Why Improvement Sprints Will Push You Far Beyond Your Current Limitations

Unlike 30-day trials or micro-goals, improvement sprints focus all of your attention on to one of your current skills.

An improvement sprint passes that skill and the knowledge that goes with it, through a concentrating lens to improve an area you are already adept at. You use one of your strengths to push far beyond your current ability level into new and uncharted territory.

The intent is not for you to adopt new and possibly uncomfortable thought patterns or habits, but to concentrate on getting better at something you already do.

Improvement sprints have an effect on a life change whereas 30-day trials affect a life change.

Instead of attempting to create a new habit or adopt a new way of life, as you would with a trial and that you may or may not continue beyond the trial period, by sprinting you are attempting to advance your ability and push forward through any limiting barriers of a current ability, solely for a fixed duration.

Sprinting dictates that you increase the number of times you perform a particular habit, you increase the duration, you lift more weight, you improve flexibility, you change your technique, you tweak an already established habit. An improvement sprint takes one characteristic of an activity that you already do, and do more of it or do whatever it is with a slight but meaningfully significant change in the method that moves you beyond your current plateau of achievement.

To extract the most from an improvement sprint you must focus on the process, not the results. The process is the “how” rather than the “what.” How you go about improving, instead of what your results will be. Each step, and only the steps, in an improvement sprint, are important. Ignore how far you can go, concentrate only on how far you have come since the start of the sprint, because that act of looking behind will tell you whether your improvement sprints are helping or hindering your advancement.

An example of an improvement sprint for me during the month of April has been cooking new and interesting meals, and adding more self-discovered recipes to my recipe book. I wanted to cook a certain number of meals, but I was not too concerned if I actually hit that number. I wanted to improve my desserts and pastries, but did not overly care if I created other types of dishes too. It was the steps I went through to improve my culinary skills, “the how,” rather than the number and types of dishes I prepared and cooked, “the what.”

An improvement sprint, just like a trial or micro-goal, permits you to time box your focus so that it does not overwhelm other areas of your life and personal development. By knowing that you only have to concentrate on something for a short duration, a week, a fortnight, a month, you are more readily able to mentally commit to the dedication and extra work needed.

You can use improvement sprints when your energy is at its peak. Everybody gets down-time, where energy is low and you lack any kind of motivation, you simply fall off the personal development wagon, but by sprinting for short bursts, you do not have to concern yourself too much with the motivational dip you might face.

I recommend never sprinting for less than seven days, anything below that number confers little benefit, does not build a motivational habit and falls just beyond the “initial motivation” period, right in the motivational dip, that people have, but not so far out that you have to get over the persistence hurdle that most fail at. Longer sprints of a fortnight or a month are better of course, but not everyone can dedicate extra time to managing their sprint.

My recommendation, when sprinting the first few times, is to find where your motivational dip is for taking on something new and putting your sprint just beyond that. Later, when you are more adept at undertaking improvement sprints, you can attempt the full 30-days. I really do recommend that if you are not a regular sprinter, trialer or micro-goal achiever, you keep back from the 30-days time box, at least initially, so that you are not de-motivated by continuous failure.

It takes a strong will of character and well-honed self-discipline to push through repeated failure when it comes to our own personal development.

How you find your motivational dip is an article for another time, unfortunately. All I can say right now, is look at your past trials and goals, and see how long you have stuck at them. Somewhere between day 5 and day 14 is where your motivation dwindles and your procrastination techniques kick in to drive you off course from your goals.

Sprinting will reinforce the routines and habits you already have, by causing you to focus on one particular activity. When you reach the end of your improvement sprint, and I recommend you do end it at the appointed time, you may feel a sudden loss of direction for a day or two as your routine returns to normal. If you were spending a little extra time at an activity and now you are quitting earlier, it will feel weird.

Odd that people never experience this effect when they take on something new, but only when it goes away. If you were sprinting by changing up the routine or injecting new ways of doing something, that sudden change back to how it used to be, assuming you do change back, can be jarring to your senses.

Once you are done with your improvement sprint, analyse whether the changes you made lifted you up or held you back. Not all change is beneficial and some changes may have taken you off in a direction that is opposite to your goals or beliefs. If you find that the changes brought about by your sprint are desirable and you wish to keep them, a new evaluation of your goals would be necessary to find whether they are still congruent with the direction you have chosen for your life.

When trying to decide whether to choose a trial, micro-goal or improvement sprint for a particular month, ask whether you:

• “want to get better at something” — an improvement sprint
• “learn or try something completely new” — a trial
• “achieve your next target” – a micro-goal.

Improvement sprints should be used regularly, from weekly to monthly, are a relatively easy technique to employ, and you should utilise them far more than your trials or micro-goals. Our greatest achievements and gains mostly come from our strengths, not our weaknesses. Putting most concentration in to a strength, that 80/20 rule again, is an ideal way to grow quickly with strong, forceful bursts of energy and achievement.