A personal goal can turn into a ceiling, and a steady routine keeps you moving past it.
A Hall of Fame hitter on scripting the small stuff, refusing a fixed target, and why he wants every man to check his PSA.
I'll admit something. Every time I go fishing, I eat a can of Vienna sausages and pour the juice in the water. So when Wade Boggs told me he ran through seventy-five or eighty rituals on a game day, I understood the impulse. The reason surprised me, though. For him the rituals weren't really about luck. They meant nothing snuck up on him.
The part I keep thinking about for business is goal setting. I told Wade I think about team goals versus personal goals in business. His answer runs against most of what we hear about targets, and I think it's worth hearing out.
A fixed personal number invites a letdown the day you reach it.
Seventy-five or eighty game-day rituals meant nothing ever snuck up on him.
Starting a new phase at zero turns one good result into momentum.
- 01The ceiling
Why 200 hits would have ruled out a 240-hit season
Boggs never wanted 200 hits as his goal, because reaching a fixed number brings a letdown, and some years he got to 200 with two weeks still left in the season. He ran on drive instead and accepted team goals like making the playoffs. He calls 3,000 hits a plateau, one that came into view after he had 2,000 in ten years.
- 02The routine
Schedule the small decisions so pressure has less to grab
Boggs grew up in an Air Force household where meals and the school bus ran on the clock, and as a player he set a time for everything on game day, chicken included. With the day scripted, worries like whether he would make an error never really crossed his mind. He admits that skipping five or six rituals probably would not have mattered, and that we will never know.
- 03The reset
In October, every batting average goes back to zero
By September a player is physically beat, and a run to Game 7 of the World Series can mean close to 230 games. What carries you into the playoffs is the reset: even after your worst year, your average is zero, so one hit in the first game has you hitting a thousand. He says that changes your attitude in a hurry.
From the conversationI feel like if you set goals, that you're setting a ceiling.”
Find the personal target capping your effort
In about 20 minutes, you will replace one capping personal target with a team outcome and a scheduled daily routine.
- 1
List every personal target you are tracking this quarter, and mark each target you could hit with two weeks to spare.
- 2
Choose the marked target most likely to slow your effort once reached, and rewrite that target as a team outcome.
- 3
Write the one daily routine that drives the team outcome, then put that routine on your calendar at a fixed time starting Monday.