Motivation fuels productivity, and there’s nothing like a great motivational speech to get you going. One of my favorites is this short clip from Any Given Sunday.
Each inch counts. As we head into a new year, many of us like to take some time for re-evaluation. Whether you are playing football, designing a slide deck, or presenting to a room, it’s important to critically consider each inch you occupy. Conversely, are you taking up enough space while inching closer to your goals daily? Those goals won’t beat themselves! Finally, how are you measuring your successes and failures? Understanding that each inch is critical to your growth helps you build a better product. Whether viewing yourself as the product or developing the perfect marketing strategy for a product you sell, let’s calculate an effective game plan to tackle this new year head-on.
Examine your space
Now’s the time to look at your materials and see how they could benefit from a few more inches, or perhaps a few less. Does your design seem cluttered? Try adding more negative space! You’ll see how those extra inches help your readers only focus on the most important parts of your messaging. Have you seen yourself present lately? Presenting virtually more often than in-person lately gives you the advantageous ability to watch your mannerisms while presenting. Examining your gestures and minimizing them where possible helps reduce distraction. It also naturally emphasizes your intentional movements to make each count.
Advance Your Goals
Inch by careful inch, growth can indeed be painful. Whether you experience slow or rapid growth, adjustments may be necessary along the way. Be sure to reconnect to your why and keep your original intentions at the forefront of your mind through these changes. Staying true to your initial goals helps you avoid missteps along the way. Avoiding the urge of “chasing shiny objects” can be tough. It’s easy to get side tracked! Be sure to enact some accountability whether inside of your organization or a mentor you trust elsewhere to keep you on track toward reaching your desired results.
You Can Only Improve What You Measure
As you may remember from our blog on SMART goals, creating measurable goals is an important key to accomplishment. Do you have an effective system in place helping you measure your success to accomplish your “why”? If not, create one! Be sure to give yourself at least three weeks (or 21 days) to follow the system and see if it works. If you find you’re not inching closer to your goals by the end of that time: try, try again! Whatever you do, keep track of each inch, celebrate each win along the way. This will keep you motivated to stay strong throughout the entire year.
We know heading into a new year can be stressful. But don’t forget that accounting for each inch helps make the year more manageable. As we know from 2020, no matter how much planning you do, there may be something that comes along you didn’t prepare for. Understanding that challenging situations are an opportunity to “scan the field” for critical inches is key. Need someone to help with that? Ethos3 is ready for your challenge with a full line of presentation services. Whether you need a designer to scan your materials, a content strategist to massage your messaging, or a presentation coach to help you with your delivery, we’ve got you covered. Ready to get started?
