I was speaking with a coach a month or so ago, and the topic of player development plans (IDPs, IPPs, or whatever other acronym you use for these) came up. I asked what that process looked like for him and his players. He pointed to the wall. Each player's IPP was written in four words. That was it. Four words. Four focus areas, articulated in a word each. Simplicity maxed out. When I asked why they were so simple, the answer I got back really resonated with me. It was the cliche ‘lightbulb’ turning on. His response was:

“I try and coach at an average of 8 out of 10 every session. Sure, I'd love to be 10/10 every time, and I'll hit it occasionally. But if I'm averaging 8 across the week, I reckon I'm doing pretty well, and my players are probably training pretty well.

If I spend more time writing detailed, intricate development plans, I've found that starts to bring my average down. Not a drastic drop, but a drop. And if it stays a priority, in a month or so I might only be at 6.5 out of 10.

I can't coach as well as I want to on the grass if I'm prioritising time on development plans. My plans might be better, but the impact on my coaching is worse. I'd rather sustain the 8 out of 10, so our development plans stay relatively simple. I'm okay with that trade-off.”

Where should you spend your time? It’s an interestingly worded question. The word ‘spend’ does the heavy lifting, but I’d never really given it much thought until recently. And then that example from above helped drive it home for me. We do spend our time, much like we spend our money. Once that day, hour, minute is gone, we don’t get it back again. The underlying message from that story is about prioritisation and acceptance. Prioritisation in knowing what is of the most value to you and what you’re trying to achieve. And then acceptance in understanding there may be a lot of things that can help you achieve what you’re trying to, but with a finite amount of time each week, you can’t do everything.

Let’s start with prioritisation. Picture a rocket ship, and how it gets to space (full disclosure, I failed year 12 physics so this metaphor may get dicey). It has the enormous amounts of fuel and power it needs to get it out of our atmosphere. And then, it releases weight. It drops stuff that it doesn’t need in order to get to where it needs to go. It releases things to get to the right altitude.

I love that metaphor. In order to work at the right altitude, you need to be really aware of where you need to be focusing, where you need to be spending your time and what you need to let go of in order for you to do that. For the coach in the story above, he felt he needed to let go of more time spent on detailed, more intricate personalised development plans in order for him to coach more effectively, consistently. For someone else, it might be needing to let go of being as hands on with their team during the week, so they can get more quality 1-1 time with their leadership group. For someone else again, it might be letting go of scouting the opposition, so they can spend more time connecting with their support staff.

An idea to help us understand acceptance is opportunity cost. In simple terms, opportunity cost is:

.

If I choose to spend more time writing IDPs for my players, I’m also choosing not to do all of the other things I could do with that same time. If I’m choosing to scout the opposition in even more detail, I’m also choosing not to have a coffee with that player whose form may have dipped over the past couple of weeks. Opportunity cost helps us with the question that’s underpinning this post:

Once you accept you only have a finite amount of time each week, you also have to accept you can't do everything on your to-do list, even if it all feels important.

I’ve created a flow chart that can help bring this idea to life in a tangible way. It’s helps make concrete both prioritisation and acceptance.

1.      What am I aiming for?

This is your goal, what you are trying to achieve. In the story above, it was the target of 8/10 each week.

2.      What could I do to achieve that?

List every possible way you could get there, without judging any of them yet. For the coach in the story, that list might have included more detailed IDPs, more video review, extra 1-1 time, deeper opposition scouting, more time on session planning. Nothing gets crossed off here. You're just building the full picture of your options before you start weighing them up in the next step. You’re going wide before you go narrow.

3.      What else might land?

I think this question is undervalued. We all have commitments across any given week that we know take up time. Review meetings, planning meetings, 1-1s with players. A lot of these things are known to us, and we need to make sure we’re factoring that in to our thinking and planning, as that’s going to have an impact on where we can spend our time and energy.

4.      What has the most impact?

This is where you narrow. Take everything from your brainstorm in point 2, weigh it against the commitments you mapped in point 3, and rank it by what will actually move you closest to your goal. For the coach, that meant more detailed IDPs ranked low. Plenty of other things on his list did more for his weekly 8/10 than a better development plan did. This step isn't about ruling things out yet, just being honest about what's carrying the most weight.

5.      What are the trade offs?

This is the pressure test. For whatever ranked highest in Point 4, ask yourself directly: if I choose this, what am I saying no to? For the coach, prioritising his 8/10 average meant saying no to more detailed development plans, a trade-off he was clear-eyed about making. If you can work through that question honestly and still feel good about where you've landed, that's your prioritisation sorted. Time to start doing it.

That's what the coach in the story had already done, long before he ever explained it to me. Four words on a wall isn't a lack of effort. It’s what's left after doing the hard work of narrowing everything else away, so he can keep working at the altitude he needs to, week after week.

Ultimately, you’re going to spend your time somewhere. The only real choice is on what.

“Excellence is impossible if we cannot distinguish between what is superfluous and significant, between what is trivial and meaningful. But if we can draw on those distinctions and act on them, the rewards are great”.

Brad Stulberg in ‘The Way of Excellence’

For a similar, but also different take on this idea, the link below is a republish of a blog by Oliver Burkeman. He wrote the book ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ which both Sam and I highly recommend:

We work with coaches and organisations on exactly this kind of thing — if that's useful, email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!

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