Home Run Habits​ Keep ​You ​On ​Track & ​Reduce ​Overload

Rob: It’s going back, way back. Yes, it’s a home run. Cleveland wins.

Hello, folks. This is Rob Brown, host of the Truest Fan Podcast. Welcome to Episode No. 4 where we are going to talk about home-run habits. What are those things that you can be doing every day that put you in a position to hit your home runs with your family, in your business, and with the other causes and activities that you care about?

When I think about that home run, I can picture it in my mind. I can hear Tom Hamilton, the broadcaster for the Cleveland Indians, saying those words, and it’s exciting. It’s exhilarating. 01:05.1]

But I also know that that home run didn’t happen, that wind didn’t happen, that play didn’t happen because there was no preparation. Those home runs happen, those big things in our life happen, often, most often, because we’re doing things on a daily basis that set us up to succeed—and that’s what I call home-run habits. We all need to have them.

When you think about a baseball player, you think about the preparation that goes into each night’s game, I mean, they play 162 games in the season, and when the player is healthy, they try to follow the same routines day in and day out. When they get to the ball game, what they eat, what exercises they do, how they reset or set their mindset—those are habits that prepare them for that game, prepare them for their opportunity to shine. 02:08.0]

Sure, they may not shine every night and we don’t shine every day in all of the things that we do, but we have a better chance to do it, just like the ball player, when we think about our daily habits, our home-run habits, and we implement them day in and day out.

Let me give you a really quick example. A number of years ago, I worked with a great guy. His name was Roger, and Roger was one of the best performers in our organization and people would come to Roger all the time and say it to him. “Why are you so successful? You’re one of the busiest guys around here. You’ve got lots and lots of stuff to do as you help lead the firm, but you’re also producing more than people who are just focused on producing business, growing business individually, as a financial advisor.” 03:05.5]

You would expect Roger to have an hour’s worth of stuff to tell somebody, and he wouldn’t. He would stop and say, “Two by 8:00, 10 by 10:00,” and that was his home-run habit. He wanted to make sure that he talked to two people, clients or prospective clients, or other people in the organization that he needed to get a hold of by eight o’clock in the morning, and then another 10 by 10 o’clock in the morning. Roger knew that if he made those contacts, if he made those connections each day, that his business would grow. It would send him into the right direction. It would allow him to work on his most important things. 03:55.7]

That’s just one really simple, quick example that relates to business, but there are other habits that you can add to those you can think about as you think about things that are important to you.

For example, maybe you decide I’m going to take on Roger’s routine in my business and I’m going to do the “two by 8:00 and 10 by 10:00”, and that’s going to help me accomplish my goals, grow my business, take care of my clients, give them the best service that they can possibly get. It will allow me to lead my team in a way that they need to be led, so that we can do the things that we’re working on together. We can reach our biggest goals. But then you see yourself that’s not enough. I’ve got this family that I really care about. How do I make sure that I have home-run habits that allow me to take care of them, too? 04:55.8]

So, maybe you add to your routine that you are going to leave the office at four o’clock three days a week, so you can get home to be with your children or go to their events. Maybe you add to your “two by 8:00 and the 10 by 10:00” routine that you are going to take your wife out to dinner, your spouse out to dinner, one day a week, have that date night, really plan for it. Then, all of a sudden, you’ve got a bigger set of habits. You’ve got these business habits, and then you’ve got your family habits, the time with your children, the time with your spouse.

But then you think, There’s other stuff that I’m working on. I have some charities that I have responsibility for that I want to be more involved in. I want to do more work with my church. You say, Okay, how can I build that into a habit? How can I add that routine to those things that I’m doing each day and each week, so that I know that it gets done? 06:06.8]

Maybe that’s just a matter of saying, I’m going to carve out an hour on Tuesdays and an hour on Thursdays, and those hours are going to be appointments with myself to do the work, to do the things that I’m committed to doing to help advance that cause. These are building blocks. Some people call this time-blocking, but home-run habits are setting aside specific activities that allow you to do the things that are most important day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, because you know when you do them, you may not get immediate success—you may still not close that piece of business. Your kids may still complain that you’re being a bad dad. You may not hit the goal that you have for fundraising for that campaign that you’re running to help raise money for your favorite charity—but you know if you keep at it, you’re going to get there. 07:10.2]

That’s the thing about home-run habits. They aren’t about doing things that necessarily predicate immediate success, but they’re things that you do when you repeat them over and over and over again. You reach the success. You reach the goals. You’re working on your most important priorities, because truest fans, as we’ve talked about before, are working on the things that matter most.

