Unleash your inner Olympian. Discover four habits that drive the world's top athletes to success, and learn how to apply these principles to your professional life. Elevate your work performance and competitiveness, inspired by the Olympic spirit.
Four Habits to Recreate Record-Setting Performances
Identify and Enhance Your Strengths
- Designing a lifestyle or culture that supports continuous improvement
- True innovators don’t play by the same rules as everyone else; they introduce new concepts that lead to a whole new game altogether.
Leverage new technology… twice
The best athletes and coaches are attentive to technological advancements to gain an immediate edge that shaves seconds off their time.
- However, the immediate performance gains from technology are just the first step. Technology also opens the door to transformative new approaches that defy the dogma about how something is done.
Train your mindset to attempt new techniques and explore possibilities
The greatest athletes, coaches, and innovators don’t stop when something is working
- They ignore what competitors are doing and continue working to disrupt themselves
- To find your own Fosbury Flop, butterfly, or Lochte Turn, try something that is inconsistent with what people expect
- Develop a habit of seeking new approaches and looking past currently accepted solutions
Identify and enhance your strengths
The biggest leaps forward come when an athlete discovers a new idea or concept that alters the game itself
- Try this quick exercise to identify your own strengths and determine where you might focus your innovative efforts
- Make a list of all the initiatives you are executing or considering. For each activity, ask: If I am successful with this initiative, what impact will it have on my objectives? How easy is it to execute?
Design for continuous improvement
Often, expertise and conventional rules bind us to repeating what has worked in the past.
- To experience disruptive success, apply what Zen Buddhists call a “beginner’s mind.”
- Take one of your initiatives and try to imagine that you’re approaching it for the first time.
