Posts filed under 'Productivity'
Sure, you’re one bad, goal-setting, success-wielding, achievement-oriented mutha’ - but after you’ve conquered a goal and basked in the glow of success what do you do?
Do you keep an achievement cheat-sheet? Do you keep your “success resume” up to date on a regular basis? If you’re like most people, I’m willing to wager that answer will be, “no.”
It’s easy to get into the habit of setting and achieving goals - that’s the first part of the recipe of success. Accurately recording your achievements when they’re fresh in your mind is the second part of the recipe of success.
It’s easy to let your accomplishments slip by after you’ve enjoyed that “I did it!” moment; when asked what you accomplished last year or the year before you have to spend precious time creating your list, remembering the details, the impact and the results. This isn’t an efficient way to spend your time!
I admit I used to be this way. I’ve been “into” goal setting and personal achievement for a long time, but I never kept my success resume up to date. When I owned my own company, a resume and corporate overview was often one of the first things clients would ask for as we started a relationship.
Every time a client asked for this I had to dust off my last copy, review it, add to it any personal or business accomplishments and then present it to my client. Depending on how long it had been since I last used my success resume, it could take a not insignificant amount of time to get it up to date.
When I sold my business I kicked around as a “consultant” for a while before finally deciding I should get a “real job.” I was in for a shock; I hadn’t bothered to update my resume in a long time - about two years - and pulling it together turned into an all day affair! After this, I decided I needed to keep a current accomplishment cheat-sheet and keep my resume updated much more frequently.
Here’s the process I used to get everything under control:
1) Choose your tools
You will need either a nice notebook or journal that you can dedicate to recording your achievements, or a computer with a word processing application. I prefer the computer for this because I can generally type much faster than I can write.
2) Layout the document
Create a document and name it something creative like “2006 Accomplishments”. Then add four pages and at the top of each page write, Q1 2006, Q2 2006, Q3 2006, Q4 2006. You’re going to track your accomplishments by quarter.
3) Play catch up
If you’re just starting this process the chances are good you’ve not started a new year fresh and ready to go (unless you’re reading this article in January, and then you are starting a new year fresh and ready to go). Spend time outlining all of your major accomplishments for the year so far. At this point just a sentence is good, but get them all captured and try to allocate them to the quarter in which they were accomplished.
4) Stay current
Once you’ve started your accomplishment list you have to stay current; review it and update it (if needed) at least monthly. The entire point is to capture your accomplishments in only a few minutes, while the details are still fresh in your mind. If you stay on top of recording your accomplishments as they happen it will only take you moments to record them. This will save you much time compared to an end-of-year review, plus you’ll be able to capture much more detail and specific fact and figures without having to dig back through your records come December (or worse, the next year!).
5) Update your resume quarterly
You have a list of accomplishments and you’re staying current and keeping your list updated. Now you need to sit down at the beginning of each quarter and translate your accomplishments into your resume. Make sure that the responsibilities you have listed on your resume match your responsibilities on your achievement cheat-sheet. Drop from your resume projects with less impressive outcomes for projects with more impressive outcomes. This is your chance to really make yourself shine.
Once I followed the five steps above I realized that I spent less overall time tending my resume, and I didn’t have that “panicky” feeling of knowing it wasn’t in tip-top shape when asked for it. I knew it was no more than three months out of date, and it had been recently updated with my most impressive and high-impact accomplishments.
You don’ t need to write pages and pages for each accomplishment; you simply need to distill the major elements from the accomplishment down into a sentence or two, with pertinent facts and figures. You want to create expanded bullet points which will eventually make it to your resume or your annual review if you work for a company.
Here is a sample from my 2005 major accomplishment file:
1) Negotiated the purchase of a 16kVA APC Symmetra LX UPS (extended run version) for $10,450 (down from $15,700).
2) Designed company ID badge & created specification for the data and format of company’s ID program to be C-TPAT compliant. Resulting badges & ideas were adopted by US Customs & Border Patrol as recommended guidelines for small businesses looking to certify & comply with C-TPAT requirements.
3) Worked with web design and e-commerce company to implement a new e-commerce engine for company’s online sales. The company’s online sales (Jan – July) were $#.# million and the new e-commerce enabled site was negotiated for $#,### including custom pricing functionality to handle unique per-customer, per-product pricing requirements. R.O.I. on project was calculated at 4.2 weeks based on the company’s YTD (Jan – July) online sales.