Are you ready to discover your true purpose, live with impact, and build an ever-greater legacy? Then you need to make time for what truly matters most. Go to TruestFan.com/Challenge to begin the free “Truest Fan” seven-day quick start.

Let me throw a couple of other ideas at you for home-run habits. I’m not going to prescribe a specific prescription because the way that I might say them or the ideas that I might offer may not fit into your particular situation, but think about it. 08:18.2]

How many times do you hear people talking about morning routines, a good morning routine, where maybe you get up an hour earlier than you normally do? That’s when you put in your exercise, you do some journaling, you do some praying or meditating. That is a home-run habit. When you decide on what that routine is, if you feel a morning routine will be helpful to you, and I believe that they are, that can be something else that you add to your home-run habit stack, that stack of things that you do over and over again because it produces results. 09:01.4]

Another habit that I think is great and, in fact, I was talking with a client of mine about this yesterday because I’m trying to help him implement it in his business, which is to actually get away from his desk in the middle of the day. He wants to have a midday routine where he simply wants to go and take a walk, just do some simple exercise.

He’s a guy that does have a morning routine. He does a vigorous workout every morning, but he knows that around the middle of the day, he gets stalled out. He gets some brain fog. He starts maybe working on other people’s priorities and not on things that are most important, but when he stops to take the time, takes half an hour or an hour just to take a walk, to just think and relax, that when he comes back for the rest of his day, he is more energized. He gets more done. That could be a home-run habit, a midday break. 10:03.4]

There are many ways that you could do that midday break. It doesn’t have to be a walk. It could be stopping and taking some time to listen to your favorite music and just relax. It could be stopping and taking the time to say a prayer. It could be stopping and taking the time to call somebody that you haven’t talked to in a long time, just to say hello, but just to take a break. That could be one of your home-run habits.

I already talked about kind of towards the end of the day, making sure that you decide on what the end of the day is, and by choosing a home-run habit, like I suggested before—I’m going to leave the office at four o’clock three days a week to be with my kids. That’s a great end of the day habit, or on those other days where I’m not going home to be with my kids, those are two days where I’m going to go get that out in—that could be the home-run habits. 11:01.4]

Then think about maybe your bedtime. Too often, we have our cell phones, our tablets around us, and we’re paying attention to what’s going on in the world, all those distractions. We’re thinking that we’re relaxing by reading about the latest political topic of conversation—I shouldn’t even say “topic of conversations”—some argument or debate, and we’re raising our blood pressure.

Maybe thinking about a bedtime routine where you are going to commit to turning those devices off an hour before you go to bed, and in that last hour, you have some things that you do with your spouse. Maybe that’s the time where you kind of wrap up your day and give each other some time to talk about what has happened in your life that day and what you have planned for the next day. Maybe say a prayer together or just to be with each other to continue to strengthen that relationship. That can be a home-run habit. 12:07.0]

I hope you can tell by now that home-run habits are not something that I’ve come up with out of whole cloth. Most of these ideas, although maybe I’ve bunched them together in a different way than you’ve heard about before, are activities, are suggestions, are recommendations for better ways to live your life, and I think when you do that with intention and you spell it out, you create your formula.

Let’s say my formula is I’m going to do my morning routine. I’m going to do “two by 8:00, 10 by 10:00.” I’m going to take a midday break. I’m going to leave early three days a week to spend time with my kids. I’m going to have a date every week with my wife, and every night before bed, I’m going to turn my devices off and I’m going to spend an hour with my spouse. We’re going to have a good conversation and pray together. 12:59.5]

I promise you, the big things that you’re working on, those big goals that you’ve set about, those things that you’re dreaming about, the big priorities that you’ve set for yourself are going to happen, and they’re going to happen more regularly and more easily, because you’ve put yourself in a position to hit a home run, to succeed.

You’ll succeed way more often than you’ll fail and you’ll be able to check those things off each day and say, This was a good day because I was able to accomplish, I was able to complete my home-run habits. Even if something didn’t go right, you can have a day that was really completely crappy because of somebody’s outside influence or something that was totally unexpected that happened, but you can still say, This was a great day because I hit my home-run habits. I hit my home run for today. 13:56.3]

Let me leave it at that and let me also remind you to go to TruestFan.com/Challenge, where you’ll get access to my seven-day challenge for becoming a truest fan. In those exercises, part of that challenge, you’ll learn even more how to create your home-run habits. Remember, I want to see you hit home runs because I am your truest fan.

Rooting for your success!

Rob Brown