Hi Everyone and welcome back to the Hockey Journey Podcast, episode number 95, Solving Your Productivity Puzzle, presented to you by Online Hockey Training dot com. I'm your host Coach Lance Pitlick. If you're new here, please make sure you subscribe, so you won't miss out on any future episodes.
Before we start hearing how we all can become a little more productive in a day and begin the conversation, if you want to learn more about me, my hockey experiences, that I have the world's largest database of off-ice stickhandling, passing and hockey shooting drills, what I know, and most importantly, how I've been helping hockey players get really good with a stick and puck, just head on over to onlinehockeytraining.com and gain instant access to my 10 part video series where I'll show you everything. Consider it my gift to you.
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Again, welcome to the Hockey Journey Podcast, where today we're going to explore the intersection of sports, personal growth, and success. In today's episode, we'll be discussing one of the most important skills for any athlete or professional: productivity. Whether you're a hockey player looking to improve your game or a business owner striving for success, being productive is essential to achieving your goals.
To help us dive deeper into this topic, I'll be referencing a couple powerful books that have crossed my path over the years: "Organize Tomorrow Today" by Jason Selk and Tom Bartow, and "Making Life a Masterpiece" by Orison Swett Marden. Each of these titles offers valuable insights and strategies for boosting productivity and achieving success.
So if you're struggling to stay focused, manage your time effectively, or achieve your goals, this episode is for you as you start preparing for a productive off-season of training and personal improvement. I'll be sharing practical tips and strategies that you can apply to your own life and work, so you can start solving your productivity puzzle and achieving the results you want. Let's get started.
Book Number One
Organize Tomorrow Today
8 Ways to Retrain Your Mind to Optimize Performance at Work and in Life
By Jason Selk and Tom Bartow
Quote #1
“In Organize Tomorrow Today, we’re going to show you how to embrace channel capacity instead of fighting against it. You’re going to learn how to make decisions, establish priorities, and light your own motivating fire instead of continuing to chase the counterintuitive concept of multitasking. Most people still seem to believe that being busy is the equivalent of being important, but the highly successful have learned that being busy is a waste of time: being productive is the goal. ... knowing something doesn’t change your life. Doing something does. Getting through this book (or a class) is one thing, but there’s a huge difference between acquiring information and understanding it. And there’s an even wider gap between understanding it and implementing it, or actually doing it. This is why there is such an emphasis in Organize Tomorrow Today to avoid trying to master all eight concepts at once. Doing so is a recipe for inaction and failure. Success comes one dedicated and focused step at a time. The most successful people we see are the ones who take this information and use it in real life. Every day. Follow the template, and you’re getting a playbook for speeding up the process of getting from information acquisition to skill implementation. Jason and Tom call it the Owner’s Manual for Doers.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
THE 2 MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS FOR TOMORROW
“To set yourself on the right track, ask yourself those two critical questions: (1) What are the three most important things I need to get done tomorrow? and (2) What is the single most important task I must get done? The questions work within your brain’s ‘channel capacity’ to give you direction and prioritization in manageable doses. When you start your day, you know the three most important things you need to get done by the end of the day, and you know which of those three things is the big, glow-in-the-dark priority. You’ll be amazed at how much clearer your decision-making becomes—and how much more efficiently you’ll use your time—just by taking this simple organizational step.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
YOU ROCKIN’ THE ZEIGARNIK EFFECT?
“When you go to the effort to make a prioritized list of what you need to do the next day, you’reessentially opening a loop in your mind. As you sleep, your brain will automatically start preparing for the successful closing of those loops. It’s known as the ‘Zeigarnik Effect.’ In the 1920s, Russian psychology researcher Bluma Zeigarnik quantified the phenomenon after her professor, Kurt Lewin, noticed that waiters who hadn’t been paid for an order had much more recall of the details of those orders than they did for orders that had been paid. Working from Zeigarnik’s research, Lewin came up with the concept of ‘task-specific-tension,’ which persists in both the conscious and subconscious mind until the task is completed. In other words, the mind doesn’t like unfinished business! High-level mathematicians and successful writers have been using this technique for years as a tool for pushing their work forward. Before going to bed, they take a few minutes to read over the mathematical or literary work they did during the day—especially if they’ve reached a plateau or feel stuck. The mind then works all night to close the loop, and they wake up in the morning with ‘inspiration.’ It seems magical, but it isn’t so much magical as it is the result of the effective priming of the mentalpump.” (End Quote)
Quote #4
ARE YOU NAILING IT?
