[00:00] All right, here we go. I’ll give you the hook and we’ll jump right in.

[00:10] Nobody wakes up and decides that they want to drift. It happens quietly. It happens over the course of years, maybe one week at a time, one month at a time. This episode today, what I’m gonna give you is about how to stop the drift before you wake up. You know, 2, 3, 5, 10 years down the road. Look back at your life and think, man, I thought I’d be further ahead by now.

[00:30] Maybe you feel that way right now. Let’s talk about stopping the drift today, tactically and strategically, what do you need to do?

[00:47] Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man, real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus and business in life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I’m bringing you a solo episode. We’re talking about consistency. I talk about, you know, consistency in business in life, and my opening every time.

[01:05] Well, consistency is a skill. How do you build this in the busy? Noisy world that you live in. If you’re anything like my clients and most of my listeners, you’re a father, husband, and big job and pulled in a million different directions, trying to find time to work out, trying to find time to fit it all in.

[01:26] And you find yourself being inconsistent in certain ways. Right? Listen, I, as I record this episode, I’m looking in the mirror and I take my own medicine. I, I, I, I. Understand where you’re at because I’m in a very similar situation. Four kids married, own my own business on multiple boards and trying to do it all.

[01:48] And I understand there are limitations to that and I understand how to put the guardrails in place. And I’ve worked with hundreds of men to help them do the same thing.

[02:04] When we talk about consistency, nothing is going to change your behavior faster than awareness. Not willpower, not willpower, not motivation, but awareness. So today I’m gonna show you how to create awareness and awareness, not not just general awareness, but awareness of the right things. And like I said, of.

[02:24] Done this with hundreds and hundreds of men over the course of a decade plus of my business now and, and even before that as a college. Coach, athletic, you know, wrestling coach and management, and leading other people through multiple businesses and prior jobs. Like how do you do this? How do you help people become aware and be more consistent?

[02:46] And I’m gonna break down the results of a famous study for you today and how this applies to your life. With specific examples for you and what exactly you should do next, I’m gonna share with you at the end what exactly you should do next, and I’m gonna give you specific results that my clients get when they apply.

[03:06] What I’m gonna share with you here today. Now one of my clients, his name’s Gordy, and he said to me on a call recently, a few months ago, he said. Jim, I need you to extract me from the matrix once a month. Like, and what he’s referring to is the matrix that you, the world that you live in, that I live in, that Gordy lives in of, of busyness, and.

[03:28] Sometimes chaos where we just feel like we’re reacting all day long and we’re getting a hundred things done, going a hundred miles an hour all day long, but we’re not sure we’re ever really moving the needle. And how do you make sure you’re moving the needle where you get out of the matrix, you extract yourself from that, just like a general uh uh, surveying the battlefield.

[03:50] You can’t get that same perspective, that same view. When you’re a soldier. You need to step back and be the general. I actually heard Jock Willink talking about this recently, a video or a short clip that I saw where he talking about, you’ve gotta be both the general and the soldier, right? There are times when you are just the soldier, you’re out there, you’re executing, you’re not asking questions, you’re just doing the work, and there are times when you need to be the general.

[04:13] You’ve gotta step back, gain awareness, you know what I’m saying? Is detach from the matrix. Do this, uh, this, this, um,

[04:26] do something that I call the, sorry Michael. You can probably edit that. Do something that I call the productive Pause, which is defined as a short period of focused reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind. That’s what this detachment from the Matrix is.

[04:44] This was, that’s what being the general means, gaining perspective, hitting the pause button, and then executing with clarity. And this alone brings you awareness. This is. Observation this. This is time that allows you to observe what is actually happening from a higher level perspective as as opposed to ground level boots on the ground.

[05:07] What is happening in my life, in my marriage, in my fitness, in my health, in my business, in my finances? What is happening and what changes do I need to make? So I mentioned in the opening there that I was gonna reference a study. This is a fairly famous study. You may or may not have heard of this concept, but there’s a, a study called the, it’s, it’s now in hindsight.

