Personal Grit Checklist (#102)
““The backbone of success is...hard work, determination, good planning, and perseverance.”
Mia Hamm, Olympic Soccer Player
Mia Hamm is a soccer icon who played forward for the U.S. women’s national team from 1987 to 2004. She helped the University of North Carolina win four consecutive NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Championship Titles, as well as the U.S. national team win two Olympic Gold Medals and two Women’s World Cup Titles. When she retired, she held the record for most international goals scored with 158. Hamm was an incredibly strong, tough, competitive, selfless, and creative athlete. She also had grit.
Over the last two months I have covered a lot of ground on how to build and maintain your grit, or “the will to persevere to achieve long term goals.” Mia Hamm defined her personal purpose, established goals, honed her perseverance, and built her courage and resilience to create grit and take her and her team to the highest levels. Most people aren’t Mia Hamm, though. Figuring out where to start to build your personal grit can also be a huge challenge for many people. A checklist can help the process.
Checklists
Checklists are “a list of items required, things to be done, or points to be considered, used as a reminder.” They are simple but powerful tools used by pilots, doctors, astronauts, construction workers, and the military to handle complex, non-routine problems. Checklists help people balance innovation and discipline, craft and protocol, and specialized talents within group collaboration. Michael Collins, one of the Apollo 11 crew members that went to the moon, referred to the astronauts’ ubiquitous checklists as “the fourth crew member.”
In 1935 at Wright Field in Ohio, the Army Air Corps hosted a fly-off between two long range bombers: the Douglas Aircraft Company’s B-18, a two-engine bomber, and the Boeing B-17, a four-engine, cutting edge aircraft with controllable pitch propellers, retractable landing gear, flaps, and an average speed of 232 miles per hour. During the fly-off, the B-17 crashed after take-off. Subsequently, the Army Air Corps selected Douglas for the contract to produce 200 B-18 bombers. During World War II the B-18 was used for training and anti-submarine actions.
Despite its crash, the Army Air Corps still wanted the B-17 and, after an investigation it was determined that the airplane crashed due to pilot error not the aircraft’s size or complexity. To avoid another accident, Air Corps personnel developed checklists the crew would follow for takeoff, flight, before landing, and after landing to minimize the opportunity for future human error. Up until this time, the checklist was used in aviation, but infrequently. It took the crash of the B-17, as well as the development of an extremely complex airplane, to institutionalize the use of checklists throughout the aviation world. Once the checklists were implemented, Boeing went on to produce over 12,000 B-17s which served as the workhorse of the bombing campaign against Germany in World War II.
B-17 in flight
The crash of the B-17 was the catalyst for checklists to become commonplace in aviation. In addition to pilots, checklists are used today by doctors in operating rooms to reduce the risk of infection, construction workers to build complex buildings, and soldiers to make sure their vehicles operate correctly. Checklists take the pressure off people trying to remember all the necessary steps for complex systems, as well as freeing bandwidth to think about more challenging tasks.
Over the last nine decades checklists have been refined and improved. Boeing and Airbus both have departments dedicated to building checklists to support all their aircraft. The best checklists are only one page long and only hit the most important steps. They have opportunities where the group or team pauses and communicates. Finally, checklists fall into three categories: they help people and organizations do routine procedures better, prepare better, or problem-solve better.
I love checklists. I make a checklist every night for the things that I need to get done the next day. This helps keep me focused on the pursuit of my long-term goals. They help me stay gritty. My roommate from West Point, Andrew Hyatt, laminated checklists so he can use them over and over.
Since checklists are so powerful, I have provided a procedural checklist to help you better handle a complex system and follow a process to grow your personal grit over a 12-month period.
The Personal Grit Checklist
At the beginning:
o Take stock of your level of grit by using the Grit Quiz on the website
o Examine your personal purpose.
o Develop your goal or goals. Make sure the goal uses the SMART mnemonic device, break down the steps to achieve your goal, and block time on your calendar to work towards your goal. Write your goal down where you can see it daily (on your mirror or near your computer).
o Develop your courage. List your fears, reframe your definition of success and failure, and focus on all the things you will be learning along the way.
Pause and communicate – talk to close friends and family about your purpose, goals, and fears.
Daily – Build your perseverance and momentum. Start and maintain a streak or celebrate your small wins. Refer to Chapter 5 if you need more ideas.
Daily -- Resilience. Make sure you are taking care of yourself daily. Ensure you are sleeping well, eating healthy, working out daily (even if only 10 minutes), and practicing mindfulness.
Daily -- Revisit your drive. Make sure you know whether your drive is coming from within yourself or externally. Make sure you are continuing to fuel your grit. Look at Chapter 8 if you need more ideas.
Monthly – Take stock of where you were, what you’ve accomplished so far, where you are, and where you are going.
Pause and communicate -- talk to close friends and family about how it is going, your successes, and your struggles.
Quarterly:
o Goal – Take stock of where you were, what you’ve accomplished, where you are, and where you are going. Then ask is it still the right goal?
o Perseverance – Do I have a streak?
o Habits – What habits do I have that are helping me achieve my goal? What habits do I need? What habits are inhibiting my pursuit of the goal?
Pause and communicate -- talk to close friends and family about your goal, your streaks, your habits, your successes, and your struggles.
If you reach your goal, pause, celebrate, and communicate. Then go back to the top and start a new, grittier journey.
If you don’t reach your goal in 12 months, go back to the top and use the annual exercise to re-examine your purpose and goal. If it is still what you want to do, get after it. If not, start a new gritty journey.
Using or modifying the checklist can help you go on the offense and grow your grit while accomplishing a long-term goal.
If you’d like to talk more about growing your personal grit, overcoming obstacles, and accomplishing more of your goals contact us here to start the discussion.