Driving Lessons: Should vs. Want
How coaching others has led to self-coaching in prioritizing my business life.
A few years ago, I stumbled into a fun and valuable way of prioritizing what I focus on within my business.
First, in a typical year, I have at least fifteen different projects, products, and services, ranging from 1-on-1 coaching to car club talks/seminars; conducting webinars to writing these Substack posts; podcasting to adding content to my Sim Racer Academy; and various other consulting work.
Some I just can’t wait to get to, and some are fun but just a tiny bit closer to real work. Fortunately, none can be considered a real job! Of course, as with any business, there are things that I don’t really want to do, such as the administration stuff. As a solopreneur business by choice, I’m okay with even those things, but they’re not what I get excited to get out of bed to do!
However, because I enjoy almost all of what I do, I have a very difficult time saying no to pretty much any request. That’s why I need to put some boundaries on what I do, and what I don’t do. I need some discipline, otherwise I’d try to do everything, and ultimately not do anything well.
To help with this, I assigned an “official” role to my wife, Robin. Within our business, she is the Director of No, the person I ask whether I should accept a new work request. It works, mostly. See, asking Robin to say no is like asking a drug addict to say no to another fix. She’s the most accommodating person in the world, and if she could, she’d volunteer to help everyone. But as my Director of No, she can help me by making sure that something new fits into the year’s priorities.
So, my process for prioritizing the various projects, products, and services begins by opening a spreadsheet:
To start, in the first column, I create a list of every project/product/service.
Next, I create a “Should” column. In this column, I rate each of the projects/products/services from 1 to however many there are (let’s say, from 1 to 15) based on how strong a “Should” is. This Should rating is based on three factors. First, the revenue it generates for the business (since, if I only did things that didn’t generate revenue, I would be flipping burgers at McDonald’s instead). Second – and this is often a stronger factor than the revenue – is the level of commitment and responsibility I feel towards it. For example, if it’s something that means very little in terms of revenue, but it’s something I told someone I’d do, then that’s going to get a high rating. I also factor in the feedback I get from people like you; if I’ve heard from many that they want more of something, that impacts my rating. So, the Should ratings are a bit of a blend, based partly on the numbers, and partly on what feels right. After I’ve rated each project/product/service from 1 (being the highest priority) to 15, I then move onto the next column.
In the third column, called “Want,” I rate each of the projects/products/services from 1 to 15, in terms of what I simply want to do. I don’t factor any of the Shoulds in the Want column – this is just what I’d want to do if money were no object, and I had no previous commitments.
The fourth column requires some advanced mathematics: I add the ratings from the Should and Want columns together! For example, if I had a “2” in the Should column, and a “9” in the Want column, that would be an “11” as the total; if I had a “4” in the Should column, and “1” in the Want column, that would give me a “5” as a total.
Finally, in the fifth column, I rank each project/product/service from the lowest total to the highest, then I sort them by this ranking.
While the top three are rarely a complete surprise to me, sometimes some of the others are. To do this properly, I need to really focus on the Shoulds and Wants separately. In fact, often what I’ll do is rate them on different days, and make sure I’m not looking at – or even thinking about – one column while working on the other. To make this work well, I need to really focus on what I should do, and what I want to do, before combining those ratings to come up with my final priority rankings.
The result of this ranking process is a nice balance between what I should do for the business, and what I want to do for myself. Generally, that leads to doing what’s best for you and the other drivers I enjoy helping.
I go through this process every year, prior to the start of the new year, and I’m pretty sure this process came out of what I’ve learned from coaching drivers.
A coaching tactic I use often is to have a driver rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 in a variety of areas, from pre-event prep to mental focus, from the use of data/video to a specific driving technique, and as many other factors I think a driver should focus on. What this does is help the driver become more aware of what should be focused on, especially if I give the driver the rating sheet prior to an event. Just knowing that they will go through this process after the event primes their mind.
I find that by prioritizing my projects, products, and services in this way, my mind is primed to focus on the things that matter most, but from the perspective of what I Should do, and what I Want to do.
In a way, I’m coaching myself by going through this process.
And speaking of self-coaching, I’m conducting a 2-part Self-Coaching for Drivers Masterclass webinar in February. Six years ago, I did a shorter version of this topic, and I had many drivers tell me it’s the most important resource I’ve ever delivered. Because I’ve learned more since that time (and fitting all of the content I had back then into just one session was next to impossible), I’ve decided to make this a 2-parter, held on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 20-21.
For 2024, I’m upping my game with what I’ve done with webinars in the past: my goal is better content, better presentation, and ultimately more effective learning for drivers. I’m still going to provide the background information (knowledge), but I want to give drivers even more actionable practices. I want to make it easier for them to put what I share into things that they actually do. To hold myself accountable to this goal, I’m calling them masterclasses, as my mental model of a masterclass is different and better than just a webinar.
In case you’re wondering where this Self-Coaching Masterclass fits into my rankings, well, it’s the number one priority – it’s something that drivers have asked for, I feel a sense of responsibility to provide it, and it’s something that I really, really want to do (hopefully it’ll be worthwhile financially for me to put all the time into it). I’m especially excited about presenting this early in the season, giving drivers the tools to help themselves throughout 2024.
When I think about what I’ve learned about driving over the past five decades, I think it pales in comparison to what I’ve learned from driving (and coaching) that applies to everything else I do in my life. This prioritization process, which is very simple (I tried adding more to it one year, and it over-complicated it, making it less effective), is just one example of what I call “My driving lessons.”
If you think about, and use, this prioritization process for something in your life, please let me know. Or if you have other methods like this, I’d love to hear about them. Click on the Comment button below, and let me know of a “driving lesson” you’ve applied to your life.
P.S. – If you want more information about the Self-Coaching for Drivers Masterclass, go to https://speedsecrets.com/self-coaching-masterclass/.
Driving/Life Lesson: This a week ago Saturday at an endurance race at Sebring I was tracking out fully in Turn 17. Another driver thinking I would not track out fully got between my left rear tire and the approaching wall hoping he could shoot the gap...only there wasn't one. He hit the wall, then me, spinning my back end out and my nose into the barrier at the "corner" of the front straight. Flagtronics logged the impact at 25-30 Gs. The vehicle I was driving was severely damaged and I was in intense pain for a few moments. Thankfully other than a few bruises and being stiff and sore and needing regular chiropractic adjustments for a few weeks I am fine. I am fine because my teammate ensured my gear was on properly and he cinched my belts very tight and securely. The HANS absolutely did its job! The vehicle was properly prepared, had a strong cage and the window netting was in place. I liken the safety gear to our moral foundations, the cage and netting too the things we surround ourselves with and the teammates who ensured I was properly secured as well as the emergency responders as our fellow men looking after each other and running to our aid when in trouble. This is a life lesson I chose to take from this incident.
Oh man Ross, this is great: I love the disciplined prioritization process! For years, my wife and I organized all our financial thinking around the categories Must-Haves, Savings, and Wants (and we funded them in that order). It really helped us be realistic about where we could spend money and to prioritize savings at a time when we weren’t making a hell of a lot of money. Anyway, love your model.