[05:30] This, this concept is called the Hawthorne Effect. And this is, originally, it was a study that was done.

[06:26] Sorry, Michael, looking for some information I thought I had.

[06:38] Western Electric’s Hawthorne works back in the 1920s and 1930s, and they were studying how changes in the workplace could affect productivity and how, you know, if they could get people to be more productive, if they changed different effects, different things in their environment. And the one thing that they mostly studied was in this, in.

[07:00] Particular experiment was lighting. How does lighting affect people’s productivity and behavior? And they, they tested whether they, you know, if they increased lighting, does that make people more productive? If they decreased lighting, if they made it dimmer, does that actually affect people’s performance and in productivity?

[07:20] And what they found counterintuitively is that both increasing and decreasing lighting. Both increased productivity. So like, wait a second, what’s going on here? Long story short, what they’ve come to realize and what I think you and I would recognize now is, is being somewhat intuitive and yeah, I I’m not saying that people back there were dumber, were dumber, they just didn’t realize it back then.

[07:43] Um, I think they realized this pretty quickly too, is that there are a lot of things that uh, could, could affect their productivity and one of which is. Just the fact of being observed, like actually observing their productivity made them more productive. Like, think about that for you. Like if you had your boss standing in the corner every day, all day while you worked, are you gonna be more productive or less productive?

[08:13] You’re gonna be more productive. Just the simple fact that it is being observed, that your work, that you are being observed, that your work is being observed, is going to make you more productive. So

[08:28] what they realized in these experiments were, was that performance improves temporarily, not due to some of these factors that they were modifying and and changing, but simply by increased awareness. Awareness. And when I say performance improves temporarily, it drifts back to default when you remove. The awareness, right?

[08:52] When you remove the study, when you remove the, the boss standing in the corner, go figure, increase lighting, decrease lighting, whatever it might be, it’s gonna drift back to the default. So the driver here is, is awareness. It’s, it’s, it’s a self-consciousness. It’s it’s focus. Um, and so whenever you observe something, you change how you behave.

[09:18] Usually in a positive way. This highlight like the, the, these, these experiments highlighted the fact that that awareness alone can change the outcomes even if you take away any strategies that you might trying to be implemented. So how does that, how does that work? How, what does that mean for you? If you were going through your days going 100 miles an hour, getting a hundred things done, but you’re not really aware if I’m moving the needle, am I moving myself towards what I say I want in life?

[09:49] Am I moving myself towards my goals or am I just being busy? Like, think of it, you know, the athletic mind demand, right? Think of this as an in athletics. It’s like, well, okay, I’m, I’m working out,
[10:00] I’m working really hard. Um, am I doing the right things? If you’re not observing how, like if I’m not observing, am I getting stronger?

[10:10] For example, if I’m lifting weights and I want to get stronger, if I’m not actually observing the fact, if I’m getting stronger, but I’m just, I’m, I’m just doing the thing and there’s, there’s no observation taking place. I may not work as hard, and I may, or I don’t even know if I’m getting the results that I wanna get until I stop, zoom out.

[10:30] Uh, recognize, okay, how many days a week am I working out? What are the exercises that I’m doing? Is it moving? You know, am I seeing results? Am I seeing outcomes? Is this process driving outcomes? If you’re not doing that, then you’re just drifting. Going back to what I opened the, the, the episode here today with like, are you just drifting?

[10:50] Nobody wakes up and, and wants to drift. We get into this space in our lives where it’s easy to drift. We, we listen. The, the roadmap of your life has mostly run out If you are in your, you know, thirties, forties, fifties, listening to this. The roadmap is, is blank for you. Now you get to create it. There’s no teacher telling you, uh, what your grade’s going to be.

