Follow these four simple steps to optimize
your own personal growth and be as effective as your fantasy team.
For millions of us, fall means another NFL
season and of course, fantasy football. A fantasy team is a fun way to compete
against friends and provide endless entertainment. It's the ideal escape from
the hustle and bustle of everyday life. If you don't happen to participate in a
league, you most certainly know someone who lives and dies with the number of
points their team racks up, not to mention whether they win or lose each week.
You know who I'm talking about -- the one who spends hours carefully deciding
which running back to start and which receiver to bench.
What is interesting isn't so much the amount
of time we devote to our fantasy teams; it's by contrast how little time we
devote to our real-life plans. I happen to love watching sports and agree with
ESPN's Mike Greenberg who said, "There's nothing in the world better than
investing everything into something that means absolutely nothing."
Hobbies and pastimes are important. In fact, I think they are crucial for our
sanity. While it's okay to spend hours planning a fantasy football lineup, it's
not okay to spend little to no time planning your life.
Admittedly, sometimes coordinating a fantasy
football lineup can be more entertaining than tackling more serious matters.
Here are four ways to plan your life like a fantasy football lineup:
1. Draft well.
Each season of fantasy football starts with
the player draft. During the draft, every team selects the players on their
roster round by round. Who you draft and when you select them can make or break
the entire season. Even the most basic strategy includes the philosophy of
maximizing your early round selections. This is where you're most likely to
find the "building blocks" of a winning team. Before you put a single
item on a to-do list, make sure that you identify your own personal building
blocks. This should consist of what you truly want in life, perhaps revolving
around the 5 "Fs:" Faith, Family, Friends, Finances and Fitness.
Assemble a list of all of the priorities in your life. This will serve as your
personal roster and is your responsibility to manage.
2. Set your starting lineup.
After you've selected your fantasy team, the
next most important action is choosing who will start and who will ride the
bench each week. Setting a weekly lineup in fantasy is a good analogy for the
way you should view each of your own weeks, personally. Think of this as a time
to organize your priorities. Once you've drafted a player, you need to
carefully analyze whether playing him each week puts you in the best position
to succeed. Similarly, if an action made your list of priorities, then you need
to decide if devoting time to this activity puts you in the best position to
achieve your goals.
3. Look for smart trades.
In fantasy sports, a smart manager will
always look for opportunities to swap or exchange players during the season. In
your personal life, when planning your future, it's okay to occasionally swap
out one priority for another. A priority in the past may no longer be a prime
concern in the present. Wisely "trading out" priorities that no
longer serve a purpose and replacing them with ones that do is a great way to
ensure you’re heading down the right path.
4. Keep your eyes on the free agent
market.
If a fantasy football owner is unsatisfied
with the team they originally drafted or is simply looking to improve, they
will keep a close eye on the free agent market. This is a list of players who
were not selected by any team. Therefore, they can be selected for no cost by
anyone on a first-dibs basis. In your journey to reach your own life goals,
it's also important to be open to and to look for new opportunities, while
still focusing on your end target. By doing so, sometimes the unexpected game
changer will present itself.
This fall, while you plan on thoroughly
enjoying and dominating your fantasy football league, I also challenge you to
plan on committing at least as much time to planning your own week. Perhaps you
set a repeating reminder to optimize your line-up before the first kick-off
each week? What if you establish the same prompt to work on your personal
growth? Remember, that unlike your fantasy team, in real life, you directly
control the outcome of the game.
Written By: Marty Fukuda
Credit: Entrepreneur.com
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