4) Read 28 books in 2005 including 16 directly related to self improvement, success or development (goal was 3 books on development per quarter). Books were: January: Split Second, Leadership 101, Attitude 101, As a Man Thinketh, The Doomsday Conspiracy. February: Steal This Book, Babylon Rising, Goal Setting 101. March: Man’s Search for Meaning, Made in America, My Story. April: The Fountainhead. May: The Taking. June: How to Become CEO, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be, The Fred Factor, Getting Things Done. July: Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide. August: Shadow of the Giant, 1776, Children of the Mind, The Time Trap, Managing for Dummies, How to Talk to Anyone (92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships). November: Rich Dad’s Before You Quit Your Job. December: 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions, 301 Management Ideas, Ready for Anything.
I have also found that keeping a written record of accomplishments is an excellent tool to justify requests for raises or bonus programs if you work for an employer. In our modern society we’re only usually as good as our last project - the “what-have-you-done-for-me-lately?” factor. It’s easy for employers to conveniently “forget” about important achievements and contributions, but it’s very difficult to argue with facts and figures.
If you keep your achievement cheat-sheet up to date, you’ll be armed when you ask for a raise or a bonus. You can layout exactly what your accomplishments have been, and you’ll have ammunition that your employer likely will not.
If you’ve also kept your resume up to date you’ll be ready to move on if your requests for a deserved raise fall on deaf ears time and time again.
If you’re self-employed, keeping an achievement cheat-sheet and keeping your professional or company resume up to date is vital too. These days clients are asking to see more and more detailed information from the vendors they use. If you have a professional resume ready-to-go it will give you a definite advantage over your competitors in your market-space.
I urge you to start today; spend the time to get your achievement cheat-sheet caught up and then spend the (minimal) on-going time to keep it current. The rewards will be well worth it!
January 29th, 2006
There is a quote I like that says, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
I often find myself falling into the trap of trying to make a plan “perfect,” often when it’s good enough. In the pursuit of perfection tomorrow, it’s easy to miss out on opportunities available today.
I am a plan maker. I love to script out a project, layout action items and milestones, and create exquisite plans that exist on neatly hand-written pages. For me the planning process and working for perfection it seductive.
And while I’m busy chasing the beast named “perfection,” my contemporaries that know “good” is what is needed are moving ahead of me.
Do you let your desire for perfection create immobility in your life? Do you wonder why you can never seem to get a thing “perfect” or why you’re never 100% happy with a project? If so, you might also be suffering from the affliction that is perfectionism.
I’m going to tell you why you should strive to be merely “good” instead.
As a perfectionist, let me first tell you that I sympathize with the pain you’ll feel when you make sure your work is “good” and not “perfect.” It’s tough to let go and cast off the shackles of being a perfectionist.
But here’s something you should know; while you’re trying to be perfect, your competition is busy beating you to market with products and services that are good enough (sometimes even great), but never perfect.
Something that I’ve come to learn is that no matter how many hours I pour into my proposals, no matter how many expertly crafted charts I include, no matter how many perfectly worded and phrased arguments I make, no matter how many pages I write to show mastery of my subject - others very rarely care beyond what information is relevant to them. Decisions will likely come down to a face-to-face meeting anyway.
About six months ago I crafted a proposal for a new technical service I believed my company could employ to great benefit. The R.O.I. and cash analysis was a little tricky to understand, so I wanted to make sure the proposal was perfect to help our senior executive team understand all the ways the project could benefit the company. I spent two weeks writing the proposal and a third week editing and re-writing.
I left copies with the relevant members of our senior management team and I waited anxiously for their reply. After a month ticked by with no reply, I started talking to the senior executives, asking them what they thought of the proposal.
Several were able to poke holes in my “perfect” plan that they wanted to see addressed, and our key decisions makers were far to busy to do more than skim over my proposal. They wanted a sit-down meeting anyway.
When I sat down with our key senior executives and outlined my thoughts - a process that was far from “perfect” and took only 30 minutes - they said, “Why are we sitting here talking? Let’s do it!”
In my pursuit of perfection I let two months slip past me with no action that benefited the company taking place on this project. I had planned myself to death!
When a recent project appeared on my radar screen, I typed up an executive summary and passed it around with a hand-written post-it note that read, “I think we should sit down and talk about this.” I was able to get that project reviewed and approved in a week.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t create plans and you shouldn’t do things consciously and with care - you should. I’m saying you should know that a mediocre plan with action taken will beat a perfect plan every time, because there is no such thing as a perfect plan.
So how much is too much planning? That is a tricky thing to define. You want a good plan - even a great plan - without tipping over that edge towards trying to create a perfect plan. For me, there are a few tell-tale signs I’m slipping into my perfectionist habits - I suspect some will ring true for you too, and that you’ll have your own signs to add. I now try to notice when I’m acting on these behaviours and correct myself:
1) I can’t get something “just right.”