[11:16] There’s nobody saying, Hey, the next step after high school is college or training, or whatever the next step was for you in particular back then at that point in your lives. Um, nobody’s telling you, Hey, you have to show up at practice tomorrow. Or, Hey, we have a competition next week. Uh. Nobody’s building that.

[11:37] You get to choose. You get to choose where you want to go in life and how you wanna go about it. You, you don’t have that infrastructure that you had as an athlete. There’s nobody stopping and saying, Hey, let’s review film and, and maybe, maybe you’re lucky enough to work in an environment where you have, uh, a great culture, great boss.

[11:57] There’s the right performance metrics in place, the right amount of accountability. Sometimes it can, this can go too far and I’ll talk about that here in a minute. But if you have that, then. You’re gonna feel clarity there, and you’re gonna feel like, okay, I’m, I’m doing the right things, I’m moving the right direction.

[12:14] But now you have to step out a level higher than that. Is this the right career? Is this the right company? Is this the right, uh, is this creating the life and lifestyle that I want? Am I able to go, go home and let go of work and be present with my family, my wife and my kids? Am I able to be actually present there and focus on them?

[12:32] Am I, does, does this allow for the space for me to get my workouts in? Or pursue whatever it is you wanna pursue in your, in your fitness or, or, you know, miss Sogi, right? Those, those, uh, hard super challenging things that you may wanna try in your life. And if you don’t know what I mean by mis sogi, go back to episode number.

[13:03] 312 with Michael Easter. No, I didn’t memorize. I don’t have all my episodes memorized. People ask me that sometimes, like, do you have all your. You just rattled them right off. I actually paused for about 10 seconds to scroll down on my list of episodes and I found it. So that pause will be edited out. But, um, so anyway, three 12 Michael Easter, Easter.

[13:22] We’re gonna have that link in the action plan. By the way, I always, any, any episodes I reference, I always put them in the action plan. So go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. You’ll get access to the action plan and it will remind you go back to episode three 12. It’ll have a link there as well, or you can just scroll back through your podcast player.

[13:38] By the way, while I’m talking about the podcast player that you’re listening to this on, can you leave a rating and review? You know, if you’re driving right now, don’t do it right now, but if you’re not, if you’re in a place where you can leave a rating and review, that goes a long way. It helps people see value in this.

[13:53] I know that whenever I’m looking at new podcasts. I got it. I check out, you know, how many ratings and reviews are they are, are they, is this legit in the, and the more ratings and reviews, you tend to really put, uh, a lot of stock in that. So anyway, thank you in advance for that. But, um, the, you know, do you, you know, the, going back kinda rewinding to where I was like, are you, you know, pursuing maybe the moogy or the, or the bucket list items in your, in your life, does that, is that what your job or your career allows for?

[14:21] If not, you need to zoom out. And, and do this productive pause. If you wanna be consistent, you’ve got to figure, you know, at that higher level, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta find a way to, to step back and figure out what you need to be measuring. And there was a, um, there, there’s a, a paper written or was a, a re research done.

[14:43] This is published on Pub Med and this was an NIH research, uh, uh, paper that was done. It was, it’s called. Systematic review of the Hawthorne Effect, right? The Hawthorne Effect being this, you know, you, you influence behaviors simply by awareness and observation. Alright? So the title of it again is Systematic Review of the Hawthorne Effect.

[15:05] Colon New Concepts are Needed to Study Research Participation Effects. So the idea here is simply, simply studying simply. Researching, putting somebody, you know, a participant into a research study will change their behavior. So the idea is like, you know, if you’re signing up to participate in something, you’re trying to kind of go about life and world and whatever.

[15:31] Uh, by, by your default. Well, just the fact that you’re, you know, you’re in a research, uh, you’re participating in some kinda research study, it will influence your behavior, period. So this was, this, this paper was done in 2014. It was a systematic review of, of other, uh, uh, research that was done, other experiments that were done.