“What does ‘nailing it’ mean? If you’ve truly mastered one positive change, we call it ‘nailing it.’ It’s become a popular shorthand catchphrase with many of our students. For you to have fully integrated the improvement and the changes it requires, it means that for three consecutive months, you’ve been able to complete the change on a daily basis 90 percent of the time or better. Whatever improvement you choose—whether it’s Organizing Tomorrow Today or committing to doing the Mental Workout—you need to be able to do it nine out of ten days for three months straight—with no excuses. If you can’t do it, it means you need to increase your discipline or commit to a smaller level of intensity. Get started by proving to yourself that you can nail it, even if it’s a smaller commitment. You can always increase later on. An essential element of performance is for people to learn to trust themselves. When you prove 90 percent of the time that you can nail it, you can’t help but grow your confidence and self-trust.” (End Quote)
Quote #5
FIGHT-THRUS (= THE KEY TO HABIT INSTALLATION) “This is the point where ‘I can do this’ turns into ‘This is harder than I thought,’ or, ‘Is it really going to matter if I miss a day’ To make it through to the third phase, when the habit becomes second nature, you need to be able to win two or three of these important fight-thru battles with your yourself.”
“The amazing things that world-class athletes are able to accomplish are usually chalked up to freak ability—and that certainly can be a factor. But a much bigger factor in those athletes reaching that level is their relentless ability to consistently win the fight-thrus.” (End Quote)
Quote #6
HERE’S YOUR NEW MENTAL TOUGHNESS WORKOUT
“Your mind is a muscle just like your bicep. If you want your bicep to become stronger, you mustcomplete bicep curls on a regular basis. The same is true for your mind. If you want to becomementally tough, you must complete mental workouts consistently. Muscle deterioration begins within seventy-two hours of your last workout. Just as this is the case with your bicep, it also holds true for your brain. The goal should be to never let two days go by without some type of physical activity, nor should you go two days without completing a mental workout.” (End Quote)
Quote #7
HOW TO BE STRONG + RESILIENT
“Strong, resilient people have what we call a ‘Relentless Solution Focus,’ or RSF. If a person with a great RSF was in the same situation and lost that big client, he or she wouldn’t be some kind of emotionless robot—the loss would sting. But the immediate, laser-sharp focus would be on finding the solution path, and doing it in less than sixty seconds. We say ‘solution path’ because many, many problems aren’t solved with one lightning strike of an idea, obviously. A solution is a process, and there are steps to that process. In RSF, your goal when presented with a problem is to identify one step within sixty seconds that you can take that will make the situation better—even if only by a small increment of improvement. RSF is not about finding the ‘perfect’ solution but, rather, about just identifying some kind of improvement. It’s called the ‘+1 solution,’ because any improvement whatsoever to the current situation is part of a solution. The +1 concept has been credited numerous times with making the previously deemed impossible actually possible.” (End Quote)
Quote #8
REPETITION, REPETITION, REPETITION, REPETITION
“Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. . . . Mastery only comes from effort and repetition. You wouldn’t expect your five-year-old to be able to tie her shoes the first time. In the words of the Zen master Suzuki, if you lose the spirit of repetition, your practice will become difficult. This was one of the absolute cornerstones of Coach Wooden’s teaching.” (End Quote)
Book Number Two
Making Life a Masterpiece
By Orison Swett Marden
Quote #1
“No one can make the most of himself until he looks upon his life as a magnificent possibility, the material for a great masterpiece to mar or spoil which would be a tragedy. Without such an ideal, without an ambition to live the life triumphant, the life worthwhile, that which will call out the largest, completest, superbest man or woman one is capable of being, there is no possibility of true success.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
TRUE SUCCESS
“How few of us realize that true success, which is open to all, is not measured by the accomplishment of some great thing; that it does not consist in being wealthy, famous, or powerful; but that it is the crown of all who honestly, earnestly do their best and live the everyday simple life, with all that it involves in the practice of the commonplace duties of every day. It is by the exercise of the common, homely virtues; it is by trying to do everything one attempts to a complete finish; by trying to be scrupulously honest in every transaction; by always ringing true in our friendships, even by holding a helpful, accommodating attitude toward those about us; by trying to fulfill to the best of our ability the obligation to be noble, to be loyal to our highest ideals, it is by such things as these that we make successful lives.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
HUMAN BULBS ATTACHED TO THE GREAT UNIVERSAL CURRENT
