We are currently facing pretty difficult economic times.  Every single industry has been hit by the change in the economy.  It is a global thing.  Nobody is safe from its reach. 

The smart companies are paying careful attention to their bottom line while still attempting to grow.  It is at times like this that the companies who positioned themselves well will be able to buy up their competitors one at a time as those competitors face the harsh reality of their mistaken decisions.  However, those companies that did position themselves to get through times like this will be stronger than ever when the economy turns around.  They will have grown through the difficult times. 

Where are you positioned during the difficult times?  How have you positioned your nutrition when you are down and feel like eating the wrong things?  What have you prepared for yourself when you feel like skipping a workout?  Have you made the right decisions ahead of time?  Have you planned for these events?

Those of you who have planned and made the right decisions ahead of time won’t be fazed by anything that is thrown at you.  Tough times will seem like nothing because your advanced preparation will get you through.  If you haven’t done the planning or preparation, it is never too late.  Get started today.  Plan out what your workouts will look like for the next 6 months at least.  Conduct your Experiment of One and utilize the feedback you get to set up some fantastic nutritional cycles.  You will come out of the tough times way ahead.

Take out a pad and a pen and start your planning right now.  Do not put it off until later. You know you’ve been wanting to get your plan in writing, so get it done.  I have a plan myself.  It goes through to the end of 2009.  I have planned out cycles in my nutrition and I know what I plan to do for my workouts.  These things are flexible depending upon the results I am getting, but the plan is there.  All I have to do is fine tune them as necessary.  The hard part (all the planning and thinking) has been done.

Discipline and Making Decisions

When you have adopted a plan and are disciplined at executing the plan, decisions that come along are merely plugged into a formula and the right decision pops out the other side.  It is a fairly automatic thing.  The discipline part is where most people go wrong.

They say they are going to use a certain worldview to make their decisions, but they don’t stick to that worldview.  They veer off in the wrong direction and then wonder why.  The answer lies in their discipline.

As stated, when you have a plan and are disciplined and stick to it, the other decisions that follow are easy.  It just comes naturally.

Focus and Making Decisions

Sometimes the reason the discipline is lacking is because the focus is lacking.  I can tell you that I had discipline but at first I didn’t have the right amount of focus.  Once I got focused things started to happen for me.  I am on my way to a nice change in my body due to the extreme focus I’ve had recently.  It takes focus to maintain a high level of discipline.  Things change rapidly and unless you maintain focus you are going to get lost and fast.

Matty’s Workout Log:

It is the 21st day of 2009 and the focus I started the year with has continued.  I feel very much in control of work and family life right now.  The focus I’ve had has made it feel like I am aware of every single thing going on in all areas of my life.  It is an amazing feeling and very empowering.  When you know that you’ve captured all your open committments you don’t worry about missing something that is important. That makes you relax and your focus gets even greater. 

I have 3 more weeks of this body part focused workout series and then I am going to change things up a bit.  I will not reveal here what M6 will be about, but suffice to say that it will be different.  I am already experimenting with some slight nutritional changes (nothing too drastic).  I am not sharing what I am doing just yet because it is in the experimentation phase and I am not sure whether my analysis (prior to starting the experiment) is correct or not.  I don’t want to lead anyone down the wrong path.  Stay tuned for more at a later date.

Thanks to my friend, Marc David, for his recommendation of a site that allows you to keep your workouts logged using a smartphone or other mobile device.  Marc recommends Gymtechnik Mobile Fitness Tracking.  It looks like a great tool, but seems to have some limitations (unless I just don’t understand it completely yet).  I will do a review of this site in the near future.

I believe that the most important thing for your credibility is if you talk it, you’d better walk it.  What the heck does that mean?  Simple.  If you say things should be a certain way, you need to be sure you live that way.  If you preach about getting in shape, you’d better get yourself in shape.  If you fail to do so your credibility will be non-existent.  This may not matter to some people, but I am sure it matters to most people. 

The fact is that maintaining your credibility is a matter of having integrity.  One reason people start accountability blogs is so that others can see what they are up to and hold them accountable.  To me it means that if I put it out there I’d better live up to the standards I set.  Even the Bible tells us that if we expect higher standards of other people, those will be the standards by which we ourselves will be judged.  Thus, you have to do the things you say you are going to do.  You must stick to your plans because you’ve put them in writing and published them for the world to see.  You must stick to your workout plan because you put it out there for the world to see.  That’s what accountability is really all about.  You do what you say you are going to do.

Matty’s Workout Log:

I am a devotee of the Getting Things Done method of time management created by David Allen.  I believe in this system is the best because it is simple and it leverages the Power of Focus.  When you begin using the Power of Focus it is addicting.  Time flies by and you accomplish more than you ever thought possible.  People tend to stay out of your way because you are so focused on the task in front of you.  I see this at work and at the gym.  I find that people respect your time when they see how focused you’ve become.  It is almost an unwritten law that you do not bother a person who is extremely focused.  It is like not talking to someone in the middle of a heavy set of squats.  It just isn’t right.

The Power of Focus can be leveraged by capturing every single loose end you have and getting it into some sort of trusted system.  You then review that system on a regular basis (weekly at a minimum).  This system frees your mind to focus on the important things at the right time.  You won’t be constantly reminding yourself of tasks that are impossible to complete where you are at the moment.  Instead, your focus will be within your own control.  The power that you gain from this is amazing.  The process is simple.