. Try starting every day with your most important routines. Wake up before everybody else does so you can start your day with your small habits that will eventually lead you to excellence in your chosen goals.”

We know that breaking down big goals into bite-size chunks works and is a key step in a successful practice of personal excellence.

But what about when you are still not hitting all your goals?  Or even worse, what happens when you are hitting your financial and career goals and aren't happy?

What happens when your kids need things that are not in your daily plan?

Can you be happy, content, flexible and productive?

3. Renewal Activities for Acceptance and Sustained Commitment

Not all goals will be accomplished right away. We need practices in our life that help us deal with the day to day setbacks of missed expectations, tragedy and stress. We need to build capacity to deal with the successes and the failures. Renewal activities give you the mental and emotional strength to accept where you are at and keep learning and working towards your goals.

There are many good renewal practices. I recommend four regular practices:

1. Exercise
2. Prayer and Study.
3. Meditation
4. Daily Gratitude.

Read my blog containing a complete review of the research on the benefits of sustainable renewal practices.

Get to Excellence, Then Sustain Excellence

I would argue that these teachings when applied interdependently bring the complete picture of true success.  It is possible to be productive, successful, happy and content. As we install these three principles (little by little) we will experience success and happiness!

1. Dream Big and Have Purpose
   1. Have a purpose statement.
   2. Set a balanced set of goals in all areas of your life.
   3. Set up a measurement and accountability system.
2. Small Steps Planning System
   1. Identify the small steps that must be accomplished this week to advance your goals.
   2. Complete your weekly plan.
   3. Plan daily.
3. Sustainable Renewal Activities
   1. Complete a daily gratitude journal for what you were able to accomplish.
   2. Meditate
   3. Exercise
   4. Pray and ponder over inspired literature

These are the three principles of sustainable personal excellence.

Get started now: Self-evaluation questions

1. What has stopped you from applying the ideas of sustainable personal excellence (SPE) in the past?
2. What tools/ideas mentioned in this article has or will help you overcome your roadblocks with SPE?
3. What small steps could you do to start/continue your journey towards Sustainable Personal Excellence?
4. When will you start the small step?

If you need help getting started, schedule a free 30 minute assessment on how you are applying Sustainable Personal Excellence.

What financial investing teaches about Personal Development

As 2019 ended, were you able to look back and say to yourself, “I made significant growth this last year”?

If you were able to see growth, congratulations! You probably had measurable goals that you regularly followed up on, problem solved, and put actions into place to accomplish those goals.

If you found it difficult to perceive growth in your own life, then you likely failed to create a growth strategy for the previous year. Thankfully, now is a great time to do a reset and start building a growth strategy for 2020.

Creating a Growth Strategy

Lately I've been managing my own stock portfolio. Stock portfolios have highly measurable returns with clear performance benchmarks, which makes measuring performance simple.

As part of managing my own portfolio, I've aligned my strategy closely with the practice of growth investing, which focuses on identifying stocks with high growth potential so I can beat the market.

As I study about the strategies involved in growth investing, I can't help but think about analogous strategies we should be applying in our own lives. In effect, we each need to become our own best growth stocks.

Becoming Your Own Growth Stock

If you were a stock, would people invest in you?

Thinking of yourself as a stock might seem strange, but the analogy can expose some interesting concepts. Ask yourself the following:

• Am I a growth stock?
• Did I beat the market return of 30% last year?
• Am I growing or am I losing value?
• Would people want to invest in me?

This growth stock concept is as applicable in the financial performance of your personal or work life as it is for non-financial performance. Consider this: Have you achieved above average performance in the following areas of your life?

• Physical. Are you healthier this year than last year? Will you be healthier at the end of this year?
• Mental/Learning. Have you increased your knowledge over the last year? Will you do so in the coming year? Will your mental health be better at the end of this year?
• Spiritual. Will you be more spiritually balanced at the end of this year? Has your spirituality grown over the past year?
• Work. Are you providing more value at work this year than you were the previous year?
• Relationships. Did the quality of your relationships improve from year to year? Are you finding more quality time to spend with loved ones? Are you increasing the quality of the time you spend?

