60/40: There’s More Left in the Tank

“We are all capa­ble of infi­nite­ly more than we believe.” — David Blaine, Magician

I recent­ly fin­ished an inter­est­ing book called Can’t Hurt Me by David Gog­gins, which nav­i­gates his life sto­ry and the many chal­lenges he faced on his way to achiev­ing many dif­fer­ent mile­stones. He out­lines a list of key prin­ci­pals that, if applied, help to posi­tion your mind to achieve more than you might cur­rent­ly deliver.

One prin­ci­pal that real­ly res­onat­ed with me was the 40% rule. I have seen this rule applied exten­sive­ly over the last four weeks, as indi­vid­u­als achieve what they thought was unat­tain­able as they deal with the impact of Covid-19 on our busi­ness landscape.

Here’s how it works:

Most peo­ple believe they oper­ate at their peak poten­tial. ​“I put in 15 hours, today, and deliv­ered X, Y and Z so I must be at my peak.”

We tell our­selves we were pro­duc­tive, but were we real­ly? When we are at a point of capac­i­ty, what would hap­pen if we told our­selves that we are only at the 40% mark with 60% more left in the tank?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen com­pa­nies that were ​“aggres­sive­ly” mov­ing along to posi­tion them­selves for the future, find a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent gear and piv­ot entire mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar orga­ni­za­tions, in days. Out of neces­si­ty, they found anoth­er 20%, 40% or even 60% capac­i­ty they had pre­vi­ous­ly under-utilized.

It’s not to say that com­pa­nies need crazy world events to tap into the remain­ing 60% but it is a reminder that when things just start get­ting tough, we still have anoth­er 60% of untapped poten­tial avail­able to us. That 60% doesn’t relin­quish itself eas­i­ly but it is there.

So, I decid­ed to test this the­o­ry on myself. Yes, I like to run — not super-fast — but it pro­vides me with a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to think. The oth­er day, I hit the wall: my legs hurt, my lungs gasped air and I had run far enough to be con­tent with the dis­tance cov­ered. At that point, I remind­ed myself that I had only reached 40% of my poten­tial and asked, ​“What would it look like if I went to 60%?”

Let’s just say, I was pissed at myself for only deliv­er­ing 40% so I ran anoth­er five kilo­me­ters. Need­less to say, walk­ing the next day was an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry but I did it!

In our cur­rent envi­ron­ment, we need to remind our­selves that we can tru­ly achieve any­thing of impor­tance – that our tanks are still 60% full.

The Chal­lenge

• Iden­ti­fy one prob­lem or oppor­tu­ni­ty that you are fac­ing and tell your­self that you have only con­tributed 40% effort towards address­ing it.
• Now throw 80% at it and see what that looks like:
  • Deliv­er the ini­tia­tive one year earlier
  • Launch new beta tests
  • Intro­duce your­self to new 10 new customers

Dean Ritchey is a Coach and Strate­gic Plan­ning Advi­sor at Lawrence & Co. Growth Advisors.