Work Smarter, Not Harder in 2026

Jan 05, 2026

Hey coach,

Happy New Year.

January always feels a little different to me—not because the calendar fixes anything, but because for a brief moment, the year hasn’t hardened yet.

The calendar isn’t full.
The pace hasn’t taken over.
Old habits haven’t fully locked back in.

Most coaches I work with used to treat this window the same way every year.

More goals.
More tasks.
More effort.

That’s usually how they end up right back where they started.

What actually makes this time of year powerful isn’t motivation.

It’s leverage.

Leverage is choosing work that moves the needle instead of work that just keeps you busy.

Let me show you what leverage looks like in real life.

Let’s say you have one hour today to work on recruiting.

You sit down, open your inbox, and start at the top—replying to whoever emailed most recently, reacting as messages come in, trying to “stay caught up.”

You’re busy the entire hour.

Now imagine a different approach.

Before the hour starts, you identify your top 10 recruits.
And you spend that same hour doing one thing:

Moving those 10 recruits to their next recruiting mile marker
—a call, a visit, a deeper conversation, a decision.

Same hour.
Very different result.

One approach keeps you busy.
The other actually moves your recruiting forward.

That’s leverage.

When you apply leverage correctly, you don’t just get a little better—you separate from your competition.

When you focus on a small number of critical actions and execute them consistently, the gap between you and everyone else becomes permanent.

At that point, it’s not about talent anymore.

It’s about a simple decision to work smarter, not harder than everyone else.

That realization changed the question I’d been asking myself every January.

Instead of asking,
“What do I need to do to hit my goals this year?”

I’m asking a better one:
“What should I focus on that makes everything else easier?”

That question eliminates noise fast.

It forces you to stop stacking tasks—and start identifying the few decisions, systems, or standards that actually change your trajectory.

Here’s the distinction most of us miss:

Important work keeps you busy.
Leverage work changes your future.

Important work fills your calendar and feels productive.
Leverage work builds systems, standards, and decisions that quietly compound.

At first, it doesn’t look impressive.
Then momentum kicks in—and suddenly it looks obvious.

That’s the difference between motion and momentum.

As we step into this year, pause for five minutes and answer this honestly:

Where are you spending effort… when you really need leverage?

Not where you should be.
Where you actually are.

January is the one time of year when small structural changes stick more easily. Later on, change still works—it just costs more energy, more stress, and more margin than most coaches have in season.

So this week, don’t try to do more.

Instead, ask yourself:

What’s one area of my day that needs a system?
What’s one decision I keep remaking that should be solved once?
What’s one standard I need to raise so energy stops leaking?

You don’t need a perfect plan.

You need the right hinge—and the discipline to apply force where it actually matters.

That’s how winning the day stops being a slogan
and starts becoming how you operate.

Quick question before we go on (hit reply if you want):
What’s one area of coaching you want to get leverage on this year—recruiting, time, staff, or something else?

Win the day coach!
— Mandy Green

P.S. I’ve been building something behind the scenes this winter with this exact idea in mind—helping coaches stop running on effort and start operating with leverage. I’ll share more when it’s ready. For now, just know this year is about doing less… better.