I’m a huge sports fan.
And for the majority of sports fans, the rush of supporting their favourite team or athlete throughout the highs and lows of a competition is the most enjoyable and entertaining part.
But not for me.
From a young age and right through to this day, I’m absolutely fascinated by every single aspect of sport. Except what actually happens on the playing field.
I love sports media, sports marketing, sports sociology… everything that goes on behind the scenes in the sports industry. Getting the chance to study all of this at the world’s top sporting university was a life-changing experience.
I remember vividly from my first day on campus, all I wanted from my time at Loughborough was to come away with First Class Sports degree. The way I saw it, anything other than that would meant I had failed.
It was an ethos that us sports geeks would refer to as ‘Lombardian’, derived from the career of famous American Football coach Vince Lombardi, who’s famous belief was that…
“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”
Although Lombardian philosophies may ostensibly be hugely myopic for success in your wider life and career, his binary outlook arguably led to incredible success in his chosen field.
Today, the argument of whether university is the right choice in today’s business world is a highly debated topic. However in university your time becomes completely your own and no-one’s going to make you go to lectures or study. You’ve got to become self-motivated and disciplined.
Recently I came across an incredible businesswoman called Amy Landino and in a recent video she mentioned something she does called “scroll time”.
This took me right back to my university days and reminded me of a productivity technique I tried during my final year.
Back in my university days I was just starting to get serious about video production and often while I was working my mind would wander and remind me of all the cool videos I’d watch recently on YouTube and that I needed to stop the work I was doing immediately and watch them again.
Obviously this wasted time wasn’t helping in achieving my goal, so I came up with a plan…
I kept a pad of post-it notes next to me at all times when working and whenever a video I wanted to watch popped in to my head, I wrote it down to remind myself to watch it later that evening and then carried on working.
Amy idea’s of “Scroll Time” is a half hour slot that she blocks in to her calendar every day after dinner, where she can sit on the sofa with the TV on in the background and sit and scroll through her phone and look at whatever she likes.
What’s weighing heavily on my mind at the moment is how I’m using my time and to me it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the tiniest of choices on how to spend our time have a massive impact on our overall success
As Vince Lombardi said…
“Winning is a habit, unfortunately so is losing”.
It’s the few minutes wasted spent watching a YouTube video or needlessly scrolling through Instagram before bed. They may seem insignificant, but actually couldn’t be more important.
So now I’ve been trying to build the habit of only going on social media during scroll time and full disclosure I don’t achieve this successfully every day, but it’s something I’m working on.
So remember, save it for scroll time and I wish you every success.
Jack
017
By the way I did get a First.
Also I’m thinking of changing these blogs to twice a week, what do you think?
And finally I know what you’re thinking, wow he’s actually talking about someone other than Gary Vaynerchuk. But dont’ worry I learned about Amy through reading Gary’s book “Crushing It’”, it’s a great one! Check it out here… https://amzn.to/2t13pmR)