How embarrassing. Nearly two months without a blog post, after setting an initial goal of two per week! Truthfully, I’ve been suffering from a case of excusitis (prounced excuse-itis) with respect to my blog. Excusitis is a wonderful anchor first coined by David J. Schwartz in his pivotal book, The Magic of Thinking Big – in short, it is a ‘mental disease’ where one constantly creates excuses for not taking time to complete a task or goal.
EXCUSITIS OCCURS NATURALLY – AND OFTEN!
The devious aspect of excusitis is that it can manifest in any task or goal over any period of time. The challenges of time management, energy management, momentum, and motivation stretch across each action in our daily lives. When we choose to prioritize our efforts according to these criteria, certain tasks will naturally fall to the bottom of the list (often for ‘good reasons’). This is where excusitis rears its ugly head!
Consistently placing a task or goal towards the bottom of our priority list may feel the right decision, but if we’re not evaluating that decision within the scope of the bigger picture, there’s a good chance that we’re suffering from excusitis without realizing it. Unfortunately, by very its nature it can never fully be eradicated from our habits – only managed through awareness!
MANAGING EXCUSITIS WITH A BATTING AVERAGE
Becoming better at identifying excusitis is the first step in controlling it; consistently reminding ourselves that it can occur at any time for any given task. To make it easier to remind ourselves that it exists, we need to introduce a new anchor to help us identify the disease: the Batting Average.
In baseball, a player’s batting average is the simple ratio of his hits divided by the number of his at-bats. For our purposes, Batting Average is the number of times we actually do what we say we’re going to do, divided by the number of opportunities we have to perform it. Put simply, how often are you acting according to what you commit to? If you feel your Batting Average for a task or goal is low, there’s a good chance excusitis has taken control (note that I said feel here – our Batting Average can be qualitative, based on personal judgement!).
Once we feel our Batting Average for a goal or task isn’t where we’d like it to be, we are empowered to find the root of our excusitis and overcome it through action. This creates a motivation to increase our Batting Average, eliminating excuses and creating momentum to bring us closer to our desires.