[15:51] And we realized that just observing, whether it’s, you know, having the, you know, the boss, the hypothetical boss standing in the corner, or uh, an just answering questionnaires or knowing that you’re being studied, that alone changes behavior and it will change behavior for you too, like. In my program, for example, one of the things that we do is we track not only your goals, but what we call micro goals.

[16:18] Like month by month you are getting scored. There’s literally a percentage score, so you know, am I on track? Am I off track? That alone? If you do nothing else, but that alone, it will improve your behavior, it will improve your consistency. Now back to this, this research paper, this, this study, uh, 19. There were, it studied 19 different purposefully designed studies, and most of them, most of them, showed evidence of this, this participation effect or this observation, this Hawthorne effect.

[16:57] By the way, those effects, the, the impact of those effect effects tended to be bigger when people were directly observed as opposed to just, you know, filling out forms Certainly had an impact, but. Real accountability, like having to answer to an accountability partner or a coach. I mean, literally, this is stuff that is built in baked into my coaching program.

[17:21] You’ve got to seek this out. This was baked into your life when you were an athlete. You were around other people who were doing the same kinds of things as you. You had coaches, you had team captains, you had teammates. That alone. They were observing you, you were observing them. You knew if they were pushing hard on the sprints.

[17:41] They knew if you were showing up to practice or not. That alone affects your behavior. You don’t have that in your life right now. You probably, you, I’m sure you do at some level, like, yeah, I still have to show up to work or, you know, I don’t know. I, I have a running buddy. That’s great. Like, how can you replicate that in your life to the areas where you want to be better?

[18:04] Even they, they, they came out, they realized in this, this, uh, this review of these 19 different studies, even just self-reporting, like completing questionnaires made small improvements. So for you, what does that mean? Writing it down? Guess what? Writing it down, writing your goals down actually works.

[18:23] Checking in on those goals creates awareness and that nudges you along to actually take action. So listen. You’ve heard this in some different way, shape, or form before. Document your goals, get accountability. Measure your goals, track your goals. You need this in your life. If you wanna be more consistent, you don’t wanna drift, you’ve, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta welcome this into your life.

[18:53] You gotta find ways to, to get this, to insert this into your life. And there’s this idea that it’s often credited to Peter Drucker, Peter Drucker’s, sort of the, the, the, the godfather of modern management consulting. It was a great book called The Daily Drucker. All these sort of one page chapters. Really, really just a lot of great wisdom in there.

[19:12] But, but Peter Drucker is often attributed, this quote is often attributed to him, but it’s actually misattributed, it’s, it’s probably somebody else they think that actually said this. But what the, the idea that what gets measured gets managed, what gets measured, gets managed, and, and it’s true. So if you are not measuring the things that you want to improve at.

[19:34] You will not improve at them at the same rate as if you were actually measuring them, being aware Hawthorne effect. If you had that in place in your life, you would be more consistent, more disciplined, more focused, more productive, all of that. But here’s the catch if you, me, and this is actually what Peter Drucker talked about more, is like if you measure the wrong thing.

[19:55] You’re not gonna get the results you want either, right? That leads to stress micromanagement,
[20:00] you know, if you’re measuring the wrong thing, when you finally lift your head up and, and you look around, you might be wondering, why am I not further ahead? Right? That means you’re either not measuring or you’re measuring the wrong things.

[20:12] So you’ve gotta figure out like what are the right things to measure? And again. You need to do a productive pause to do this. And it’s best to be done with a coach, with a therapist, with a counselor, not your spouse, that you, there’s certain conversations that are great to have with your spouse around, you know, what do we need to measure?

[20:28] But if you wanna zoom out a level, you’ve gotta do this with somebody outside of you. A friend. Yeah, sure. That’s nice. But they’re really not gonna hold you accountable. You’ve got to invest in this. I’m not talking about it with me. I’m like, you’ve gotta find this. This is, this is why coaching actually works.

