Do or Die week? The benefits of a 2-minute game plan

This was Do or Die week. I knew it right away Monday morning.

Over the course of the next five days I would have to prepare five different messages, prepare and host a podcast, facilitate a Mastermind session, prepare for an elder board meeting, conduct several client coaching calls, and work on a new business launch. None were negotiable.

Do or Die week? The benefits of a 2-minute game plan

Do or die? I was hopeful I for a “do,” but more certain I would die. It was just a matter of time and there wasn’t a lot of that. As I spewed anxious words into my journal that morning, I discovered a new inner resolve. Samuel Johnson famously said, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

“Why not apply what you already know?” I asked myself. I write about productivity and I’m in a panic about what I need to do. That ought not to be. But it was.

So, I closed my journal and got to work. It took me two minutes to put my game plan together. Literally. That’s all the time it took to allocate time on my calendar for my most critical tasks, to close the door to my office, and to put into practice all the things that I’ve written about.

It’s Friday now and Do or Die week is nearly complete. Not only did I not “die,” but I even had a little extra time to “do” (writing this post for instance). All because I put in place a two-minute game plan and stuck with it.

Over the course of Do or Die week, I discovered my two-minute plan helped in three vital ways:

  1. Reduced my chaotic indecisiveness. Before I put the two-minute game plan together, I was stressed. So many things to do. Where do I start? I was in a heightened state of alert, fit to be tied, and in no shape to concentrate on what needed to be done. The chaos made me indecisive.
  2. Capitalized on my momentum. An object in motion stays in motion until a force is acted upon it. That’s Newton’s law. And it applies equally to objects and motivation. Once I had my game plan, I knew exactly what to work on next. Having motivation from completing one task made it so much easier to start the next. Win. Win.
  3. Clarified the important. A game plan creates greater clarity and focus on the most critical tasks that need to be accomplished. Once I knew what was central this week, I became more willing to delegate to others tasks that I might have normally done myself. I also found myself much more efficient in processing emails and less prone to distraction when other interrupts came my way. Too much was at stake to be sidelined by them.

When you face your next Do or Die week, spend two-minutes on your game plan. You may “do” or you may, in fact, “die” (it does happen). But at least you’ll have done so with your boots on.

Comment below: What are some of the “Do or Die” week techniques you use?

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