Whenever I watch tennis I am amazed at how these players make it look so easy. Of course it isn’t easy and this is why these players are making millions of dollars. The better a player is, the easier they make the game look. When I watch Andy Roddick play against some guy in the first round he seems pretty comfortable, but when I watch him play Roger Federer he looks like he is working extremely hard, while Roger almost always looks like the game is effortless to him. I have experienced this in my own sporting endeavors before, a state of being where you feel as though you are hardly trying, and yet you are performing better than you have ever performed before. Oftentimes this means you are “in the zone”.
The zone is not just applicable to sports though, it can happen at anytime in your life really. It is being in the moment so that you can allow your training to take over, so that your choices are more automatic, and you are less likely to doubt yourself. So how can we apply this principle to business? It’s difficult because business is more of a marathon than a sprint, and to maintain this state constantly is quite difficult. Even if you can’t be in the zone all the time, you can implement the art of not trying.
If your mind is overloaded with things you need to get done, and your life is quite complicated, using the art of not trying is probably not going to be feasible. In order to successfully not try you need to cut out the trivial many, and focus on the critical few as Tim Ferriss says. The sports analogy I would use is that you need to have smooth and efficient technique in order to appear effortless. Roger Federer looks like he isn’t trying because he is so smooth on court, and regardless of whatever pressure he is under he still looks smooth because of his impeccable technique. In business this means focusing on what really matters, and not being overwhelmed by numerous small things that should be delegated to someone else, or batch processed at a later time.
If you feel like you’re working too hard, you probably are. Unfortunately that also means that you are probably doing things in an inefficient manner, and until you become more efficient you have to keep working hard. In reality the better word to choose would probably be effective, because if you are really efficient at doing trivial tasks, you aren’t really going to be getting ahead. This of course applies to sports as well. If Roger Federer only had smooth technique he wouldn’t be the champion he is today, but because he also hits very effective shots, he gets amazing results.
So, think about your daily routine, how could you become more efficient, and more importantly, how could you become more effective? Decide what are the most important tasks that you need to get done, and do those tasks first. In a worst case scenario, if you didn’t get to respond to some email or to do some other trivial task, at least you got that important item done, and you will be feeling a lot less stressed as a result. Really break down your day, and find the time hogs. Write out what you need to get done the night before, and when the morning comes, attack the most important items first.
For those of you who buy into the law of attraction, which is the foundation of “The Secret”, you’ll understand what I’m getting at here. It’s important to be clear on what you want in life and for your business, but you can’t try so hard. When you start trying too hard what happens is you start to focus on the opposite of what you’re hoping to accomplish, and by focusing on the negative you tend to attract something negative.
Sometimes it’s easier to keep our bad habits, we’re too lazy to change them, even though changing these habits would mean we could be lazier later! So don’t be lazy now, find and fix your bad habits, you’ll thank yourself for it later.