Athletic Directors Toolbox

Making a Not to Do List

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By Mandy Green

Mandy is the  Head Soccer Coach at The University of South Dakota.

 

Mandy is also an Author, Speaker, Trainer and Consultant. She has posted many useful tools for coaches of all sports on her site Busy.Coach

All of us fall sports are less than a month away from starting our seasons.  AAAAHHH! So exciting!

I’m sure you have either had or will have shortly a conversation with your staff about your priorities and what you want to accomplish for the season.  I just did this recently by myself and my list ended up being about 25 things that I wanted to work on.

After jotting down my initial list, I then met with my staff to review the list and we circled the top five that were most important to us for this season. As I expected, we initially struggled to narrow down everything, and it took some time to make a decision on what our top 5 would be.

Finally, when we decided on our top five, we next needed to ask “Now what are we going to do with the other 20 things on our list?”

Hesitantly, my assistants responded: “Well, the top five things are our primary focus. The other 20 things are not as urgent, but we can still plan to work them into our practices.”

Sounds like a reasonable answer right?

What I said next surprised them.

“I believe that is a mistake that we have made in the past. I think that everything we didn’t circle just became our ‘avoid at all cost’ list.”

We all have so many things in our coaching life that we want to do and accomplish. Who wouldn’t want to succeed at 25 different things? I learned the hard way that when we chase after 25 things at once with our team, we run the risk becoming a jack-of-all trades, but a master of none.

Items 6-25 on your list are probably all very important things, and things that could make your team better. But when it comes to Items 1-5, Items 6-25 are a distraction.

As James Clear writes, “Spending time on secondary priorities is the reason you have 20 half-finished projects instead of 5 completed ones.”

In my study of high performers over these last few years, avoiding distractions to focus on what matters has been a HUGE key to their success.

What sets apart high achievers is not the number of ambitious things they plan to get done, it’s the ability to avoid distractions in order to focus on accomplishing the things that matter.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” — Steve Jobs

Creating a NOT To-Do List
We’ve all familiar with creating a to-do list to increase our productivity and that is the first list I want you to create. The 2nd type of list that will jump start our productivity is the not-do list – things we shouldn’t do. By being conscious of what to avoid, it’ll automatically channels our energy into things that we want to do. Doing both hand in hand will maximize our performance.

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN “NOT TO DO” LIST

Put away your phone, your planner, your to do list apps, and your timers. Instead, take out a sheet of paper and go through this exercise which will help you make your own Not To Do List.

The steps are easy:

  1. Write down your top 25 goals for this upcoming season.
  2. Circle your top 5 goals
  3. Avoid working on any goal that is NOT circled at all costs

Once you have your two lists, focus all your efforts on dominating your top 5 goals and ruthlessly eliminate the 20 less important goals.

It couldn’t be simpler than that.

Whether you’re looking to bring about progress into your program or you’re seeking a way to simplify your coaching life. Creating a Not To-Do List will help you focus on the projects that matter.

Seeing through on your do-not-do list ultimately may take sheer force of will. Like everything, you will get better with practice.  Jim Collins writes, “The real question is… do you have the discipline to do the right thing and, equally important, to stop doing the wrong things?”

When you get stuck on your not-to-do list, you waste time and end the day frustrated because you didn’t progress on your important top 5 goals.  Make your list and post it where you can always see it to remind yourself of what you should not be doing.  Enlist the support of co-workers to help keep you on track.  If you find yourself doing something on your do-not-do list, get up, walk around, refocus, and then get back after your important to-do list items.  Good luck!

I’d love to hear what makes your list!  Please email me your list at [email protected]

Prioritize Progress

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This article was provided by Busy.Coach, a great source of ideas for the coach that want to improve their productivity

By Mandy Green

So as you are headed back to work after the  holiday break, hopefully you have already set up your plan of attack.  Are you ready to have the best year, best month, best week, and best day ever with your program, recruiting, and career as a coach?

If your response to that sentence was, “yeah right, I wish,” I imagine that your 2016-2017 school year was filled with people, texts, emails, and voice messages begging for your time, attention, and energy.

As you look back over this past year, would you say that you had more wins or losses for you each day work wise?  By winning, I mean did walk into your office with a plan and then you dominated your day by actually getting your most important work done?  I would consider the day a loss if you found yourself giving your time, attention, and energy away freely to anybody who asked for it.  And then before you knew it, your days were gone and you had no sense of accomplishment or progress.

