Gold Medal vs Participation Trophy: This One Technique Separates The Two

In the late 18th century, Benjamin Franklin, a renowned American statesman, inventor, and author, developed a method to track his daily activities to improve his personal productivity. He created a simple chart where he could record his daily progress towards specific goals he had set for himself. Franklin’s “habit tracking” system became so effective that it is still used today as a template for many modern goal-setting techniques.

Franklin pursued excellence in 13 virtues and tracked his daily performance in each. There is no doubt this discipline contributed to the amazing life he led and his contributions to our country.

Franklin’s approach may seem simple, but it was highly effective. By tracking his activities and progress, he was able to identify patterns, adjust his behavior as needed, and ultimately achieve his goals.

Tracking activities and progress is important so where do you start?

Begin With The End In Mind

Before you start tracking anything, you need to understand what objective(s) you are trying to achieve.

In Argent Alpha, our overall objective is to become Harder To Kill. We break this overall objective down into six more specific areas:

• Create Your Future Self — Design your life, avoid default settings
• Improve Body Composition — Target 15%
• Reverse Biological Age — Age slower than your chronological age
• Make the 2nd Half of Life the Best Half — upgrade limiting beliefs
• Reinvention > Retirement — continue to grow, learn, evolve, create
• Do Things You Aren’t Supposed To Do — a leader, not a follower

Just like Franklin, we need to identify the proper “inputs” that will help us get the desired “outputs”, in this case identify the inputs that will help us make progress in each of the six areas outlined above.

Standards — Default vs Intentional Settings

We identified and tested 5 key inputs, all of which are leading indicators for achieving our six objectives above. When treated as non-negotiables and followed daily, setting standards in these five areas produces the desired results.

The Alpha 5 are:

• Mindset
• Sleep
• Nutrition
• Fitness
• Hydration

Each Man sets his personal standards for each of the Alpha 5 and raises his standards over time. In other words, they are relative standards; my standards are different from yours but we both have standards in these areas.

As we consistently live by these standards, we measure our compliance with our standards daily and report them weekly.

We also perform specific tests each month to measure our progress. If our progress meets our expectations, we continue with the current version of our standards. If our testing results fall below expectations, we adjust each standard and test again in 30 days to see if we tweaked the right variable(s).

The last piece of the process is a monthly review of our activity:

The daily, weekly and monthly tracking, measuring and reporting is called our R.A.D. process — Recurring Accountability Drivers. It’s our secret sauce of success.

I often have Men tell me “But I don’t have standards in those areas.” They absolutely do, whether they know it or not. They are called default standards.

Think about it for a second:

Mindset — we all think.
Sleep — we all sleep.
Nutrition — we all eat.
Fitness — we all move.
Hydration — we all drink.

Just because you haven’t intentionally set standards in these areas doesn’t mean you don’t have standards. You do…you just aren’t intentionally directing your efforts.

And for most Men, default standards make you easier to kill.

Setting YOUR Standards

In a future newsletter I will focus on setting standards. But if you want a quick and dirty approach, do this.

Set up a table in a document and follow this example:

Gold Medal vs Participation Trophy

With all of the above as background, let’s get to the single most important factor that determines whether you get a Gold Medal or a participation trophy.

Tracking and reporting your compliance with your standards is the difference between getting the gold medal or the participation trophy.

Men who track, measure and report their activity get results and achieve their goals. They realize that all progress starts by telling the truth. Tracking, measuring and reporting the truth creates accountability which leads to results.

These Men get the gold medal because they follow the process.

Men who don’t consistently track don’t get results. When they don’t track, they don’t report. Accountability is thrown out the window. They live in the shadow of truth. Frustration leads to quitting and chasing the next bright shiny object and starting all over.

These Men get the participation trophy because they don’t fully follow the process.

Let me be clear: the participation trophy is better than sitting in the stands and watching the game of life play out.

But knowing and not doing is ultimately the same as not knowing. You need to do the work. Tracking, measuring and reporting dramatically increases the odds that you will do the work and keep making progress.

Growth is rarely linear as the image below illustrates. The key is to be going “up and to the right” over time. Tracking and reporting is what helps you keep moving.

The difference between a gold medal and a participation trophy is usually small, very attainable, and measurable. The image below shows how close Men are to achieving their goals when they quit.

Tracking, measuring and reporting creates accountability and feedback on what is working and what isn’t. When combined with our monthly testing protocols, we have real data that we can use to inform our efforts, course correct and keep moving forward.

Tracking, measuring and reporting is the bridge between “trying” and “doing”.

Every other approach is pure guessing and hoping.

Keep It Simple

We keep measuring simple at Argent Alpha.

You hit YOUR standard that day or you didn’t. Black or white. Yes or No.

Score yourself a 1 if you hit your standard. Score yourself a 0 if you miss your standard.

Here is a recent week of mine:

In this particular week, I hit every standard, every day. Not because I’m special. Because I set standards that were attainable for ME and then I went out and hit them.

The Men who get results in our program consistently score 32+ each week. It’s like clockwork. When they dip below 32, their score pops back up the next week as they make adjustments.

If you aren’t consistently hitting a 32 or higher, it means one of two things:

1. Your standards are too high right now, lower them a bit so you hit them.
2. You aren’t following your standards. Ask yourself why.

Take Action

Let’s summarize so you can take some massive action.

Determine what is important to you. Call it a goal, an objective or an outcome. If you pick something general, identify the specific underlying drivers. For example, one way to become Harder to Kill (general) is to get your body fat % to 15% (specific).

Identify Key Drivers. Think through and identify the activities, actions, behaviors and habits which are necessary to achieve your goal. These need to become your non-negotiable standards. Keep the list at 3–5 to make things attainable.

Measure Your Activity. What gets measured gets managed. Track your compliance with your standards and use this as feedback to adjust your efforts. Measuring daily creates the awareness necessary to make change.

Report Your Activity. Recruit an individual or join an online group for your accountability partner. Share your goals, your process and your tracking process with them so they can ask the right questions to keep you accountable.

The reason other health, coaching, fitness, nutrition, and self-help programs don’t consistently work for people is they lack our R.A.D. process. It’s why the world is filled with participation trophies and not many gold medalists.

If you are a Man over 50 and serious about results, apply to join Argent Alpha. We have the process, support, accountability and community built. It’s a proven approach that gets results.

Every day Men over 50 are raising their standards with The Argent Alpha Upgrade. We accept new members each week. Go to Argent Alpha to learn more.

Follow me on LinkedIn for daily posts on becoming Harder To Kill.

Here’s a recent photo of two late 50’s and two early 60’s Men getting in a workout in Scottsdale, AZ with their 30-something coach.

Originally published at https://hardertokill.beehiiv.com.