Paper-in-the-Jar Strategy

 

“Your future is found in your daily routine. Successful people do daily what others do occasionally!”_Paula White

 

In his bestselling book, Atomic Habits, James Clear narrates an interesting story on how someone made the most of each day in his career through the help of visual cues and momentary awareness of meaningful progress.

The name of that someone is Trent Dyrsmid. He catapulted his career by optimizing his daily performances through the strategy I am about to re-examine.

Trent would start his business hour with two jars before him. He purposefully filled one jar with pieces of paper and he purposefully left the other jar unfilled.

However, beyond mere jars and papers is where the insight of his game hides.

Trent would move a paper from the filled jar to the unfilled jar after every sales call. One paper for one call, moment by moment. That is the idea behind his strategy!

Furthermore, he sustained this practice every business day. In the words of Joe Louis, one of the greatest boxers of all time: “A champion doesn't become a champion in the ring, he's merely recognized in the ring. His “becoming” happens during his daily routine.”

As narrated in the book, Trent personally explained to James Clear that: “Every morning I would start with 120 paper clips in one jar and I would keep dialing the phone until I had moved them all to the second jar.”

Trent Dyrsmid discovered that winning in his field came down to one essential task of making sales calls. And he gave his best to that critical factor, which is not necessarily what another person in the same situation would have decided to do. In fact, that is hardly the choice most people would have made.

You see, the simple lesson here is that, to succeed in our endeavors, we need to figure out the most important or the most difficult element of our quest, and then goad ourselves to act on it through the paper-in-the jar strategy.

In others words, discern the difference-making input for your goals, then break it down to your current actionable capacity with the strategy herein described, then execute on it unremittingly.

Granted, Trent started with 120 paper clips in a jar, we may have to start with 12 paper clips or less. The key is to get started and improve along the way.

If we do this right every day, the desirable results we earnestly seek will eventually find their way to our door.