“We get light from the electric current in proportion to the number of candle power in the electric bulb. The filament in a four power candle lamp cannot take off the light of a sixteen candle power lamp. We are human bulbs attached to the great universal current of force and power, and the light which we give off depends on the candle power of our lamps. Many people go through life with a little dim four candle light, not because they lack power to generate a stronger light, but because they never learned how to express their power. Why be a candle when you can be an arc light?” (End Quote)
Quote #4
YOU ARE THE CAPTAIN OF YOUR LIFE SHIP
“What would become of a sea captain who whenever he saw a fog settling down on the waters, or a storm coming up, would turn his ship around and sail back to the port he had left? You know he would lose his job and be branded as an incompetent and a coward. Every sea captain keeps his ship true to the compass and he plows through fogs, storms or hurricanes to his distant goal. You are the captain of your life ship, and it is up to you to bring it into port grandly. If you haven’t the qualities of a good sea captain your ship is in danger. Downright hard work, a purpose which never flags, a grit and nerve which never retreat; these are the qualities that make life victorious.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
NOBODY EVER DRIFTED INTO ANYTHING DESIRABLE
“It would be impossible for a ship to come into a certain port without a compass as it would be for a man or woman to make any headway on the sea of life without a purpose. Nobody ever drifts into anything desirable. To get the thing worthwhile you must know where your goal lies, and you must make straight for it, past all the rocks and sandbars.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
FRESH MINDS + FIRST-CLASS WORK
“Many think that all great achievement depends upon unceasing industry; that, if they keepeverlastingly at it, if they are always at work, their accomplishment will be greater than if they work less and play more. There could not be a greater mistake... Clear, strong thinking springs from freshness and enthusiasm, and these qualities are not produced by strenuous, driving methods...
There is no greater delusion than that we can accomplish more by working a great many hours each day, straining mind and body to the limit of endurance, than by working fewer hours with less straining, less fatigue, but with greater freshness and intensity. First-class work is impossible to brains exhausted by lack of recreation and sleep.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
BIG LITTLE THINGS
“It may seem a very far cry from such trivialities to the great catastrophes of life, but to my mind the highest courage, the finest and most complete self-mastery are no more than the result of the habit of control and steadiness in the small things of life. The man or woman who meets the little things calmly will be prepared for the more serious or the unexpected, and will ultimately, through force of habit, attain that sublime order of courage, poise, self-mastery, which even the greatest calamity cannot shake. And though his highest courage may never be put to the test, the one who has habituated himself to self-control in little things will have gained the strength of character that will make him a person of mark in every situation of life.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #8
WHAT COULD YOU DO WITH AN HOUR A DAY?
“I wish it were possible to blazon on the sky, where it would burn itself into the consciousness of every youth, the marvelous results of even one hour a day spent in persistent, concentrated, earnest self-culture. What young man is really too busy to give an hour a day to self-improvement, self-enlargement? One hour a day for a short time profitably employed would enable men of ordinary capacity to master a complete science. One hour a day in ten years would make an ignorant man a well informed man. In an hour a day a boy or girl could read twenty pages thoughtfully—more thanseven thousand pages in a year, or eighteen large volumes. An hour a day might make—nay—hasmade—an unknown man famous, a useless man a benefactor of his race. Think of the mightypossibilities of two—four—yes, even six hours a day that are often thrown away by young men and women in frivolous amusement!” (End Quote)
Thank you for tuning in to the Hockey Journey Podcast, episode 95, Solving Your Productivity Puzzle. Today we explored the intersection of sports, personal growth, and success, and discussed some valuable insights and strategies for boosting productivity and achieving success. Remember, productivity is not about being busy, but about being productive and achieving your goals.
Well that concludes another episode of the hockey journey podcast. I can’t thank you enough for stopping by and listening. I hope you enjoyed learning about ways to be more productive. Lastly, if you think there’s someone in your circle of family and friends that might like this episode as well, please share it with just one person, it will really help me in growing this hockey community.
Again, I appreciate you being here, don’t forget to subscribe, rate or submit a review, I hope to see you back here soon, and do me a favor, make someone close to you smile today. All the best my friends!!
