3 Keys to Peak Performance: Commitment, Completion, and Closure

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." — Vince Lombardi

Want to achieve personal excellence?  Want to get better results and be able to give your best when it counts?   According to Brian Tracy, there are three keys to peak performance:

Commitment, Completion, and Closure

You can use the 3 keys to high performance to build better habits for getting better results in work and life.  If you don’t Commit, you won’t give it your all, which will make it tough to complete it or do a great job.  If you don’t Complete, you’ll erode your confidence in your ability to see things through and to deliver above and beyond.  If you don’t Close the Loop, you’ll distract yourself and stress yourself out with things looming over you or buzzing around in your head.

In his best-selling book, Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want — Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible, Brian Tracy shows us how to use Commitment, Completion, and Closing the Loop to achieve high performance.

1. Commitment

When you really commit to something, you give yourself permission to give it your all.

Tracey writes:

“When you make a firm commitment to achieve a particular goal, and you put aside all excuses, it is very much like stepping on the accelerator in your subconscious mind.  You will be more creative, determined, and focused than ever before.  Great men and women are those who make clear, unequivocal commitments and then refuse to budge from them, no matter what happens.”

2. Completion

So close, can be so far.  Nothing builds motivation or momentum like finishing what you start.

Tracy writes:

“Completion is the second ingredient in peak performance.  There is an enormous difference between doing 95 percent of a task and doing 100 percent of a task.  In fact, it is very common for people to work very hard up to the 90 percent or the 95 percent level and then slack off and delay the final completion of the task.  This is a temptation that you must fight against.  You must continually force yourself, discipline yourself, to resist this natural tendency and push through to completion.”

3. Close the Loop

Don’t let unfinished business rob your attention, energy, and time.  It wears you down and wears you out.

Tracy writes:

“The third C, after commitment and completion is closure.  This is the difference between an ‘open loop’ and a ‘closed loop.’  Bringing closure to an issue in your personal or business life is absolutely essential for you to feel happy and in control of your situation.

Lack of closure – unfinished business, an incomplete action of any kind – is a major source of stress, dissatisfaction, and even failure in business.   It consumes enormous amounts of physical and emotional energy.”

I Committed to writing this post in 20 minutes or less, I Completed it, and now I’m Closing the Loop.

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Image by Jose Mesa.