Usually I will be stuck on an aspect of something and I’ll revise it and not be happy; I’ll revise it again and not be happy. If I don’t notice myself doing this, I’ll keep doing it over and over again. When I do catch myself doing this, I put that work away for a few hours or a few days and I’ll come back to it once. If I still can’t get it right, it’s very likely “good enough.”
2) I’m getting long winded.
I never seem to have a problem filling pages and pages when I write a proposal. I am a very detail oriented person, and I have a tendency to want to fill my proposals with details. I try to employ what I call the page-to-title ratio; I limit the number of pages in my proposals to the same number of letters in an executive’s title (CEO, CFO, etc.).
This helps me force myself to be succinct, plus it keeps our senior executives happy because they are already inundated with informaiton. I’ve fount nothing makes a CFO crankier than handing them a thirty-page proposal. If he wants more detail, he’ll ask for it.
3) I lose sight of why I’m working on something.
If after working for a period of time I realize that I’ve lost sight of the end goal or I’ve lost perspective on why I’m working on something, then I’ve probably let myself get buried trying to make it “perfect.” When this happens it’s usually a good indicator that my perfectionism is starting to emerge. Always keep your end goal in mind!
With all I’ve said about the evils of perfectionism, is there any place for it? I think there is, but only when you (and you alone) control and dictate the results. If I’m trying to photograph a flower, I may spend hours getting the image I create to be a perfect match to the image in my mind. I don’t depend on photography to pay my bills, I’m creating my own vision of perfection for myself.
For the vast majority of the things you do, you’ll find that “good” or “great” is far better than “perfect.” You can take action on a good plan today. You can take action on a great plan today. If you look for a perfect plan, you’ll always be waiting to take action.
January 21st, 2006
Take a look at your desk; is your inbox piled with paper and your desk covered with clutter? I know personally keeping on top of the ever accumulating stack of papers being delivered to my inbox, and keeping my desk clear is a constant struggle.
In our new modern world we’re deluged with email (I average 80 actionable email messages per day at work) as well as being bombarded by an unending stream of paper too.
The promise of the 21st century was a paperless work place, but most people still have to process as much paper as ever plus electronic communications to boot!
It’s extremely easy to get behind in the sorting, processing and handling of this flood of information. Once you’re a little behind the gap between where you are and being “caught up” gets a little wider every day. Pretty soon the gap is a chasm and you don’t see any way to build a bridge and get back to being “caught up.”
What you need is a fresh start, but how do you get a fresh start when you’re buried and the backlog keeps getting bigger every day?
The first thing to do is realize that there are tools out there to help out. If you’ve not picked up and read Getting Things Done by David Allen, I recommend you start with it. One of the best ideas I took away from Getting Things Done (GTD for those “in the know”) was the process to work through your backlog and get caught up.
David recommends you do this for every aspect of your life; gather up all of your loose ends and then process them to completion. This is a big challenge. If you’re already overwhelmed and buried, trying to get your entire life’s loose ends gathered and in one spot for processing will just overwhelm you more.
I recommend you segment your life into chunks, triage the areas that are the worst or that you’ll see the biggest benefit from fixing, and then working only on one single area until you’re caught up.
The first step is to get a fresh start. Once you’re behind this is critical because if you don’t draw a line in the sand, you’ll never be back on top.
Here’s what to do:
1) Get a big inbox that’s empty; I use a legal-size beast that’s 6″ deep).
2) Put every single paper on your desk in it! No cheating, gather them all up and put them in your empty inbox. Your desk should be squeaky clean when you’re finished.
3) Once your desk is clear, turn the inbox upside down on your desk and work through the stack one time only! You want to use the three “Ds” when you work through; Delegate it, Defer it, or Delete it.
4) Delegate whatever you can to others. Put these papers aside so you can go hand them out when you’re finished.
5) Defer anything that requires action on your part. These papers go back into the inbox.
6) Delete as much as possible; send it to the “round file.” If you’re like me, you probably get a large amount in your inbox (email too) that just doesn’t need your action or delegation to staff. Throw it away! Make your motto, “When in doubt, throw it out!”
7) Put your deferred items (which should be only a fraction of the original total) aside, stick them in a drawer, just get them out of the way for a moment. You are trying to get a fresh start.
Congratulations, you should now be the proud owner of a clean desk and an empty inbox; the challenge is now to keep it that way! Now you have to commit to staying on top of your inbox; process it at the end of each day before you leave. Your goal should be to go home with an empty inbox on your desk.
Now you have a fresh start, but what do you do with the “deferred” pile of papers? You need to create a separate plan to handle them. Handling your backlog is now a project, and you schedule it and assign resources just like you would any other project you have to accomplish.
For this project you need to set a time-line to finish handling all of your deferred paper. You need to plan and schedule time to work on chipping away at your backlog. You need to manage yourself just like you would for any other project on your plate.
