Underachieve: To perform below expectations or achieve less than expected, especially by others

Just like it was yesterday, I remember the very first time I underachieved. I forget how old I was but I was on a school excursion and all I had to do was to swim the length of the local swimming pool to earn The Herald swim certificate. I wasn’t a great swimmer but I was confident enough I could swim the required distance because all my friends were able to do it. About halfway into the swim I was struggling to stay in stroke and I still recall the sense of frustration and disappointment when the teacher told me to “get out of the pool, you won’t be getting The Herald today.” This childhood memory didn’t scar me, but the feelings of frustration or disappointment have been similar throughout my life whenever I have underachieved.

There are things we can control or influence through our actions and then there are situations where the saying Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong, will go wrong) happens.

Game 1 of the first week of the 2016 AFL finals kicked off in exciting fashion with the Western Bulldogs upsetting the West Coast Eagles. Game 2 was even more thrilling with a kick after the siren deciding the outcome of the Geelong and Hawthorn game. Coaches say there’s greater intensity in finals and it’s always interesting to see storylines unfold and how players and teams perform at the most important part of the season.  

Success is difficult to attain in business, sport and even our personal lives. There seems to be competition for our time and attention in everything we do. I was watching TV when the latest NAB more than money campaign said: “on average only 50% of new businesses actually succeed.” The statement hit me right between the eyes because I’ve recently been thinking about what it takes to be both scalable and sustainable.

There’s a difference between reaching a goal and achieving a goal. Making it to a level of an objective is reaching a goal, whereas, completing the objective successfully is achieving the goal. The differences are subtle yet profound. 

There are 3 phases of momentum where it either gains, drains or remains the same. If you watched sport on the weekend then you may have noticed the differences in energy to the team with momentum versus the team without.

What a great feeling it is to achieve a big goal or complete a large project. Even seeing visible progress provides a level of satisfaction.

Why is this?

Seventy percent of a meditation class I regularly attended 10 years ago were meditating as a way to deal with either stress, anxiety or depression due to having difficulty in coping with their job. More recent research identifies two-thirds of today’s employees are feeling overwhelmed. Yet, for busy workers, I believe work-life balance is more of a myth than something we can achieve on a regular basis. What’s more realistic is aligning our rhythm to get balance based on what’s important in our lives in a day, a week or month.

The activity we’re doing gets easier when we’re in a rhythm and consequentially we’re able to either get more done or perform at a higher level. This is evident at work but also applies to everyday scenarios such as going for a run in winter where starting off in the cold can be reasonably hard and uncertainty can creep in with “I don’t think I can do this today” but if we persevere until we get into a bit of a rhythm our mood usually changes to “I’m glad I got going as this wasn’t so bad after all.”

July 1 for many workers and businesses in Australia signalled the start of the New Financial Year. So regardless of how successful or unsuccessful you were last year, everyone started back at zero in relation to achievement of their targets.

I’m very interested in the rhythms of how people work. Last week I conducted a very small experiment where I asked 10 people what was the very first thing they did when they got to work.

If you have teenage kids and you’re anything like me then your weekends are probably crazy busy with being a taxi service to get the kids to part-time jobs, sporting commitments, parties and the like. It also means early mornings and late nights, so anything I need to do for myself I try to fit in around the gaps before the next activity we need to dash off to.