The Play Sheet: A Simple Resource for Overloaded Professionals

copyright

© 2025

brian hurtak

All rights reserved.

the play sheet

A Simple Resource for Overloaded Professionals

First Edition

isbn

978-1-5445-4681-0 Hardcover

isbn

978-1-5445-4680-3 Paperback

isbn

978-1-5445-4682-7 Ebook

Contents

Pregame

First Quarter

Who Are You and Who Do You Want to Be?

Film Study

Define Your Ethos, Objectives, and Key Results

First-Quarter Highlights

Second Quarter

The Play Book

Film Study

A Play Book Is the Hub of Continuous Professional Development

Organizing for Success: Build Your Play Book

Second-Quarter Highlights

Third Quarter

Play Book to Play Sheet

Build and Use Your Play Sheet

Third-Quarter Highlights

Fourth Quarter

The Season Never Ends: Making Adjustments

Film Study

Making Adjustments

Fourth-Quarter Highlights

Conclusion

Will You Be a One and Done or a Hall of Famer?

Film Study

Coaching Tips on Using This System over Time

Acknowledgments

Further Reading and Additional Resources

Notes

Pregame

On any given Sunday (okay, more like a regular Sunday afternoon a few years ago), something ordinary that I had seen thousands of times before ended up completely changing my approach to professional development.

I was sitting on my couch, a football game on the TV, my laptop in front of me, buried in printouts as I prepped for the work week ahead. It was comical, looking at my calendar and its dizzying mix of colors from my attempt to color-code my schedule by priority. I was double-booked here, had a conflict there, and of course had back-to-back meetings that did not allow any prep time between one big engagement and the next. I saw that I had several scheduled interviews for critical new hires, some crucial conversations with existing directors and partners, and a big presentation on Monday.

This process created so much weekly anxiety, and it was only Sunday. The week had not even started yet! I began shifting a few things around and heard the echo of Stephen Covey’s voice in my head telling me, The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities. I leaned back on the couch and thought, What are my priorities?

Then the NFL game I was watching caught my eye. It was close. With a few minutes left in the third quarter, my favorite team was driving, and the camera quickly zoomed in on the offensive coordinator. The coordinator, headset on, paced the sideline, and his eyes darted back and forth between the field and a white laminated sheet in his hands. The sheet was about eleven by seventeen inches and loaded with small writing in a rainbow of colors, and it covered the mouth of the coordinator, who called the next play into his headset for the quarterback standing about twenty yards away from him.

The camera went back to the field of play. The ball was snapped. The quarterback faked a handoff to the running back (play action) and dropped back into the pocket. He looked left, pump-faked to the wide receiver on that side of the field, and then quickly pivoted and threw the ball deep down the right sideline to a wide-open receiver. Touchdown!

I should have been excited that my team had just scored, but I sat completely still. I’d had an epiphany. My mind rewound its mental tape to the moment prior to the play, to the offensive coordinator with the laminated sheet at his fingertips, a tool that enabled him to quickly call an effective play.

My mind was blown. As I watched more games that day, I didn’t even care about the games anymore but simply watched the sidelines to see how many coaches used these sheets and how often they were using them. Quickly, it became evident this was a best practice used by every coordinator in the NFL. How had I never noticed? Every single coach I saw on TV that day had a laminated sheet of paper at the tip of their nose during every second of every possession.

I realized that all football teams and coaches have an overwhelming amount of content to study each week as they prepare for an opponent: their team Play Book, game film, player intelligence, roster diagnostics, and more. If they could put all that information on one sheet of paper, why couldn’t I do that for my workweek?

Professional TMI

Have you ever stopped to think about how many books, podcasts, LinkedIn articles, blogs, conferences, seminars, Facebook posts, Ted Talks, and more there are on professional development? It’s crazy. Business professionals spend billions of dollars for the next great piece of advice that will instantly propel them upward in their company or industry. Most of the ideas are extremely insightful and, if applied correctly, could help many improve professionally. The challenge is that there is just too much information, and many people are unable to effectively apply what they learn to their daily lives.

We are bombarded with information, and despite our best intentions, we are creatures of our old ways and unhelpful habits. When faced with a critical situation that drives anxiety or pressure, we constantly go back to our natural reaction and completely forget about what we learned or intended to try differently this time around.

For years, I was no different. Although a voracious learner, I lacked an intentional approach to implementing what I spent so many hours learning. I would show up to work armed with this new information crammed into my brain, but I never thought about how or when to apply it. Looking back, I realize that I just hoped it would naturally find its way into my style or approach. I was reactive to each meeting, situation, and day, and even worse, I failed to get a return on my invested resources.

In early 2014, as a newly married man and a junior executive at a Fortune 100 company, I wanted to improve or develop in certain areas of leadership, business, time management, and life. Now that I had moved from an individual contributor to a manager, how could I become a leader of leaders in a large organization? How could I balance my time despite having much more responsibilities, including having a team of people reporting to me? How could I do this and not jeopardize my relationships, both inside and outside the company? And most importantly, how could I accomplish this while growing a thriving family? I sought out every book, podcast, article, conference, video, and excerpt on those subjects, thinking that if I just kept learning all I could, I would improve in each area of focus.

I can recall so many times when I read a page in a book, received guidance from a mentor, or heard something that excited me so much in the moment that I knew I had the answers. There were times when I was driving to work, listening to a podcast, and heard something so impactful that I had to pull over and relisten to what I’d just heard over and over again. Sometimes I would then email myself what would turn out later to be a cryptic message with hopes of never forgetting this piece of wisdom again. Until I inevitably did.

In those aha moments, excited by this latest information, my mind would often float off into a daydream where I would envision myself in a situation using this newfound advice. In my professional fantasy, there I was, killing it in a presentation and being hoisted by the team in celebration. It was like the scene in A Christmas Story when the main character, Ralphie, hands in his homework assignment and starts to daydream that he’s astonished his teacher with the essay’s brilliance, leading to a fantastical celebration and the adoration of everyone in the room. So basically, I was handling my career like an imaginative nine year old, and something had to change.

More often than not, I would completely forget this epiphany that I pulled a motor vehicle over to relisten to. Even worse than forgetting it, I never applied it once in my professional day-to-day.

Have you experienced this in your professional journey as well? If the answer is yes, keep reading.

Problem Statement: Cognitive Load Is Real

How many books about professional or leadership development do you have at your desk, in your home library, or in your Audible queue? How many conferences have you attended to help you improve in some way? Do you have a mentor or executive coach? How many times have you learned something and been extremely energized about the concept, only to forget to apply it to drive improvement? Why does this happen to so many of us? Some argue that a major reason for this