These questions get at the heart of personal continuous improvement. Goals and the proper goal setting process are at the heart of becoming a personal growth stock.

In episodes 3 and 29 of my podcast Continuous Improvement 4 Life, I reviewed a 4-point system for setting and accomplishing goals.  Even with the best goal-setting system, we sometimes find ourselves not accomplishing our goals.  Sometimes we get discouraged and give up on our goals.  Sometimes we just keep trying the same thing harder and expecting different results.  I'd like to teach you a problem-solving method for getting any goal unstuck and back in growth mode.

A popular lean problem-solving method is the DMAIC framework. DMAIC (pronounced de-MAY-ick) is as follows:

• Define. What is the business problem or project goal?
• Measure. How can you measure current and future performance?
• Analyze. What are all the factors that could be affecting performance?
• Improve. Which factor should we change for the greatest net improvement?
• Control. How can we embed the change and ensure sustainability?

Example: Applying DMAIC to Personal Investing

To see how DMAIC works, let's walk through the framework in the context of personal investing.

Define: What is the business problem or project goal? In the case of personal investing, I wanted a higher return on investment. Specifically, I wanted to beat the market by at least 20 points. This was my problem and opportunity statement.

Measure: What does the data say? What is my baseline performance? Last year my investments achieved a 28% return on investment. Here are the achievements of various index funds:

• Dow: 23%
• S&P: 30%
• Nasdaq: 37%

An additional metric of note was that over the last 20 years, the returns of the Dow were 7% and the S&P 5.9%. So last year was an incredible year for sure.

Analyze: What are the root causes? Why was my return on investment last year roughly the average of the most common stock indexes? The answer: I had over 200 stocks and ETFs in my portfolio, so my stock picks were so diversified I was destined to achieve market averages.

Improve: What can I do to eliminate the root causes of my issue and prevent future problems? My favorite way to approach this step is to ask, “What are the best doing that I can replicate or learn from?” For those investment firms that achieved over 50% last year, what are they doing differently from me?

For example, over the last 16 years, David Gardner of the Motley Fool has achieved a 621% return. What can I do more like Gardner to achieve similar results?

For me to achieve the right results, I started to apply lessons from the best advisors I've come to trust.

A key learning here is to become a researcher of your own performance. Be curious, be an objective observer.  Analyze your areas of improvement as dispassionately as possible and put a plan in place to improve.  If you can't analyze objectively, then get an accountability partner or coach to help you.

Control: How can I embed the changes to ensure sustainability? Now that I've identified qualified advisors, I've started reviewing their recommendations every Saturday in preparation to make the appropriate investment changes for Monday.

To beat the market by 20 points, I started to focus on the Technology and biotechnology sectors. They have been high growth areas of the market.

Also, I started focusing on companies that have double digit growth in sales and whose stock volume trading has been growing.

So far, this practice has returned a significantly higher return than the general market in just over six months.

I am not trying to become a professional trader but trying to prove a point: with the right mindset, toolset, and skillset you can achieve any goal in life!

Apply DMAIC to Other Aspects of Your Life

I encourage you to apply the DMAIC process to any area of your life. As I mentioned above, you can use DMAIC for the spiritual, emotional, physical, financial, work, or relationship goals you have in your life.  You can problem solve using DMAIC with yourself or use a trusted accountability partner or coach.

At work if you were 20% off target, you would gather as a team to problem solve and implement new actions to improve. Why don't we do the same thing with our personal development?

Just ask, “Which area do I want to work on first?” Pick the area and run through the DMAIC problem-solving process. Review your solutions during your weekly planning process and you will achieve outstanding improvements and results in your life.

You can achieve any improvement in your life. You just need the right mindset, toolset, and skillset to analyze and improve.

I hope these tools and examples have inspired you to work on your own personal or professional continuous improvement.

Be a Personal Continuous Improvement Growth Stock!

With questions or comments, email me at rheyland@gmail.com.

My wife Cheryl and I love to waterski. We have loved to waterski since we first learned on Montana lakes in our teenage years. 