You will find that your backlog will start to dwindle even more, and if you’re keeping on top of your inbox on a daily basis you’ll stay “caught up.”
To speed things up even more you should figure out whether you’re “a filer or a piler”. I am most definitely a piler; spending all my time organizing papers into files sends shivers up my spine. I’ll do it when I have to, but for most of my needs a “piling system” suits me just fine.
You can now pause and enjoy being on top of at least one area of your life. To truly achieve balance you should repeat this process for your home office or anywhere else you’re buried in clutter and information. Once you get “caught up” you should enjoy the feeling, but you can’t rest because once you do things will start piling up around you again.
Don’t let the backlog “gap” come back!
January 13th, 2006
How often to you batch your tasks for greater productivity? Do you cluster tasks that require similar energy and do them all at once to get better performance? You should think about your day and your tasks with a batch-oriented mentality to achieve more in less time.
My employer uses a sophisticated software package to run its business. This software operates on the principal of batch processing. A lot of our users initially try to fight this principal of operation their productivity suffers and they complain they can’t use the system to get their work finished. They’re not used to thinking in batches.
When they finally embrace a batch-process work-flow a change happens. They can get more done, in less time than they thought was possible. Suddenly it’s not a problem to process 2500 invoices. Suddenly it’s not such a burden to print 800 checks. They get to a point where a minimum input on their end produces a maximum output by the system.
Applying this type of thinking to all aspects of your life can transform your productivity too.
Anywhere you can compile like tasks, and save your effort to finish those tasks until you can do them all at once, you can save time. If you pack a lunch to eat at work are you packing a lunch each night?
How long does it take to get the bread, get some lunch meat, make a sandwich, get some fruit, pack a bag of chips and put it all in a bag for the next day? What part of the process is setup and what part of the process is production? Now multiply the setup time by five days. If the setup time runs even 3 minutes per lunch that’s fifteen minutes per week spent just getting ready to make lunch!
How much more efficient could you be if you spent your three minutes setting up for lunch on Sunday night and then made five sandwiches, packed five pieces of fruit and five bags of chips? All you would have to do is grab a bag from the fridge each morning on your way out the door. If nothing else, you saved twelve minutes per week just on setup time.
Twelve minutes per week saved adds up to ten hours per year. That’s time you used to spend just preparing to make a lunch. Think about what your time is worth and then figure out what your “cost” savings is; it will surprise you.
This is a very simple example to be sure, but the idea scales to other areas of life too. You can also batch your tasks for times when you feel at your peak.
For example, I am not a writer by nature. I enjoy writing, but it doesn’t come naturally to me - I have to work at it. There are times however when I feel like I can’t stop writing. Those are my peak writing times.
When I experience a peak writing moment I take advantage of it. I keep a notebook with ideas for articles and essays and when I’m in a writing mood, I write! I cross out the ideas as I’ve executed them, and if they’re articles for my web site I schedule them in advance to appear automatically at a future date.
For this web site I will typically have three to five articles in the queue, ready for publication and usually at least one article “in process” that I keep working on until I’m happy with it.
I’m able to take advantage of my peak times, and by batching my tasks I end up getting a lot more done in less time than if I sat down every other day and forced myself to write an article. I wouldn’t necessarily be in a peak state, and I wouldn’t be using my time efficiently.
It can be tricky to get used to thinking like this if you’ve never thought in a batch-oriented mentality before. We are so used to real-time processing that it’s our default habit.
To get used to the switch, we have to think about efficiency and optimization. When faced with a task - especially a repetitive task - you have to constantly ask yourself, “How could I handle this in a more efficient manner?” Your goal should be to turn yourself into a factory - streamlining operations and steps as much as possible to achieve greater output.
* Try to setup your environment so when you tackle tasks you can do multiple steps at once and use the results at a later time (minimize input, maximize output).
* Work to recognize and mentally flag those times you notice you’re in a peak state for any given activity.
* When you feel that peak state “click” in the future, try to maximize the energy and results you can get out of it (you’ll get more done and it will likely be better quality than “normal”).
* Think in terms of long-term time savings (months or a year) and challenge yourself to find ways to save time in the long run - you’ll find something else much more enjoyable to fill that time.
* Realize that effort and output don’t have to be directly linked. It’s easy to feel some guilt when you realize that you’re getting tremendous output with less input than you’re used to. It may take a little time for you to adjust and be comfortable when your productivity goes up. We get stuck in a feeling of “I should be doing more right now” mentality and we rush to fill it with “something” - even if that “something” isn’t a great use of our time!
Once you get used to batching your tasks you’ll wonder why you didn’t start doing it sooner. When you can work on tasks in a peak mental state you’ll be amazed at how much you can get accomplished with seemingly no effort (or minimal effort) on your part.
