Monday Mindset
– an uncommon approach to school, sports, and life –

Today’s Monday Mindset: Your Shortcut to Success

Welcome back to our Monday Mindset, the shortcut to success in getting what you want.

I finished another workout and if you watched last week’s Monday Mindset… In fact, you got to go back and watch it to see what it takes to be great at anything.

Once you do the work, and I finished up another workout here – and you’ve got to the work – but once you’re doing the work, don’t try and work even harder.

You don’t have to grind to achieve what you want. What you have to learn how to do, and this is the shortcut to success, is work smarter not just harder. This assumes you’re already working harder. You’re already doing the work.

Here’s a couple different applications.

In my academic career as a student in high school, I knew I had a limited amount of time. I was training hard in basketball, and to do as well as I wanted to do academically and be able to get into university, I decided to do two courses. These were weekend courses – a memory course and a speed reading course. Those propelled me forward. It didn’t take that much time to do them, but it enabled me to work way smarter. I was able to study less and do well rather than working harder.

In basketball, I made the mistake of never working smarter. I just worked harder and I just kept putting in the time, shooting shot after shot after shot, and I didn’t realize I was actually sabotaging myself by what I actually believed about my shooting and what I believed about my game. If I had I had the opportunity to do it over again, I would work smarter. I would spend time learning about mindset.

And that’s why at PGC Basketball, and with our YouTube videos, truly in everything we share there’s so much around mindset because you don’t need to put thousands of hours in on the court.

Work hard, yes, but work smarter.

I’m helping a long-time NBA player right now work on his mindset because mindset is so important. It takes less time but the rewards are just enormous.

Here’s another application.

If you want to be healthier, maybe some of you even want to lose weight, the exercise industry has fooled us all into thinking we’ve just got to exercise more. And sure, exercise is important. We all know that. But do you know what’s more important? What’s more important is what you eat. And the crazy thing about what you eat is it doesn’t take any more time.

When you go to the grocery store, just buy healthier food that are going to help your body. Food which will help you to feel better and be in better shape. And probably for some, maybe even lose weight.

But we spend most of our time thinking we’ve got to run a marathon or we’ve got to get on that bike or we’ve got to push our bodies every single day. And while exercise is important, if you want to work smarter and not harder, just sub out what you’re picking up and what you’re putting in your fridge and you will be healthier.

Final application. In business or in my work career, I could try to work harder and harder and harder – including and encouraging our team to do the same. But what I do is challenge all of us to work smarter, not harder. It assumes we’re already working hard.

But what does working smarter look like? Every morning when I’m working out right here, I listen not to music but to a podcast. I listen to a podcast so that I can be learning strategies to help me be more successful. It doesn’t require any more time. It’s just working smarter, not harder so I can learn from the mistakes of others, learn from others who are ahead of me on the journey.

Commit to doing the work, yes. But then take this shortcut to success and work smarter, not harder. And that’s your Monday Mindset.