Turning Ideas into Action

Coaches are knowledge seekers in my experience.  We are always on the lookout for big ideas or little nuanced advice that will tip the scale with our teams or with recruiting.  

For the longest time, I was a coach who accumulated a lot of books, courses, and resources.  

I got to a point where I was feeling I should be much further ahead because of what I knew.   

If I am being honest, I wasn’t making much progress because I wasn’t taking much action on the knowledge I was getting. 

The lightbulb turned on when I learned this little routine from Darren Hardy, Author of The Compound Effect.   

Every morning, a success habit I have developed is that I read or listen to something positive.  I do it to calibrate my mind and eyes for that day.  

For example, Darren daily is one source for that. In his daily morning message, he gives one idea, one insight, or one behavior tweak that I’m going to work on that day.  

I watch it as soon as I have my coffee in hand, and I sit in my favorite chair in my home office.  

On my desk I have a designated growth journal.   

Every day I write the date and I have three sections that I write on each page that I observed my Darren daily for the day.  

The first section is simply titled notes. This is where I write the key idea or the ideas from that day’s Darren daily.  

Another key point here is I write down anything that Darren daily makes me think of that might be parallel or might be completely unrelated to the content of that Darren daily but that it ignited part of my creative mind. Some of my best ideas have come from when I am reading or watching or listening to something inspiring or instructive. As I am listening, I find my mind comes up with something totally unrelated to that content that I’m absorbing. The content I listened to put my mind into a creative zone so that the idea could percolate up. I don’t want to miss those great ideas, so I make sure to write them down.   

The second section on each page of the journal is titled “action”. 

“Ideas and inspiration without action are just delusions and insanity.” Jim Rohn. 

In this section of that page, I figure out what is at least one thing that I can do that day to act on this idea. 

It could be small, but it has to be something to be sure that I do.  

I will write the action I need to take on a sticky and put that on the bathroom mirror or on the edge of my computer monitor until it’s done. Once completed, I get to take it down and put it in the trash.  

I like to make things physical. If it is out of sight, it is out of mind and it’s easy to forget and neglect.  

It’s hard to avoid a sticky on your bathroom mirror or on your computer monitor. It just stares at you all damn day until you get it done.  

Or if it’s something that I need to research or someone that I need to meet with to delegate to I will immediately set an appointment on my calendar.   

Instead of just thinking that this might be a good idea and I will get to it eventually, I put it on my calendar for when I will work on it.  What gets scheduled gets done.  

The last section in on each page of my journal is for review. One of the last things that I do before going to bed for the night is I go back to my growth journal, and I review my notes from that day.  

Did I do the action? What was my experience? What did I discover or realize? What aha came up as a result this idea?  

Usually, it’s just a note or to a quick sentence or two that takes 2-3 minutes to write out.  

By book ending my day like this, I found it cements in that day’s learning and that day’s growth. 

This whole process from start to finish is probably 10-15 minutes max in total for the whole day.  

But it is the kickstart at the beginning of the day and the cash out at the end of the day that makes the magic that happens in the middle possible.  

I hope that that gave you some great ideas to go on.  

23+ plus years helping athletes and coaches with their performance has taught me the power of focusing your attention on just one idea, one adjustment, one small behavior tweak a day.  Just one a day, day over day, is how a massive change is compounded into transformational results.  

Those small improvements accumulated over time add up to big results.  

Now your turn. I’d love to hear what are some of the tips that you’ve used or practices that have helped you to turn ideas into action and then produce lasting results in your life?

To your success,

Mandy green