When you learn to think and work in a batch-process mentality, the time will fly by, your production will be up, and your quality will be great. That sounds like a pretty good reason to think in a batch-oriented mindset to me!
January 11th, 2006
How many ways can you save time each day? One easy way is to really take a long look at your daily drive.
I suspect that most people have more than one possible route they can take to get to their daily destination. If so, are you sure you’re using the most efficient route when taking into account the time of day and traffic levels?
I have two primary routes I can use to get to my office. I’ve always used one in particular because it seemed faster; there was always less traffic because it led me through quieter streets. It’s peaceful. The other route, which I never really used, kept me on the highway longer and then directed me through an industrial area with nothing to look at on my drive but huge, grey, concrete buildings.
If you look at a map and trace out these two paths the first route - through the quiet neighborhoods - looks like the clear winner in terms of distance and time. The second route takes me farther and through busy, industrial areas.
But I wondered if my assumptions were true; was my preferred route to my office really the quicker route? I decided to put it to a test; I drove each route for a week while I timed the trip.
A strange thing happened; I realized that my assumptions were completely incorrect!
My preferred route actually took an average of 7 minutes and 25 seconds longer to arrive at my office. Further, this time was pretty stable whether I was headed to my office or to my house. I was spending fifteen minutes more in the car each day than I needed.
I know what you’re thinking, “Big deal, you saved 7.5 minutes going to work and another 7.5 minutes going home. That’s not so much.”
You’re right, it’s not much. But think about that time in bigger terms; If I continue to take the longer route over the course of a work-week it’s an extra hour and fifteen minutes I’m stuck in the car. Over the course of a month it’s an extra five hours in the car. Over the course of a year it’s an extra sixty hours stuck in the car. I don’t know what your time is worth, but for me sixty hours lost costs me a lot of money.
If you’re earning $75,000 per year, losing 60 hours “costs” you $2163.60 - think in terms of what each minute lost costs you and you’ll quickly learn to seek out and eliminate lost minutes.
I also suspect there are a lot of places in my day I can shave additional minutes that will add up to extra hours in a short amount of time; I’m willing to wager this is true for you, too. Additionally, this “recovered time” not only gives us the freedom to spend it elsewhere, it also reinforces the skills of productivity, efficiency and resource management - skills we should all be practising at every opportunity!
Every lost minute reclaimed is an extra minute you can use to do something you want, or use to continue to build wealth and work to achieve financial Independence.
If I can save a few minutes a day, that time adds up quickly. Anything that gives me a few extra minutes of my day back without taking any additional effort on my part is exactly what I keep myself open to.
I challenge you to find your own ways to “shave and save.” What will you do with the extra time you reclaim?
January 10th, 2006
I love the saying, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” It’s memorable and true, and often very overlooked in life.
I’ve always been a video game fan; I like the big, epic tales involved. Over the long, New Year holiday, I picked up a game on which I had read rave reviews. So with some free time to myself I decided to give it a try. I readied by character for battle and I plowed into a group of monsters - I was happy to be hacking and slashing away! My zest for adventure didn’t compensate for my character’s weaknesses as a new player in the world; the group overpowered me in moments and without much effort on their part I was dispatched back to the bone yard.
I recovered myself and tried again, “Have at you!” was the battle-cry running through my mind. Again, moments later I found myself back at the bone yard. I tried again and I found myself dead just as quickly.
In my excitement to try out the game and become a fierce warrior I had let myself fall prey to repeating the same, unsuccessful patterns over and over. I was doing what I had always done (rush into the mob), and I was getting what I always got (a quick trip to the graveyard). About thirty minutes into charging, dying, recovering and charging again I realized I was stuck in this pattern. Once I recognized this, I was able to apply myself differently - by drawing out the monsters one by one - and I handily defeated the mob.
Do you do this in real life? Do you rush in, always doing things the same way, but expecting a different outcome? If you don’t pay attention, it’s very easy to slip into this behavior.
We are pattern machines. Our brain loves habits because they feel comfortable. It’s very easy to experience a little success performing a behavior and it’s very easy to expect we can always get that result. Our brain is also very hopeful - it wants us to have the best things, the perfect relationship, or be amazingly happy. This combination of loving habits and wanting the best can lead us to expect that we’ll get better and better results from the same action, every time we perform the action.
The action of wanting to lose weight is a great example. Months ago I cut out non-diet soft drinks from my diet because I didn’t want to keep consuming all the empty calories. An unattended side effect was that I lost a little weight in the process. Jumping ahead several months, I caught myself drinking the full-calorie soft drinks again. I made another effort to stop, thinking that I might even take off a few more pounds and be able to put on some old clothes that were now too small. Again, I lost a little weight, the same as before, but I didn’t lose any more weight. At first I was a little upset, then a little angry with myself. It was only when I stopped and realized I had expected a different outcome from the same behaviour.