[20:45] Interviewed Jeff Spencer in a podcast, and that was back in episode number. Yes. By the way, I just did it again. I paused. Found the episode 4 85. 485, and he works with freaking bono from U2. Bono welcomes this kind of accountability. Wait, but he’s a world class performer. Yes. He’s a world class performer.

[21:08] Not despite having a coach, but because he has this person in his life who helps him with, uh, with his own performance and tracking and measuring the right things. But here’s what, here’s what some people end up making. Here’s what people make them say. And I said earlier that I’m gonna give you some specific examples, real life examples of, of what all this means in your life if you’re, if you’re tracking and measuring.

[21:30] Let’s say your kids’ grades, that may or may not be the right thing, right? It’s, it’s an outcome. It’s a la it’s a lagging indicator of the thing that you should be tracking, which is how hard are they studying and well, how many hours are they putting in their, their consistency, their effort? Are they asking for help when they need it?

[21:47] Like, that’s the kind of thing to track because when you just track the grade, like for here, here’s an example. Let’s say your kid’s getting fantastic grades, straight As. They’re not doing any of the work. Guess what’s gonna happen if it doesn’t come easy to them in the future, in college, in some other area of their life, if it doesn’t come easy, they don’t know what it means to actually have to invest the time and put effort into it and work hard.

[22:13] You want to measure their effort, not the outcome, right? So, so tracking and measuring the right things and, and for your business it might be, you know, tracking revenue. It might be like, okay, I, I gotta track revenue. Well, that again. Lagging indicator. What are the leading indicators that you could track and be aware of?

[22:34] You could, you could put awareness around the Hawthorne effect. The awareness around that might be sales conversations or proposals sent, or

[22:46] it might be CEO time for you, right? Or like, like focus time for you where you actually blocked off time too. Look at the right things, you know, ask yourself the right questions and actually get clear on what are the things I should be tracking here. Right. Um, productivity wise, it’s like, well, how many hours did I work?

[23:05] Okay man, I grinded, I work 60 hours this week. Well, maybe that’s, again, maybe you’re not tracking the right thing here. It’s deep work sessions or, um, are, are you hitting the priorities, the things that actually move the needle? Just use the, the, the sales calls example again, like, are you. Doing the outreach and the sales calls right in, in your marriage.

[23:27] It’s like, is it tracking the number of date nights or is it tracking quality conversations, undistracted timing, the date nights. That’s great. Right? That’s, that’s something I track and, and that’s a, again, I, um, that’s not even necessarily a lagging indicator, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s helpful to track those, but what are the right things you need to be really tracking, um, personal growth.

[23:51] Are, are you tracking, um, just how you feel, your motivation? Are you tracking the habits and the execution and the, the journaling and the, the things that you should do that you know, you could be doing to put you in the right mindset, right? Again, another example in the looking at the scale and your fitness, like, are you tracking the scale or that’s the lagging indicator, or you’re tracking the workouts and the steps and the, you know, your intake, how much you sleep, things like that.

[24:19] You’ve got to track the right things, right?

[24:28] So I mentioned I’ve done this with hundreds of guys over the course of a decade plus. Now, what are the results they actually get from this? I’m gonna give you some specific concrete results that, that, that guys are getting and.

[24:43] I’m gonna give you to these, to you in their exact words, like things that they’ve actually said. So I’m gonna give you four different guys. Here’s the first guy. He said, uh, and, and so the result he’s gotten was his, is that his net worth has nearly doubled since being in a program, my program, for less than two years.

[24:58] And he said, now I now have the freedom to drive my kids to school, right? So he’s got more time back. And he said, the number of times I’ve flown first class has increased by a hundred percent and I’ve lost 11 pounds. This is his, his actual quote, he said, with the help of a coach, we came up with a strategy for growth.

