To Live, To Love, To Learn, To Leave a Legacy

Many, many books have been written on the subject of prioritisation, planning and time management. Many of them are actually quite good. One of my favourites is “First Things First” by Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill. I was first introduced to it on a management course which I did as part of my day time job and the title of this blog is from this book – the four basic human needs: to live, to love, to learn and to leave a legacy.

No, no, I haven’t completely lost it. This is still a blog dealing with all things triathlon. As mentioned in my last blog we’ll look at addressing planning and including sleep into our planning and you’ll recall I ended with the below quote from the article “Sleep-Deprived Triathletes Face an Uphill Battle” by Dr. Krishna R. Polu.

“Unfortunately, sleeping has become equated with laziness and fails to find its way onto our list of priorities. This perception is skewed in a society that is preoccupied with doing too many things at once. Adequate sleep is part of that balance, and in triathlon it may be the most important choice in our preparation for the next race.”

Whilst I’ve never really thought of sleeping as laziness, I have to agree that sleep probably doesn’t feature high enough on my priority list and I see the same issue with many of my fellow athletes. Given that we now have a better understanding of the importance of adequate sleep, it seems only reasonable that we include it into our planning and if adequate sleep equates to somewhere between 7 and 10 hours per day, we’re going to need some serious help. This is why I’ve turned to the corporate world for some help. Time management is something most successful executives have a black belt in.

The planning principles

The book “First Things First” suggests an entire way of life and very eloquently provides guidance and suggestions on how to live a more balanced and principle centred life. I’m not going to deal with all the aspects of the book as I probably wouldn’t do it any justice and the real value would be for you to read it. What I am going to do is take two concepts mentioned in the book which focuses on planning and use it to assist us to get to an adequate amount of sleep.

Firstly we need to understand the difference between importance and urgency and focus on importance first. Many of us get caught up in doing the urgent things first and then don’t get to do the important things.

“Urgency itself is not the problem. The problem is that when urgency is the dominant factor in our lives, importance isn’t” – First Things First.

Secondly we need to identify our roles in life and place them in priority order. Each of us will play different roles: i.e. Husband/Wife, Father/Mother, Coach, Athlete, Manager, Brother/Sister, Son/Daughter. With seven probably the maximum we should be focussing on at any one time. Understanding the importance of our roles in life allows us to understand the importance of the activities we’ll plan for.

Where does your training fit?

The purpose of a triathlon coach is to help you achieve your triathlon goals. Your goals determined by you. For your coach to be able to help you achieve your triathlon goals, you should:

·         Know what it is you wish to achieve

·         Know where it fits on your life priority scale

The better understanding a coach have of how triathlon fits into your life, the better equip that coach would be to help you to have an enjoyable and successful journey.

For a professional athlete training to win a gold medal at the Olympics, the importance of training time would be quite different from the 40+ year old dad training for his next Ironman finish. Both of them wish to do the best they possibly can. For both it would be highly unlikely that they will achieve their goals and be happy if the importance placed on their goals does not value the interdependency of that goal on the other roles of their life.

“Values will not bring quality of life results… Unless we value principles.” – First Things First.

In other words, when you determine where your triathlon goal fits on your priority scale, be realistic, don’t forgo good principles and allow the people close to you to be part of this prioritisation process. For both the Olympian and the dad, the people around them are the ones that’ll get them to the start line.

Food for thought

Armed with a good understanding of where your training fits in, we can now look at how much training  time you have available each week. Understanding this, a coach can adapt the volume and intensity of your training appropriately – and this should include sleep and recovery time.

You may not think you have a lot of time available to train but remember you’re more likely to have success following an achievable training plan with the support of your family than following a plan which leaves you sleep deprived and stressed for months on end.

Live, Love, Learn and make Triathlon part of your Legacy…