Is there anything in your life you’re not accomplishing the way you’d like to? Training? Fitness? Personal relationships?
Ironically, the cause of the problem and the solution may be the same. Think “frequency,” “duration,” and “intensity.”
Your lack of success in reaching your goals may be that you aren’t making the effort often enough, for long enough, or with intensity enough. Increase the frequency of concentrated effort, the duration you exert at this effort, and the intensity with which you work on your projects and dreams.
Exercise is a good example of the power of this formula. Tim O’Brien, director of the Institute for Stress Management and Performance Improvement in Tallahassee, Fla., observes: If you “do not exercise at all, you have no frequency. So the first step is to increase frequency to at least once a week. Once you have your frequency up to four to six times per week, increase the duration.
“Initially, a sedentary person might only walk for five or ten minutes. But with consistency in your frequency, your duration can quickly increase.
“Finally, increase the intensity of your walks, first walking faster and adding in walking up and down hills or other inclines.
“Using this process, the once-sedentary person becomes the physically fit person in about six months.”
The same combination of frequency, duration, and intensity can be brought to firearms and DT workouts and other survival skills, as well as to goals you may have off the job.
O’Brien notes: “Work on your time management skills and you’ll find time for frequency and duration. Then when you do work on your projects or goals, be intense. Avoid distractions as much as possible. Stay focused. Don’t try to ‘multi-task’—it’s a myth.”
When you face a challenge that seems unusually difficult, when you feel you’ve experienced a setback, or when you wonder why you have not made more rapid progress, ask yourself if frequency, duration, or intensity might be the cause…and the cure.