Never choose fads over fundamentals.

I have been engaged in some heavy techie talk recently around productivity, priority and performance issues. I’m no Luddite but I am slightly concerned.

Sometimes fads, whether gadgets, gimmicks, apps or hacks – especially in the arena of productivity and performance can cloud simple truths.

Success in all its forms consists of simple fundamentals. That’s why my approach to all my training and speaking engagements is to honour the fundamentals and work out a way to help people like you, to put those fundamentals into daily practice as easily as possible.

Fundamentals are not fully appreciated by the vast majority of people.

Professionals respect them while amateurs dissrespect them. Professionals work with them while amateurs work around them. This is nothing new.

‘We are what we repeatedly do – excellence then is not an act but a habit’ – Aristotle (384-322BC)
‘We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.’ – John Dryden, Poet Laureate of England in 1668
‘Bad habits are like chains that are too light to feel until they are too heavy to carry’. – Warren Buffet

To build anything worthwhile and enduring it has to be built upon rock-solid foundations. The fundamentals are important because it is from their secure base that we can build our performance behaviours – whether around managing priorities, projects or goals or managing our influence within relationships.

Beware those who deride fundamentals as ‘Common Sense’ or worse. Most of them have not gone through the effort to embed them as Common Practice within their own lives.

In fact, in life, many people only widen their knowledge-practice gap by gaining new information. The idea of changing their behaviours significantly, especially when they feel at the top of their game is alien to them. Perhaps this is why many people plateau.

The problem with a plateau mentality is that that we can sometimes treat it as the summit, and we fail to future-proof ourselves.

I’ll leave you with one of  my favourite quotes; it is incorrectly attributed to a Frank Outlaw on the web. It is much older than him. It doesn’t matter who coined it first, it is well worth reflecting on:

Watch your thoughts; they become words
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Naturally, if you are interested in creating a rock-solid productivity platform to build your future upon I would be delighted to support you through our training and support programmes and build ‘Results Worth takling About’ please do get in touch