Hello and welcome again to SAM Moments™. We hope that you pick up some good ideas each week and that you encourage friends and colleagues to sign up!!

There are many, many great ideas and best practices when it comes to Activity Management, like one that I first heard at a time management seminar: “Work expands to fill the time available”.

One of the best ones that I ever heard was the first day that I met industry icon, Al Granum at a meeting in his office, which was then in Northfield, Illinois. His tip was contained in a story that he told me about when Charles Schwab asked efficiency expert Ivy Lee for some advice? Mr. Lee replied, “Before retiring, post and prioritize (your goals)?”

Those are two great ideas, but when someone asked me recently, “If there was “1 Thing” or best practice that you can give me about Activity Management, what would it be?”

Only one thing came to mind, so I turned to him and said:

Don’t give yourself a “Bye”!

Now, what is a “Bye”?

In professional sports, a “Bye” is skipping one round of competition to advance to the next, usually because someone already qualified or has a higher ranking. I have personally used that same term in a round of golf when I suggested or took a “bye” after slicing a drive into the woods or putting one in the water, though “Mulligan” is probably a more accurate term.

When it comes to Activity Management, “Don’t give yourself a Bye!” means that just because you didn’t reach your daily goal of making 10 Prospecting Calls today, for example, does not mean that you get a free ride! It means that you must carry-it-forward and make 20 calls tomorrow. If your goal is to get 1 Referral per day, it means that if you miss, you try to get 2 referrals tomorrow or 5 for the week and so on?

Whatever your goal is, “Not taking a Bye” means you have to “carry-it-forward” to fit your timeline, whether it’s for the day, week, month or even quarter, if you follow Brian Moran’s “PERIODIZATION” strategy.

I must confess, that I first discovered this strategy with a personal goal, not a professional one! I remember setting a goal to do “50 Sit-ups or crunches per day”, which I did for 2-3 days and stopped. A few days later, I thought that I would start over. So, I did it for a few more days, and stopped again. It wasn’t working until, I figured out the trick: I had to hold myself accountable by carrying-it-forward! So, if I missed one day, I had to do 100 the next! If I missed two days, I had to 150 the next or average them out and do 100 per day for the next two days. Fifty (50) sit-ups per day may not sound like much, but it’s 350 for the week, 1500 for the month and a total of 18,250 for an entire year of 365 days…which I did for 3 years! (But obviously, not recently LOL)

This technique works so well, that when I felt the calling to pray the Rosary every day for a year, I used the same strategy. That was over 6 ½ years ago, and I’m still going!

So, don’t give yourself a “Bye”,