You should keep in mind that your brain wants to perform its habits - when it does you feel comfortable. You also should keep in mind that if you’ve tried something several times and were unsuccessful in achieving your desired outcome you shouldn’t keep trying to achieve your desired outcome the same way - it won’t work. You also shouldn’t expect that you’ll suddenly achieve significantly more than you did doing the same thing.
I know for myself it’s not always easy to keep this in mind. It can be a habit (a good one) to just remember to check your assumptions when asking why you’re not getting the result you expect or want. It’s easy to slip into old habits of trying the same thing over and over while expecting to achieve more or different results.
Try some of these ideas for a week and see what shaking up your patterns can do for you:
- Wake up 30 minutes earlier than normal. You would be amazed at what an extra half-hour will do for you in the morning.
- If you’re an office worker, don’t check your email until mid-morning at work. Trust that nothing is so critical it can’t wait for 2 hours before you reply. If something really is that critical, they’ll find your office and tell you. You can get a lot more accomplished when you don’t spend your morning checking and replying email.
- Read a book or a newspaper in the evening instead of watching T.V. - If you already do this, listen to an audio program instead.
- Challenge yourself to make one new introduction a day. If you’re in the grocery store, introduce yourself to an employee you recognize. You never know when it will pay off big to know that person.
These are just a few ideas to force you to shake up your patterns and hopefully make you realize that by doing things just a little differently you’ll get a new result, not the “same-ol-same-ol” you might be used to achieving!
January 7th, 2006
There is a fancy sounding term I like; reticular activator. You have one, I have one, everyone has one. It’s a little part of your brain that focuses in on the things you tell your mind to pay attention to. It’s your mind’s filtering mechanism. When you consciously (or subconsciously) think about things, it’s your reticular activator that filters out examples of what you’re thinking about and brings them to the front of your conscious.
If you’re thinking about buying a new car and you’re really drooling over a new VW Beetle, you’ll very likely notice them everywhere you go. If you just bought a new leather jacket you really wanted, you’ll very likely notice everyone else seems to be wearing leather jackets too.
If you’re sitting at home reading in your living room, you’re probably aware that your kids are playing with the dog, that you wife is in the kitchen and that the TV is on in the den, but you’re not really focusing on any of these inputs - they’re filtered out. Though if your daughter falls and starts crying you’ll be instantly aware of it.
This is your reticular activator at work. It can not only help filter in, but it can filter out as well. If you understand how it works, you can use literally use what you think about to shape yourself.
Years ago there was a sign hanging in the computer lab of my high school; it read “Garbage In, Garbage Out” and was there as a reminder that a computer was only as good or as “smart” as the person putting data into it.
We don’t think about it much, but our brain is really just an incredibly powerful computer running software we call our mind. If we ask the right questions we’ll rarely fail to get a good answer from our mind. If we input bad data, our mind will process it and produce bad results. We too can be the victims of “garbage in, garbage out.”
And this garbage will literally drag your personal performance into the trash (no pun intended).
How? When you put in bad data you mind starts to setup limiting beliefs. When someone tells you, “You can’t start your own business, you’re too young.” or you hear, “You can’t get a promotion, you don’t have a degree.” you’re getting garbage as an input. If you don’t use your reticular activator to focus on other, positive inputs your mind will happily work on processing the garbage.
Then it spits out a result - a limiting belief - and suddenly you believe you really can’t start a business because you’re too young!
So how do you use your reticular activator to focus on good inputs to your mind and eliminate bad inputs?
The first step is to start “feeding” your mind with positive material; information that will help you develop new skills or reinforce skills you already have. For me, the easiest way to “eat” this positive material is through books. Audio programs are a good way to bring positive and useful material into your routine. I usually alternate between talk radio (I’m an NPR junkie) and audio books when I’m in the car.
The second step is to be aware that people will feed you “garbage” without meaning to. You need to be aware that this negativity exists out there and be ready to stop listening to it when you notice it. Again, use your reticular activator to tune out negative inputs.
The third step is to create positive inputs and suggestions that you constantly review. There are a lot of books out there that will tell you to write your desires over and over or to use positive talk to achieve your goals. I don’t believe that either of these processes alone will cause you to succeed, but when used in conjunction with good (written) goal setting and the regular input of positive material these positive suggestions can help you enhance what your achievements already are telling you.
Using these tools, and being aware that your mind will readily work on any input you let your reticular activator focus on, you can “think” yourself into becoming what you have outlined in your goals and focused your mind towards.
