How to Be More Efficient

Increasing your peak performance frequency and consistency is a recipe for disaster.

Achieving a new “personal best” daily can only lead to burnout or blowing yourself up.

For instance, elite marathon runners don’t train by trying to beat their previous day’s time day after day. If they did, they’d sustain injuries that could be career-ending.

Another example is how many bands follow up their biggest hit by immediately releasing an even bigger one?

(Remember Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors? The double album Tusk follow-up disappointed them and their fans and cost the band more time and money than any other project).

As a difference-maker, especially an independent freelancer or solopreneur, the best thing you can do is show some restraint when you beat last month’s revenue or client acquisition numbers.

Hitting new highs requires rigor.

To remain robust and resilient as we advance, you need to recuperate and reflect on how to raise the floor on valleys, not try to push the peaks higher.

What do I mean by “raise the floor?”

Making a better living while making a bigger difference requires planning. You must build and continuously optimize your system.

And a system’s reliability and success can only be enhanced by eliminating unnecessary components (more ≠ closer) and improving the efficiency and effectiveness (AKA “raising the floor”) of the essential ones.

Click here to see the math.

And here’s some more math. The ROI (return on investment) on improving a system component’s effectiveness and efficiency diminish as you get closer to 100% (and nothing is ever optimized to absolutely 100%).

That’s why pushing the peaks only leads to burnout and blowing up and why raising the floor provides more exponential improvement.

What are the components of your difference-making system? Which are the ones where you need to raise the floor?

Scott Perry, Encore Life Coach at The Art of Encore Living

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