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Last week I chatted about planning. Setting up your 2019 and how being really clear on your goals matters.

I also spoke about the High Performance Getaway I had just run and the fact that you can be very successful in your business or personal life and not have a plan. You can just kind of wing it and everything’s ok.

The problem is, if I’m being honest, that whilst this is possible it relies on a lot of things going your way. It’s easy when life’s all smooth sailing. But when the time comes, as it often does in life, that you get hit with an unexpected challenge. You cop that punch in the guts that really takes the wind out of you – you won’t have built the resilience or perhaps it’s more that you don’t know what your perfect performance line is so won’t know how to get back to it.

What’s a Perfect Performance Line?

In the Special Forces, particularly our SASR, there’s a concept around a Perfect Performance Line.

If everything goes smoothly. If everything runs to plan. This is the line from where we are to where we want to be. This is the line from the start of the mission to the perfect execution and completion of the mission.

Now the SAS know that a plan only ever stays perfect until the first bullet is fired, the first contact with the enemy. Then it’s two sides with two very different plans. But their idea is this:

If you know what a perfect performance line looks like, if you understand the line from where you are to where you want to be then once you have contact with the enemy you have a line to identify and get back to.

As soon as you’re knocked off your line the focus for you individually and for your team is to get back as close to the line as possible. Every incident, every moment that pushes you off that line you focus on moving back to that line or as close to that line as possible. You’re anchored to that line. You will drift. You will have circumstances push you away from it but you always bring yourself back to it.

The truth is, even if you don’t fully get back to the Perfect Performance Line, so long as you’re consistently close to it and moving in the same direction as it, you will reach the objective. You will complete the mission. You will.

But if you don’t know what the line looks like then as soon as you hit tough times you will be throw this way and that. You won’t have an anchor point to get back to. Nothing to hold you on the course.

Having a plan is vital. Not in easy times. But in tough times.

There’s a saying ‘Chop wood when you can. Sharpen your saw when you can’t’.

I first heard this from a mate Steve Claydon in a sales context but I think it works in all contexts.

You have do the work when the works there to be done. Ie. You chop the wood.

But when there’s not work to be done you sharpen your saw so the next opportunity to chop wood you will be ready and efficient.

Sharpening the saw in this context is planning. Plan for yourself, your life, your career, your business. Do it in the good times. When life’s easy. Sharpen the saw.

When the going gets tough. When the shit hits the fan. You will have a sharpened tool with which to chop the wood.

So that’s your goal this week. Set your plan for 2019. Sharpen your saw over the Christmas period so you can chop the wood, move towards your goals, in 2019.

The plan is your perfect performance line. If it works for SAS in a combat situation it can certainly work for you in everyday life.

That’s what I do. Look for the ways people achieve extraordinary results and then try to hack the code they use to do it. You do not have to create the wheel. It’s been done. Your job is to make it useful and more efficient for you.

A lot of people contacted me for the planning worksheet. I have uploaded it...

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