Analyzing Your Process
I just did a short video post about analyzing your process. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for some time. Mental game coaches, myself included, talk about working the process or trusting the process. However, what do we do if our process isn’t helping us to achieve our goals? Is there a time set aside to analyze and look at our process to make sure it’s still aligned with where we want to go? I believe we must make time to look at what our process is, in order to fully maximize our time ‘working/trusting the process’.
Here are 3 simple ways that I like to analyze my process:
- ) Check in on my personal MVP Process every 3 months
First off, here is a sample of what my personal MVP (Mission, Vision, and Principles) Process looks like. It has adapted over the years, but this helps to guide what I do each quarter and shows where my focus will be.
Every quarter I go back and review what I had written for my MVP Process and then create a new one for the next quarter. This allows me the opportunity to take time and review what went well/got accomplished and what didn’t. This review gives me the chance to make changes/adjustments if I need to. I, also, have a daily review, where I look through my MVP Process to remind myself what my mission, vision, and principles are. This helps to keep me focused on my process and allows for adaptability where needed.
2.) Weekly 168 Plan
A 168 plan is an hour by hour plan of your week (24 X 7 = 168). Each week I sit down and plan out what each day is going to look like. This allows for you to go about your week with a sense of control because you have given yourself the best chance to be successful by planning ahead. The old saying: “fail to plan, plan to fail” has a lot of truth to it and the more planned out you are, the better chance you have to ‘trust your process’. If you don’t have a plan, then do you really have a process worth trusting in? We must learn to take an hour (at most) out of our week (I like to do it on sundays) to make a plan for the week ahead. This is especially crucial for high achievers, coaches, and athletes as your schedules begin to get packed tighter and tighter the higher you climb the ladder.
3.) Nightly Process
Each night I’ve started to take time in my PM routine to write out 5 positives/1 needs improvement or negative from the day. This gives me an opportunity to keep a positive outlook no matter what my day looked like, while still being able to see constructive feedback as well. 5 positives to 1 negative is what we talk about in education as a great ratio for feedback to our kids, so I believe it is an important ratio when talking to myself as well. If we are constantly critiquing ourselves and never praising ourselves for successes, we won’t learn to enjoy the process and may miss the fact that we are actually moving towards our goals. Lastly, I also have found that writing out what was controllable/uncontrollable during the day allows me to see if I struggled to ‘work the process’ or if things were outside of my control for that day. After doing both of these things I choose to let go of that day and get ready to attack the next day with a positive outlook.
These are 3 ways that help me to analyze my process and see if what I’m doing daily, weekly, and monthly/quarterly is helping to move me toward my goals. This can be an incredibly helpful process for athletes and coaches. If you’re interested in learning more you can DM me, Andrew Harris , or email me at abharris03@gmail.com
