A big welcome to 2016. No doubt, many of us started the new year with resolutions which may or may not be ditched by now. I finished off last year by doing a bit of review. What went well and what do I need to do to improve as a coach. I won’t go through the detail as it would probably take up far too much of everyone’s precious time. The real positive outcome is that I have used a number of my interests to develop a process which I believe will firstly, help me and then help others.

So this year I intend to follow a process which is all about habits. This will be gaining good ones and losing bad ones. I have applied my interests in leadership, simplicity and coaching underpinned by the scientific principles of behavioural science.

I am going to start by using myself as the guinea pig and then hopefully roll this out to my coaching in grassroots football (Hopefully it can be applied to any context). Firstly I have picked a theme for the year (not a new year’s resolution or a goal).  My overall theme is to improve my overall health and fitness in order to have more energy to do the things I really want to do. Ok, good start. So I want to break down the things I want to do more of and remove the things I want to do less of. Opening up a bit personally here, but these are the areas where I want to spend my time:

• Spend more time with my family
• Make time for key friends
• Improve my own personal fitness and health
• Reading
• Writing
• Coaching

By using my theme I want to create more energy to do these things. The way I will do this is to develop a monthly habit which supports this. Much has been written about the length of time it takes to develop a habit and depending on what you read this could be anything from a week to a year. I am going to use my own 30 day challenge and the popular blog on the 1% rule to see if I can develop a stated habit in 30 days. I started this at end of December and my first 30 day challenge is ‘Exercise’. I am pleased to report that I have done 9 sessions since 30th December consisting of a run and a workout consisting of squats, lunges, crunches, press-ups, plank etc. The intensity and volume of each session has gradually increased session on session. My 30 day challenge ends on 28th Jan and will review if it has been sufficient to develop this habit into my daily routine.

By creating one habit at a time. I am putting all my focus on attaining this. To further support achieving a habit,there is a need to put consequences in place. I am therefore going to measure and publish my progress on Twitter (@Daviddale05) therefore putting in some public consequences regarding progress. If I achieve the continual progression and meet my 30 day challenge then I will donate £100 to McMillan Cancer Charity and Start-Up Stirling. If I fail then I will donate £200 to something I dislike (The Tory party springs to mind!).

My final piece is to make this part of my Daily MIT’s (Most important Tasks) where I write down at the start of the day the 3 most important things I am going to achieve in the day. One of these is to achieve my daily exercise goal. By doing these 3 things before lunchtime it means if I do nothing else I have felt a sense achievement. Of course this means doing my exercise before going to work!

So there you have it. Anyone else wanting to join is most welcome to try it and please provide feedback on your outcomes. If it works for me, I then intend applying it to other areas and see if it can be a process for coaching and development. A final acknowledgement to John Davies and Jocko Willink for creating the inspiration for this. I now need to provide the perspiration and as Jocko would say ‘Get after it’