January 3rd, 2006
My father-in-law has a saying of which I’m fond; he maintains, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
In his hey-day my father-in-law was a competitive archer, and he likes to tell stories from competitions past, but he always stresses that what he accomplished during a tournament wasn’t the result of luck or wishing or wanting to win “real bad.” It was the result of hours and hours of practice…perfect practice.
My father-in-law never called it this, but a large part of his practice was visualization. He visualized the bow in his hands. He visualized the arrow settled in the rest. He visualized the tension as he drew the bow. He visualized the arrow as it flew from the bow and, most importantly, he visualized the arrow hitting dead-center on the target.
He saw all of this happen in his mind before he ever drew back the arrow or even picked up the bow. He did all of this over and over in his mind before each and every shot he took.
Visualization is an extremely powerful tool, but it alone won’t make you a super-star. For that you need a coach. My father-in-law did have some luck on his side, he caught the attention of one of the top archery shooters who took on the role of a coach; his mentor.
His mentor taught the base skills, how to technically be a perfect archer. The rest was up to my father-in-law and that’s where persistence, visualization and perfect practice comes in to play.
So what did all of this perfect practice and visualization do for my father-in-law? Well, he didn’t pick up a bow until he was an adult and in the course of only a few years was at a point where he had to decide between turning pro and spending all of him time on the road, or keeping archery as a hobby and spending time with his children. That’s a pretty powerful accomplishment for someone who won his first bow in a raffle.
There are two keys to being better at whatever it is you do. The first key is finding a coach. You have to get your technical skills down so you can practice perfectly in the first place. The second key is visualization, using your mind to create a perfect reality in which you cannot fail at anything you attempt.
When you visualize an outcome in your brain, the chemical reactions fire just like they do when you actually attempt the same activity in real life.
When you visualize in your head, you have the ability to break the rules. It’s your own miniature “Matrix” - you can bend the rules in your favor.
You can visualize giving the perfect speech over and over, you can visualize sinking that 20 foot putt over and over, you can visualize anything you can imagine. When you couple your visualization with the skills you learn from your coach you create a situation where you’re practicing perfectly, and you’re getting better at whatever you’ve put your energy and effort into.
And through small improvements you can see a huge change in your life. If you can improve just 1% a week on whatever aspect you’re turning your energy you’ll see a 52% improvement in the course of a year.
That’s a huge return on your investment! Wouldn’t you be doing back-flips if your stock portfolio turned in a 52% return in a year? Wouldn’t you be doing back-flips if your personal-development portfolio turned in a 52% improvement in a year?
When you work with a coach or mentor and you put to work the power of visualization you unleash a tremendous amount of energy that you can direct to personal development; if you want a better than 50% return don’t settle for a 1% improvement each week, strive for a 1% improvement each day. The sky’s the limit when you put these tools to work for you!
December 13th, 2005
Want a secret that will make you more productive in an extremely short period of time? Keep a time log on yourself for a week.
Now I didn’t say it was a secret that would shake you to your foundations, but it is something that most people have never done. It’s also extremely powerful to see your entire day, laid before you, in black and white. When you have a concrete log of how you spent your time (the only limited resource there really is) you’ll start to see how those extra trips to the coffee machine and those interruptions from co-workers really eat away at your day.
And how do you keep a time log? Great question, here’s how:
Get a piece of paper and write the time you start and stop doing any activity. It’s really that simple! If you’re like me though, you want to keep better track of your time to really get a good idea of where you’re spending it.
I found a form in the book “The Time Trap” by R. Alec MacKenzie that works perfectly for me, and I’ve created a PDF in the spirit of that form, which you can download for yourself:
Here is what a time log looks like when filled out.
Using the time log is extremely easy, but here are some helpful tips to get you off and running more quickly.
1. Write down the time anytime you change what you’re working on. This is the whole key to making a time log work for you. Be brutally honest with yourself, you’re the only person who will see this, so no fibbing.
Why write down the times as you change tasks or are interrupted? If you go back and try to summarize at the end of the day you will forget a substantial amount of what you did and the times will become fuzzy. Trust me on this from my own personal experience. I have at least two time logs I never finished because I stopped tracking the time and I could not remember enough detail to make it worthwhile.
2. Use abbreviations where possible. Alec recommends, and I use, the following: An arrow pointing in is incoming (you receive), an arrow pointing out is outgoing (you initiate). A capital “I” is interruption, “C” is call, “E” is email.
Using this system an incoming call looks like this: “->C Joe Smith, RE: New client” An outgoing call looks like this: “C-> Bob RE: Meeting plans”.
If a person walks up and starts talking to me I would write down “I, Sally RE: Her weekend”
3. Rate the use of your time. I like the 1-4 scale where 1=critical, 2=important 3=routine, and 4=waste of time. Most tasks are 2 or 3; the major item I want to accomplish in a day would rate a 1 and I try to weed out all of the 4s as much as possible.