The other day, Cheryl took me for a morning ski on calm glass water at 7.30 a.m. Suddenly, while moving at 30 miles per hour, the boat abruptly tilted on its side. The jolting tilt didn't affect me behind the boat, but those family members in the boat were highly alarmed because someone could have been thrown out.

Thankfully no one was injured, but we were shocked that a boat running at 30 miles an hour could suddenly tilt the way it did.

As we arrived home, we found a letter in the mail telling us that the software on our boat needed an update and that its current configuration could cause the boat's trim tab (a little underwater wing that affects the pitch of our model of boat) to tilt at high speeds, causing serious injury or harm. Yikes! 

The software update was an easy fix and the boat is fine, but we consider ourselves very lucky.

Above you see pictured two trim tabs for motor boats. Compared to a massive 23-foot, 6000-pound boat, the trim tab seems inconsequential. Yet these small sheets of metal can change the whole angle and plane of a massive boat at high speeds.

When a trim tab is working effectively, it can give you the perfect angle and run for your boat, turning your wake from bumpy for waterskiing to very little wake at all. For surfing behind the boat, the trim tab adds depth and cleans up the wake so the surf looks like North Beach in Waikiki, Hawaii!

I'm amazed at how such a small lever had such a big effect on performance. 

Life's Trim Tabs

The above experience got me thinking about my research on habits, happiness, continuous improvement and productivity. 

If something as small as a trim tab can have such a big effect, could there be an analogous trim tab for personal performance? What is the trim tab activity in our lives that can make the difference between a bad ride in life or a great ride?

Weekly planning is the trim tab activity for personal improvement and productivity.

A Return to Goal Setting with Weekly Planning

So many people give up on their goals—or don't even set them anymore—because urgency often wins over importance. Moving at 30 miles per hour, people will often address urgent, in-your-face tasks first, letting non-urgent but highly important activities get swept aside in life's wake. 

Our lives are full of urgent requirements—to pay a bill, to respond to an email, attend various meetings, take kids to lessons and sports activities, and responding to phone calls. If we let every urgent task control all of our time, we'll never get any long-term but important goals done.

Weekly planning, our trim tab, can change that.

Filling the Gap Between Short-Term and Long-Term

Weekly planning serves as a bridge between daily planning and yearly goal setting. 

Spending 20-30-minutes each week to calibrate your goals will set you on a happy and fulfilling course for the week.

Weekly planning is your game plan

You would never go into a competition without a game plan. Some of the best football teams script the first 10-20 plays of the game based on their game planning.

The need for a game plan is also apparent in industrial settings, where every hour of a maintenance shutdown is extremely costly for lost production. Great Shutdowns script out the first several days activity by activity to ensure a good start to the maintenance shutdown period.

Our time is precious, so why would we start our week without a weekly game plan?

Benefits and Requirements of Weekly Game Planning

The benefits of weekly game planning include greater ability to:

1. Focus on and accomplish the important but non-urgent activities/goals
2. Avoid getting sucked into the busy trap
3. Prioritize activities you have wanted to do but have been procrastinating
4. Feel satisfied from working on your most important life items

Here are some of the key factors of success when carrying out your weekly game plan:

1. Have your purpose statement and yearly goals in front of you when setting up your weekly plan.
2. Set your weekly game plan in all areas of your life, not just work. Specifically, set goals in the following areas: Physical, Spiritual, Emotional, Family & Relationships, Work, and Financial.
3. Establish the same time each week to develop your plan. Sunday nights are a good time to set up your week. Train your brain with a consistent time and place to weekly game plan.
4. Refer to your weekly plan during your daily planning sessions.
5. Measure your completion percentage on weekly planning. An 80% completion percentage says you're accomplishing a lot but maybe not setting too easy or too hard of goals for the week.
6. Don't get discouraged. Treat each day and each week as a learning system.
7. Honor what you did well! Learn from what you didn't get accomplished. Love the process!

Here is a sample weekly game plan:

Go to www.ci4life.org to download a weekly game plan sheet. Look for the “weekly game planning tool” menu button.

Send me your learnings and feedback to Rickh@ci4life.org