If you are finding that more often than not, your days were on the frustrating side because you didn’t feel like you made any significant progress towards your vision and goals, it goes back at some point to how you are prioritizing things during those days.

How have you been doing in this department? Really think about it. Do you feel like you are proactive and in control of your days or do you just wake up and respond to everybody all day? Obviously as coaches, we have to be available to our team, staff, administration, and recruits, but not as much as you may think or are currently doing.

Today I want to teach you one new way to think about your prioritization. When you do a better job of prioritizing things, I know that you will find that you will start having more wins than losses day by day.

Stop prioritizing the easy.  You know if you are guilty of prioritizing easy if your day feels like there is a whole lot of busy work but you don’t feel as if you’re spending a significant amount of time on work that can make your program better.  I’m sure that you probably intended to do a significant amount of high priority work before you got in the office.  But you think that to get a great start to the day and to build some momentum, you will just get some of the easy things off of your to-list. And then what tends to happen is that you never ever really get around to doing work that will really move the needle for your program.

Coach, you set up your day.  You can choose to do things first that will make a real difference in your program and could change your program for the better in a significant way.  Sure, those other things need to get done.  But choose to do them only after you have spent at least 90 minutes on high priority things.

Stop prioritizing easy, “prioritize progress”.  Things that matter to your program. When you are planning your day, ask yourself, what 3 things must happen today that will get me some real movement forward? I want you to take on something hard every single day. If you do that you will start to find yourself getting a little bit more confident, more momentum, and more into that space where you’ll feel like you are doing things you were meant to do.

For more great ideas to improve your productivity visit Busy.Coach

Goal Setting for Coaches

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This article was provided by Coaches Network

Part of coaching is dreaming big. But it’s not enough to just hope for the best. When you set goals for yourself and your team, there are a number of steps you can take to turn these goals into reality. An article on CoachesTrainingBlog.com is a detailed checklist that will help you achieve your aspirations and get on the path to success.

1. Clarify the goal

When setting goals for the future, it can be easy to leave them as vague and undefined. But this allows for too much wiggle room and doesn’t provide a tangible way to measure your efforts. Start by setting an objective that is measurable. In order to know that you and your team have reached the goal, there needs to be a quantitative way to assess progress. By making a goal clear and identifiable, you are one step closer to making it a reality.

2. Make the goal real

Imagination is just as powerful as reality. Imagine in detail what it will feel like when you reach your goal. Think about where you will, who will be there, and what the moment will look like. Use all five senses to set the scene and truly visualize yourself achieving success. Then use this as constant motivation to keep moving forward and working as hard as you can. Before you can get where you want to be, you have to believe in your ability to get there.

3. Strategize action steps

Once you have a clear and measurable goal in place, it’s time to develop a detailed plan to help you get there. Start by thinking about the first steps you have to take to get on the right path. These may be small but are necessary before you can start taking leaps forward. It may be helpful to think about your ultimate goal and then work backwards to identify all the steps you will have to take to get there. Each action, no matter how big or small, difficult or easy, frustrating or enjoyable, should be treated as equally important.

Click here to read the full article.

4. Strategize accountability

It’s essential that you hold yourself and those around you accountable. This means setting a standard and sticking to it. As a coach, this often requires leading by example and showing your staff and your athletes what it means to pursue a goal and treat everyday as a chance to grow and get close to achieving success. Everyone should be held to the same standard, no matter their contribution or talent level. By staying committed to a goal and to those around you, you will inspire confidence and motivation to take the necessary steps forward.

5. Celebrate each step

A major part of keeping the confidence and motivation alive is to acknowledge every positive gain. This is an essential part of coaching in general and will help you inspire your athletes and fellow coaches to be their best. When you celebrate an achievement, you provide motivation to keep working and achieving more. The road to success is often long and full of challenges, but by celebrating positive step along the way, you can make the road that much smoother.

Click here to read the full article.

Four Items for Your Coaching Toolbox

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This article and other helpful coaching tools can be found at Coach Dawn Writes

By Dawn Redd-Kelly, Head Volleyball Coach at Beloit College.

Folks who are fixer uppers or tinkerers know that the key to handling any situation is having a nice toolbox.  Whether its needle nosed pliers or a power saw or cordless drill…these things will prove to be essential for any job that needs to be completed.  And it’s the same with coaching!  We need to have a toolbox that is stocked so that we’re able to deal with the disgruntled player, the starter whose spot is about to be taken, as well as the athletic director that wants you to fundraise a ridiculous amount of money each year.

