SHORTCUTS

                                                           "THERE ARE NO TRAFFIC JAMS ON THE EXTRA MILE." ZIG ZIGLAR

I perform farmer's walks with some weighted contraptions I put together 1 to 2 times weekly. I set a goal of 30 total laps around the garage, 5 laps each set, followed by variations of pushups, pulls, and squats. As I progress through this set and start to become fatigued, I start to see myself make the lap of each circle smaller and smaller. I have a pull up/dip/push up station that I move to the center of the garage, and I noticed as I become more tired, I sometimes nick the edge of the workout station with the weights I am carrying because my "circle" has gotten smaller and smaller as I begin to fatigue. When I feel that "bang" of the carried weight hit the station, I make a concerted effort to widen that circle to ensure I maximize each lap….but sometimes…I still walk a pretty tiny circle…..

This often happens to us in the work place as well, as we fatigue, we often "shorten our circle" or take short cuts resulting in less accurate outputs. We get tired, we fatigue, we sometimes wish to make things easier…..that makes us human. We can take steps, however, to minimize sub-optimal work and outputs by making concerted efforts to keep us on track and on the path of quality work.

Here are a few recommendations that can help!

1. Take breaks- Periodically, we should walk away from the work we are doing and allow our mind a chance to rest. In the above "farmers' walk" example, I noticed that if I added about 45 seconds more rest between my sets, and monitored by hear rate to allow it to be at a more rested state before engaging in the next set, I performed higher quality farmers walks (less "corner cutting") and better quality repetitions on the follow on exercises because I had allowed ample recovery time between sets.
2. Discipline yourself so others won't have to. In studying Emotional Intelligence, the first aspect of this process is "Self-Awareness" -Making concerted efforts to know what you are feeling and why, then through self-regulation- adjusting so that your actions and words do not negatively impact others. In this same vein, we can look at what we are doing, see if it is meeting the expectations of ourselves and those for whom we are doing the work, then make adjustments to ensure we maintain the quality expected of us. This discipline takes time but will better ensure you complete more quality work. As Jim Rohn so beautifully stated, "We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” We must try not to weight ourselves down unnecessarily
3. Quality check- ask someone you trust to review your work. If you are unable to find someone , you can use Review Mode in word to read back your work if it's a document you're working on. This allows you to hear the flow, identify overuse of certain words, and see it the work makes sense. If it's another program, Excel, for example, there are Data Quality Checks that may better equip you to review your work. 

Sometimes solutions are simple…it's the discipline to apply these solutions on a routine basis that are hard. As Jim Rohn is quoted as saying, “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”