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5 Minute Assessment to Become More Successful

I initially learned about the High Performance Habits book through Greg Todd’s Smart Success PT course.

During the first week, everyone took this short 5 minute Performance Assessment, and received our scores via email. You’re given an overall score and a breakdown of 6 different categories to help better understand yourself and how to improve your personal habits so you become more successful.

I highly recommend getting your own scores and seeking out ways to improve yourself! I’m sharing my results and what I’ve been working on over the past few weeks. If you want a better description of each category and how to improve, the book would be a good place to start!

Please don’t compare your scores with mine! Instead, just focus on yourself and what you can personally improve.


My results

  • Overall score: 3.56 / 5.
  • Clarity: 3.5 / 5
  • Energy: 2.83 / 5
  • Necessity: 4 / 5
  • Productivity: 2.67 / 5
  • Influence: 4.67 / 5
  • Courage: 3.67 / 5


My Improvements Over the Past 6 Weeks

1. Energy

I’m normally pretty good about eating healthy and cooking 90% of my meals, but I was frustrated by always feeling hungry and planning my day around when I can eat next. I tend to be a stress eater and a snacker and I wanted to change these habits.

I started following an intermittent fasting diet, which isn’t as scary as it sounds, I promise! I follow a more conservative plan of fasting for 16 hours and eating for 8 hours, specifically between 12pm – 8pm. It’s a hard habit to get used to, especially because I normally get pretty unfocused and hungry if I don’t eat every few hours. For the first two weeks I only drank coffee with coffee creamer before 12 and never ate my late-night snacks after 8pm. Unfortunatel over the past few weeks I haven’t been as good about stopping my snacking after 8pm, but I’ve been sticking to not eating before noon! I definitely feel less hungry during the day, I have significantly more energy, and my focus has improved because I’m thinking about food a lot less often. 


2. Productivity

This is my lowest score which was somewhat of a surprise to me. I often hear from friends and classmates that I’m always busy and get a lot done with my schoolwork. However, I’ve always associated being “busy” with being “effective” or “productive”, which is absolutely not the case! I tend to spend a lot of time on every task because I’m too much of a perfectionist, and I get easily distracted by other people and social media.

I’ve found it the most helpful to make weekly and daily to-do lists, and to not feel guilty if I don’t complete everything on my lists. I have also been working on prioritizing each task and making sure I complete the most time-sensitive tasks first, instead of just doing the tasks that are the most fun, or the tasks that are the fastest to complete.

journalplanner

This is a typical example of my journal. I put my to-do list for the entire week in the top-left corner, and then have lists for each individual day.

journal_planner_checkmarks

I also occasionally break down each day into sections. I’ve tried all of the following sections:

  • Overall To-do list for each week
  • 1 to-do list for each day
  • Individual to-do lists for each day, including personal tasks, school tasks, professional development tasks, etc.
  • 3 things I’m grateful for each day
  • 3 things I was successful with each day
  • Quote of the day

My favorite sections have been the quote of the day, 3 things I’m grateful for, and 3 things I was successful with each day. It’s been the most helpful for me to break down my to-do list into different sections, instead of one giant disorganized list.

I’ve also found it helpful to schedule out specific times to complete these tasks. I tend to ignore my to-do lists and come back to them a week later without checking off very many items. I’ve been flexibile with each day and am currently OKAY if I don’t follow the plan 100%. I’ve found that scheduling my day forces me to not spend too much time on certain things (*cough cough* this blog), and ensures that I spend enough time on my hobbies and schoolwork, for example. Here’s an example of one day that I’ve planned:

schedule_google_calendar


3. Courage

I finally shared my blog! This was a huge step for me to take and I had butterflies the entire weekend when I eventually made posts on social media. I’ve been planning on releasing my blog for a good 8 weeks, and finally pulled the plug! It’s such a relief to take that jump, and I’m so excited to be done with that so I can continue exploring outside of my comfort zone. 

I’ve also recently made the jump into deciding to pursue travel physical therapy once I graduate! This decision has been in the back of my mind for the past year or so, but it’s finally felt real once I started telling all my friends, classmates, patients, and clinical instructors over the past 3 months. I’m still a little afraid, but it’s getting easier the more that I speak with other people.


I’d love to hear about your experience, so please share your scores below! Did anything surprise you? How do you plan on improving your scores?

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