Folks,

What would change your mind? 

New information?

A new way of doing things?

The weather?

There is a lot that can change our minds.

I’ve been talking to a few people recently about high performance. What do elite performers or good coaches do that the rest of us don’t? 

Do they know more than us?

Do more than us? 

One thing high performance isn’t about is having all the answers – it’s about committing fully to a direction, learning from what emerges, and adapting intelligently.

The elite performers I’ve worked with understood this: they made plans, committed to them, and extracted learning. Those who struggled were constantly seeking the next performance edge, changing direction every session, never staying with anything long enough to discover what worked.

If you change as quickly as your feeds scroll, you might have just found the answer.

Which leads to a pertinent question this time of year:

What gets better because you persist? 

For me, it’s an answer I didn’t think I would ever give. Posting daily on social media. 

I create a post, ship it, and move on. I don’t overthink it. I don’t negotiate with myself - I just get it done. Counterintuitively, since it’s social media, which is normally considered a time suck, it’s a way of getting me into a productive mood each day. 

I’m not sure the habit will last past the 90-day mark. I also don’t think it matters; it’s a habit I think I need right now to get things done and out the door. 

What gets better because you persist? 

I’ll leave you with this: https://thedolectures.com/talks/anji-play/

At first, I was a bit dismissive of it; it's just play pedagogy, right? But of course, I sat with it, and then what I got from it was risk - learning is not risk-free. 

It's a central tenet of any coaching practice design. We can ignore it, sure, but in the end, it won't ignore us. Risk is part of the deal - how we build it into what we do, that’s the interesting bit.

Play nicely,

Simon

P.S. Not all my reviews have been positive. If, however, you managed to get to the end of my book, feel free to tell us what you think.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/244086520-good-coach-bad-coach