4. Keep your time log for a minimum of a week. Plan on keeping a time log for a week at least twice a year. This will give you a good snapshot of your time over more than one day. This helps smooth out those really low or really high productivity days and gives you a more accurate picture.
Coming back to your time log twice a year (or even better, quarterly) helps keep you on your toes so you don’t fall back into your old, less productive habits.
How will keeping a time log send your productivity through the roof? Once I had kept a really honest time log on myself for about two weeks I noticed a few things; first, I spent way more time checking and replying to email than I thought I did - upwards of two hours a day! Second, I allowed myself to get interrupted by calls and visitors far more than I thought. Something like 60% of my interruptions were from people wanting to discuss non-business topics and about 80% of my phone calls were sales solicitations from companies offering services I had no intention of using.
I immediately changed my email habits. I now check my email when I get to work, after lunch and before I leave. I might check it one or two more times depending on how many meetings I’ve been in during the day. I also started paying a lot more attention to how much time I was spending in personal conversations. I didn’t want to cut them out and isolate myself from others, but now I make sure I have an exit planned so I can gracefully step out of a conversation after a few minutes.
I also stopped answering my phone unless expecting a call (thank goodness for caller ID!). Since I don’t have a secretary to handle my calls (and in our modern business society many people don’t), I let my voice mail screen my calls. Now instead of reaching for the phone every time it rings I let it go. I check my messages before I leave work and make notes of people I need to call back in the morning.
Just making these three minor changes in how I spend my day made a very noticeable change in my level of productivity.
I’m also a lot more careful about how I spend my time. I try to keep in mind that it’s the only resource that’s really limited and I pay careful attention to what I’m working on and to whom I’m giving time for interruptions and projects.
In the weeks since keeping a daily time log these longer-term changes have really boosted my productivity. One of the biggest gains is that I usually and ready to leave - with major tasks completed - at 5:30pm every day, it’s very seldom I need to stay late; this has the added benefit of making my wife much happier too!
December 12th, 2005
Email is the killer application of the Internet; it allows near-instant communication, it allows easy group collaboration, and it’s an efficient way for the top brass of a company to keep their ear turned towards the entire enterprise.
Email is also not as distracting as a ringing phone. When someone calls you, it’s interrupting what you’re doing. When an email arrives you can usually continue working and check the message when it’s convenient for you. That’s why so many people love email, and that’s one of its greatest powers.
And Microsoft is trying to screw everything up!
A few months back our office upgraded to Outlook 2003 to go along with an Exchange upgrade. I must admit I enjoy some of the changes in Outlook 2003, but it has a new feature that really drives me crazy.
When you get an email message Outlook 2003 pops up a semi-transparent window in the lower right-hand corner of your desktop for about 7 seconds. This window contains the name of the message sender and the subject line of the message. If you put your mouse over the window it turns fully opaque and if you click on the window you’re whisked away from whatever you were doing to read the message.
If you’re like me, and that pop-up is from your boss or maybe someone with a question about an urgent project, it’s very tempting to let yourself get distracted, click the message, and jump to another task. And that makes it very tough to get productive and stay productive.
What’s the easy solution? Many productiviy gurus recommend only launching your email program once or twice a day and only checking your messages during these times. This may be the best way to make sure that you’re in control of your email and not vice-versa, but I don’t have the luxury of checking and responding to my email only once or twice a day. I don’t have to be on top of it minute-by-minute, but I need to be responsive at least hourly. And I’m willing to guess than unless you’re in a pretty high position within your company, you’re in a similar situation too.
So how do you take back some control over your email? Turn off all the distractions! Though the pop-ups and new message sounds are enabled by default, you can turn them off. Here’s how:
- In Outlook 2003 click the menu
"Tools"
- Choose the menu option
"Options".
- Click on the button
"E-mail Options".
- Click on the button
"Advanced E-mail Options"
- Un-check the options
"Play a sound", "Briefly change the mouse cursor", and "Display a New Mail Desktop Alert...".
I like to leave the option "Show an envelope icon in the notification area" option turned on. That way I can glance down and see if new email awaits. It also serves as a reminder for me to check my messages about once an hour, but die-hard productivity fans may want to turn the envelope icon off too.
While I was typing this article I received 5 email messages. Fortunately I didn’t notice because I had these notifications turned off. Instead of being tempted to jump away from writing this article, I was able to finish and then check my messages.
Changing these settings allows me go about my work without being interrupted by “dings” and pop-up windows, and it lets me take some control back over how I let (or in this case, don’t let) others interrupt me via email.
December 5th, 2005
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TimeLog.pdf
