Boston Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester suggested that his team’s historic late-season collapse had nothing to do with the fact that he and his teammates were drinking on the job. His rationale: they were doing the same thing in April and May–and the team was winning.

Sure. And if I substituted laziness for running laps, the fact that I’d be sucking air after a couple of months would be coincidental too.

You have to practice. And practice isn’t just for athletes. 

• If you get out of the practice of blogging, you stop looking for inspiration.
• If you get out of the practice of networking, your pipeline dries up.
• If you get out of the practice of business development, it’s harder to make that first call.
• If you get out of the practice of budgeting, it’s easy to go into debt.
• If you get out of the practice of planning, it’s easy to miss market signals.

If you get out of the practice of doing, what falls down in your business?

Photo by Newtown grafitti (Flickr).