Here’s four things that every coach should have in their toolbox:

Mentors

When I took my first head coaching job at age 24, my toolbox only had a hammer and a couple of nails clanking around in it…not nearly enough for the repair project I’d taken on!  I was certainly enthusiastic, but that needed to be combined with knowledge…and I was a bit short on that.  Enter our men’s basketball coach who was a legend in his field and had a head full of coaching genius that he was willing to share.  So I’d haul my butt up to his office about once a week and we’d chat.  Sometimes about my team, sometimes about his, but each and every time I learned something from this man.

Peers

Here’s one thing I know: coaches love talking about coaching.  Once you find folks with a similar philosophy, make it a point to talk to them and pick their brains.  I truly believe that coaching is coaching so it doesn’t matter if you talk to the football coach or the soccer coach…if you share the same philosophical foundation, you’ve set yourself up for fun and challenging conversations about coaching.

Seminars/Conventions

Be a coaching nerd!  Go to your sport’s convention…and attend the sessions (not just the social stuff) and hang out after it’s over and chat with the presenter.  Go to local clinics even if you don’t think you’ll learn something new…you certainly won’t if you don’t go!  Plus other coaches will be there and maybe you’ll be able to chat them up and get a different viewpoint on an old problem.  This will help keep you current in your field.

Books

I read a lot of books.  I read books for myself in order to grow in my leadership and influence.  I also read books that I think will be good for my team to read during the season.  Sometimes they’re sports books, sometimes they’re business oriented, and other times they’re faith-based…but what they all share in common is that I think that they’ll make me a better coach.

Energy Management Tips For Coaches

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These Energy Management Tips are provided by Busy.Coach, a great source of ideas for the coach that wants to improve their productivity

By Mandy Green

For coaches to be at the top of their game, to be action oriented, fast moving, and extremely productive, you have to have high levels of physical and mental energy. In July I spoke at The Alliance of Women’s Coaches Conference about a 5X50 method that I learned from Brendon Burchard. This has helped me to create more sanity and less stress to my day. I have written about a lot of these before, but I can’t stress enough how important they all are

1. Sleep 50 minutes more.

Unless you usually sleep 8 hours per night, bump your regular sleep routine up by 50 minutes. This means go to bed 50 minutes earlier. That extra sleep will improve your cognitive scores by 22% within 7 days. Nice! Plus, you’ll have more energy to get stuff done, and you’ll be kinder to others – yep, the science proves it.

2. Spend 50 minutes in the morning stretching and strategizing.

Stretch for 20 minutes (I recommend yoga) then strategize your day for 30 minutes. This means you do not check email or respond to others in the first 50 minutes of the day. This alone will change your life. The inbox is nothing but a convenient organizing system of other peoples’ agendas; so if you begin the day in your inbox you are framing the day in reaction not thought. Instead, get in tune with your body, then sit down and decide on the major projects and priorities you will dramatically move forward today. If you’re not strategizing and actually *thinking* about your day, goals and life for 30 minutes per day, you’re not yet living an intentional and fully conscious life.

3. Work/create in 50-minute scheduled blocks.

During these blocks, NOTHING is allowed to happen except your focus and work. (See what happens when you try to cover too many things at the same time in precious articles of mine about multitasking…) You don’t take calls, look at your inbox, browse, or start other activities. You do ONE THING. I block 3-4 of these per day and it’s why, in just a few years, I became “the most prolific content developer and trainer in the personal development world. It’s how I amassed 3MM followers and built an 8-figure company. FOCUS.”

4. Every 50 minutes, take a BREAK.

I set an alarm on my phone to go off every 50 minutes. It helps me get that block time done, but it also makes sure I stand, stretch and hydrate every hour. No matter what I’m doing, no matter how interested or passionate I am, at the 50-minute mark I stand, get water, stretch or walk, even if just for 3-10minutes. It refreshes the mind, allows the body to re-align after sitting, and builds up tremendous stores of energy.

5. Create 50 minute renewal times.

I do 20 minutes of the Release Meditation Technique every day, and I also walk briskly OUTSIDE for 30 minutes – EVERY day. That’s 50 minutes in the day total to completely focus on energy renewal. Yes, I also work out every other day, but that is not counted in this or the other 50 minute blocks, but yours could. This 50 minutes of total renewal each day is a MUST for high performers who want to be creative, energized and without gobs of stress.