It is all a matter of doing better today than you did yesterday. That should be your goal. You should be striving to beat your previous performances.
I’m Mike from Top Tier Coaching Services. As a coach and trainer, I often find people asking me how to be more productive. In today’s video, I want to discuss a book by Nic Peterson called “Bumpers”.
Bumpers are all about how to actually do the things we should be doing more consistently. The lessons learned from the book are not magic pills that you can simply swallow and see great results. There is actually hard work that must be done.
A good life lived is not one that successfully dealt with problems that presented themselves but one that understood the things that mattered and accurately measured, managed, and appreciated those things.
This is where the idea of “bumpers” comes into play. Like on a bowling alley, bumpers allow you to go after life 100% because you’ve created a mechanism to automatically keep your ball in the lane going toward the pins.
Remember, bumpers don’t exist to protect us from the world. they exist to protect us from ourselves.
This is where things get exciting and scary all at the same time… cause those bumpers you put up are only going to work if your pursuits stay aligned with your unique disposition and your life dreams and goals.
The first step is to imagine your perfect day from start to finish. This is not the perfect day for society in general or for your spouse, but it is the perfect day just for you.
You must remember that this is not a perfect day in the future when you’re rich, this is your perfect day right now.
You have to work. You have to take care of the kids. You have to do certain things in your life. Think of the responsibilities you have and when you would want to do them and work that in.
If you want, stop the video here and plot out your perfect day and then start the video again.
If you took the time to plot out your perfect day, the next step is to make your current life that perfect day, meaning you make choices and plans with others based on that perfect day.
Everything is now going to be perfect. This isn’t going to be easy. In fact, it’s going to be hard. But the way to get there is to have reasonable expectations. And the expectation you need to ingrain is to just be better today than you were yesterday. Just win the day you are in right now.
You’ve now come to another important step. Now that you know what you want your life to look like, irrespective of money, it’s time to come up with the non-negotiables that will facilitate your perfect day becoming reality.
Now write down some things you are willing to go to the mat for. These are the non-negotiables.
Now you are ready to create your bumpers.
Take a look at your past week and put everything in buckets according to the time spent for the entire week. Here are some good buckets: work/sleep/eating/family time. If you have any others feel free to add them. You should have a total of 168 hours when you are done.
Now take each of those buckets and average them out. If you are going to work 5 days a week divide your work hours by 5. If you are going to sleep every night, divide by 7, etc.
This is the part that you’re going to want to resist, but just hear me out… take those averages and put them in your calendar. That’s right, the same amount every day.
You have the greatest chance for success over the longest period of time if you do the same thing in the same amount of time consistently. When you feel like shit, you do the things. When you feel great, you do the things, AND NO MORE unless you are willing to do them on the days you feel like shit.
When you look at it you’re going to want to adjust it… don’t. Just try it like this, spreading out across all the days, and see what happens.
Here’s how I’d do it. sleep goes in first. Then work. then eating. then family time. the rest is free time for you to fill up however you want.
The only thing I do extra is, if I know there are certain work tasks I want to do every day at a certain time, I’ll put those in.
Here’s the key… when things come up, you do them. No excuses. No questions. When you feel great it’s easy. When you don’t it sucks.
It will make you the most productive you’ve ever been, as even if you don’t consciously do anything, you’ll still have gotten a lot done.
Moving forward make tiny adjustments every week or two weeks. For example, if you aren’t getting enough sleep, increase that time, and decrease something else.
Something magical will happen – guilt, shame, and that uneasiness of the unknown will disappear. As long as you are inside the bumpers, everything is great.
Before I close out this video, I have two important things to mention and one thing for you to do for me.
First, communication is key. When you start doing this new stuff, people are going to notice, and they are going to be weirded out.
It’s important for you to communicate it to them in a way that helps them understand. This is most important for kids, wives, husbands, the people that will see the shift (like you insisting on going to bed at 10 pm EVERY night and waking up at 5 am EVERY day).
Second, get rid of arbitrary goals and arbitrary timelines. Focus on winning the day. Give yourself time to put in the work to get the results that you want.
If you want more coaching advice and assistance, head to CallWithMahony.info. The first 5 people who sign up for coaching will get FIVE free sessions right away so that they can see the difference a good coach makes in life.