[25:16] Okay? He’s working with somebody and however you wanna implement this into your life, there’s the Hawthorne effect in place. Working with a coach, finding somebody outside of him that helps him. Increase awareness around execution. Now he’s more consistent. In fact, he checked the box in this particular survey that said his, his consistency didn’t two x didn’t five x at 10 x.

[25:44] He’s like, my consistency is 10 x. He said, quote, accountability is key here. Belonging to a group that is like-minded and we hold each other accountable. That’s it. Right? That is the Hawthorne effect leveraged for his success. Here’s another one. This guy said, uh, with the framework built and reviewed consistently, okay.

[26:09] Keywords reviewed consistently. I have doubled my business, doubled my business, hired key people in a better shape physically, and have more time for my family and all those sports that my kids do. Reviewed consistently, Hawthorne effect tracking, measuring, managing the right things. Again, going back to my opening statement, nobody wakes up and decides that they want to drift.

[26:34] It happens quietly. It happens slowly over time. How do you stop the Drift Hawthorne effect awareness, observation. That leads to consistency and that’s what happened for him. He’s doubled his business because of this. Here’s another guy gone from having ownership in one company to now having ownership in five companies and more in the pipeline.

[27:00] This is in one and a half years, and he doesn’t, you don’t do this by working harder. This is about being strategic, working smart, observing the right things. This is a guy who showed up already working hard. He was actually a world professional, world class athlete. Earlier in his life, he brought that, that, that needing of somebody outside of him.

[27:24] He, he understands the value of that, and now he’s getting the results still. Here’s another guy. This is the last one I’ll give you here is, and, and I’m gonna give you a specific tactic. How, what do I do with this? Um, I’m gonna give you that to you here in a second. And he said, um, I’ve gone from vice. This is since working with me.

[27:39] Uh, I’ve gone from vice president to president. I now serve on three big boards that I was not serving on. When I joined, I also finagled the time pay attention to my next words here. I also finagled the time through the planning process. All right. This could be re replaced with through the observation, through the awareness, through the Hawthorne effect.

[28:03] He said, I’ve finagled the time. Through the planning process with my coaches to take on coaching five sports teams, five sports teams. It’s crazy. He’s coaching five sports teams and I’ve done all this without sacrificing my daily workout. Okay, so you understand that you need this in your life to get results.

[28:21] How do you do it? I’m gonna give you a quick, easy way to start actually implementing this. This now and again, this, this is based off this concept I’ve talked about. Quite a bit. The productive pause, this idea that hitting the pause button, stopping, extracting from the matrix, detaching from the matrix, being the general, getting the view of the battlefield.

[28:43] Before I become a soldier, I’m gonna be, get, be a general, what do I need to measure on the battlefield of my life so that I can go, uh, insert myself back into the matrix, insert myself as a soldier once again, and go ahead and execute. What do I need to do? Here’s step one and the only step I’m gonna give you.

[29:05] Download the action plan from this episode so you can get the goal setting worksheet. All right. Now for my clients, we use a, a, a software, a a web app that I’ve developed and they’re now tracking their goals in there. But for you, I’m giving you a tool that we have used for years that is a highly designed spreadsheet with all kinds of bells and whistles.

[29:25] It’s such a, a really useful, cool tool that you can use. To start implementing this in your life, download it and share it with a friend and be like, Hey man, let’s just check in with each other. Once a week, 15 minutes a week, every Monday. That’s it, right? 30 minutes or an hour a month. You each spend 30 minutes, you know, uh, uh, reporting on how your progress from your goals and their goals, and what you’re doing for the next month.

[29:50] If you do this alone, you’ll be implementing this Hawthorne effect. You’ll increase awareness. You will start to observe what is working, what is
[30:00] not working. You’ll start tracking the right things. You will all of a sudden find yourself more consistent, because consistency is a skill that you can learn to implement into your life in this busy, noisy, chaotic world that we live in, and you will start seeing results.

[30:18] Take action. Good luck.

Note: This text was automatically generated.