Athlete Efficiency

Instead of trying to manage five things at once, athletes focus on what’s in front of them at that very moment. Allowing events and reminders of things you need to do into your head causes you to lose focus, and when you lose focus you don’t produce the desired results, either in the classroom or on the field (unless your desired result is making mistakes, that is).

Allman recalls that she had some difficulty adjusting to the student-athlete life when classes finally started. However, when she made the transition from her senior year in college into the workplace, she thought to herself, “Oh, this is nothing!”That’s because, after four years of being a student and an athlete, she had learned how to be more efficient by mono-tasking.

Freshman year is all about adjusting to the college environment; you quickly realize that the mentality that got you through high school isn’t going to cut it in college. “Oh, my paper isn’t due for another week, I still have time,” I’d think to myself.

But when you remember that you’re traveling this upcoming weekend and that you now have two fewer days to work on your paper, you had better get started. It only takes missing one important assignment to make you realize that getting a head start on everything is the best way to go.

Former UC Davis men’s soccer player Brian Ford says that “an individual only has so much energy in a day, and with the expectation to improve both physically and intellectually, they put pressure on how efficiently they spend their time and energy.”

As I discuss in Chapter 3 of my book, Fit for Business, athletes have to coordinate their game schedules with their syllabus schedules so they can see how everything shakes out. Seeing all of your assignments and weekends on the road might make you panic, but at least you know what’s coming. Eventually, you get used to doing everything ahead of time because you never know what’s going to pop up. It’s not uncommon for schedules to get rearranged, which means that you’ve got to find some other time to write your paper and study for that exam.

A 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that “interruptions as brief as two to three seconds — which is to say, less than the amount of time it would take you to toggle from this article to your email and back again — were enough to double the number of errors participants made in an assigned task.”

There are plenty of factors that can cause an employee to lose focus — the most popular culprit being technology. Your office phone rings, an email pops up on your screen, your phone buzzes with a text, and then you remember that you have an important set of paperwork already in front of you.

Now that the baby boomers have begun to retire, millennials make up the largest part of the workforce and, according to OpenMarket, 83% of millennials open text messages within 90 seconds of receiving them. There are 28,800 seconds in an eight-hour work day; on average, adults under the age of 45 send and receive 85+ texts every day, according to Kenneth Burke.

On average, that’s 70 text messages opened per day which inevitably decrease work focus and productivity. In order to shut out the possibility of distractions, you need to practice allocating your time efficiently. Otherwise, you won’t complete nearly as much work as you had hoped.

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In his TedX talk, “Student Athlete: the Untold Story,” Richard Carthon identifies “being present” as a key principle to keep in mind, because it’s something that college athletes have practiced and perfected. As a two-sport student athlete at Tulane University, Carthon had his hands full all the way up until graduation. After reflecting on how he managed to do it all, he enlightened the audience with the five keys to his success as a two-sport student-athlete.

The first is to be where your feet are. Focusing on the task at hand, or “being where your feet are,” allows you to make the most of your current situation. As a student-athlete, you are living in two distinct worlds: academics and athletics. Each comes with its unique sets of challenges, but the biggest challenge is to live in the moment.

If you continue to dwell on how crappy you practiced yesterday, chances are you won’t be able to focus in class. If you keep thinking about how much you have to study tonight for your exam, chances are, you’re going to lose focus during practice. Focusing on where your feet are gives you the best chance at being successful with the task at hand.

Having practiced this skill for years, student-athletes like Carthon are accustomed to balancing multiple activities at once and are still able to be productive and achieve success. International business coach Karen Trepte says that “it’s about creating breathing space.” Athletes need to manage their time in order to take joy in their life experiences, rather than stressing their way through them.

Carthon’s second point is to remain disciplined. Athletes don’t have time to zone out, because their focus and performance levels will drop. In the workplace, if an employee zones out while the boss is speaking, his or her dedication to the job will be questioned. Likewise, if your coach sees you zoning out during practice, he or she will probably call you out and tell you to snap out of it. Professors who see you staring out the window during their lectures will assume that you couldn’t care less about their class. Staying disciplined will ensure that you’re using your time wisely and effectively.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It, says that “almost any experience is improved by paying full attention to it. ... Attention is one way your brain decides, ‘Is this interesting? Is this worthwhile? Is this fun?’”

Thirdly, Carthon says that producing results and not excuses was key in his experience as a student-athlete, because he realized that coaches don’t care about homework, professors don’t care about athletic competition, and neither care about how either of them interfere with your performance on the field or in the classroom. You’re expected to perform at your very best no matter what. The term “student-athlete” implies that you’re always a student and always an athlete, never just one or the other.

As a college athlete, you are expected to be punctual. In fact, if you’re early, you’re considered on time. Turning in a paper late or showing up late to practice are both inexcusable. It’s your job to manage yourself, and when you don’t, it doesn’t reflect poorly on anyone but you.

The fourth key to life as a college athlete is to remember that success comes in “can”s, not in “cannot”s. Cheesy, but true. You won’t achieve anything physically, mentally, or academically if you don’t believe in yourself. It’s rather easy to get overwhelmed and defeated by all of the schoolwork you have to complete on the road this week. Self-belief is half; time management is the other half.

Setting attainable goals is the key to maintaining your discipline. Karen Trepte points out that a lot of people forget that we are the ones in control of our time, and not the other way around. It really gives us the chance to just step back for a minute and see where we can gain some control. Even the expression “time management” suggests that we are acting as the manager of our most precious asset, time. “Time doesn’t control us!” Trepte says. Our success is in our own hands. Focusing on what we can control through time management gives us the best chance to overcome the inevitable curveballs that life throws at us.

Last but not least, Carthon identifies trust as the last element of the equation. Without trust in yourself and your teammates, it’s hard to be accountable for your actions. Building trust in your teammates validates the notion that you will work hard for each other. You trust that everyone will obey team rules, and you trust that your teammates will stick to their word and will do everything they can to help everyone on the team achieve your goals. Being able to lean on each other and lend a hand when needed can go a long, long way.

This last and final point demonstrates how trust is evident in other aspects of sports besides teamwork and leadership. The trust you place in your teammates that they’ll be on top of their schoolwork creates accountability among teammates. If you see one of your teammates slacking off in school, you’ll start to believe that it’s okay for you to do the same, and if this cycle is perpetuated by poor time management, the group’s standards and values are, at best, diminished.

It’s no surprise that the combination of these five pieces helped Richard Carthon graduate cum laude from Tulane, while also earning 2016 AAC Scholar Athlete of the Year. His decorated athletic and academic careers are just glimpses of his bright future, as Carthon also founded a social calendar, called FollowMyCal. As a matter of fact, he also developed HandPact, an app that allows you to exchange contact information in a matter of seconds.

Carthon is just one of many former college athletes who have mastered the practice of time management. In fact, FollowMyCal was designed to help people manage their time more easily. By practicing and mastering this skill himself, Carthon is currently making his knowledge accessible to others as a businessman and entrepreneur.