Thursday, May 26, 2016

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 6: Making it Work

Is your work enjoyable?


If it is, then you might be more amenable to call everything you do at home and at the office work.  If not, let’s reframe for a second.


Work = Effort toward a Goal


If the equation holds true, then what you do at home (home maintenance, vacations, personal finance, raising kids, plans of the future, health fitness and hobbies) is also WORK.

What’s interesting about calling all of our life activity ‘work’ is the sense that work is something that you do with purpose.  You want a result for your effort.

The business mind is focused on achieving the business goals, the revenue, the growth, and the sustainability of business.  

The personal mind is focused on seeing how to prepare kids for life in the future, enjoying a vacation, re-training for another career, reducing the stress in life, spending more time with your spouse, changing ingrained habits or starting on a bucket list item.

The business mind has a natural craving to design and execute goals. The rewards are very tactile.  When you do a good job for a customer you might get a thank you, and of course you get paid.  

For salaried folks, you might not see the transaction so vividly, but we want to get the project or tasks done and often we are measured during the year for achieving specific goals.  Achieving goals results in a better review and potential earnings growth, maybe a promotion with more scope.

The personal mind requires a lot more proactive behavior to create the goal.  Personal goals are not laid out by the leadership of the business, they are created through personal leadership.

Personal Leadership

For specific steps on how to employ personal leadership see the prior articles on “How to Learn a Productivity System.”  Part 3, 4, and 5 are focused almost completely on personal leadership.  Parts 1 and 2 are focused on tactical ways that you can create time in your day so you can spend more hours doing the strategic tasks needed to increase your personal leadership.

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 1: Capture

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 2: Actions

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 3: Planning

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 4: Goals

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 5: Evaluate Life Dreams

Which is more important, business mind or personal mind?


That is a tough question.

The business mind provides the How-the monetary sustenance.  

The personal mind provides the Why-the Character and the Motivations.

The answer: They are both important.  They both impact each other.  


A personal example of interleaving the personal and business mind


In 2005 I took a role as a “Team Lead/Scrum Master.My leadership style was centered around high volume and persuasive intimidation.

In 2008, I was promoted to department manager and I WAS SCARED SPIT-LESS. I had engaged in numerous technical and political battles with my peers over the years, and now I was taking over leadership of a team that knew my reputation as loud, overbearing, manipulative person. I had created animosity with a couple of the most senior and respected individuals by forceful getting my way using pushy tactics.

Answering the wakeup call


Faced with managing a team that saw me as an antagonist rather than a helpful resource, I realized I needed to drastically alter course.

In the months and years that followed my promotion, I studied hard to change my mindset and my behaviors (and I still study hard to this day). I read book after book and listened to people in the organization that showed management skills coincident with what I was learning about effective personal and public leadership. I moved my personal style from directive-authoritative to servant-leader.
This personal study to improve character created a deep well of good behaviors and resulted in better quality of life in both my personal sphere and in the business arena.
People in my organizations gave me feedback that they had grown to respect me over time as I demonstrated consistent other-centered leadership.

Personal leadership has a broad impact


Isn’t it interesting that the personal mind has such a great impact everywhere?  It might be the more important mind after all.

The moral of the story is this: No matter if it’s personal or business it’s WORK.  And if it’s work, it needs a system to move toward the goal. 

One of my favorite authors, David Allen, has a great book on this very topic called, Making it All Work.  He provides an entire book dedicated to creating a unified productivity mindset around personal and business goals. David Allen’s previous book, Getting Things Done describes a comprehensive productivity system which is now known globally as GTD.

What is not working in your personal or business system?  Write a comment or send me an e-mail and let me know? 

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 5: Evaluate Life Dreams

When we think about productivity, we might think about being busy. That is an inaccurate view of productivity.

Productivity is achieving the most important things in life while avoiding the pitfalls of busy work and unproductive meaningless time wasting endeavors.


Productivity definition


So if you’re not yet keenly aware of the most important things, then that’s a very good place start. If you’re already aware of the most important things, then it’s good to revisit them to make sure you continue to move in the right direction.


Identifying the most important things


The following two exercises will help you identify some of your core desires in life. These exercises strip away things that are just about prestige and outward appearance.  

Yes, I want to own a Porsche 911, but it actually doesn’t appear on the core list of what I want to achieve during my living years. A Porsche cannot help me leave a legacy so it is not on the ‘got-to-have’ list.

Give these two exercises a try for building your core desires. If you already have a most important list, is it time to revisit it? Compare these exercise results to your existing list. Are there any differences? 

Why do you think some things made the list and others didn’t?

Time Travel to Your 80th Birthday


80th birthday cake

Envision your 80th birthday party. In this self-created visualization consider the location, the people, and the conversations you’ll have with those attending the party. You might need to close your eyes.

For me, I placed my 80th birthday party in my backyard and visualized my wife, my daughters, my grand-kids, my extended family, and my friends. I thought about my own character and legacy and the character of my children and grandchildren. 

Another addition to the exercise would be to visualize your professional accomplishments. It could be the successful sale of a business, the retirement from a company after attaining a certain leadership position, or perhaps the accomplishment of a significant goal that impacts the world.

In your visualization you can also think about:
  • Things still on your bucket list
  • Health goals
  • Travel
These results are the core of why you want to be productive.


To discover the real dreams in your life requires considerable introspection.

Write down your thoughts on paper or in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Through the years I’ve added, removed or refined different aspects of it. Revisiting it annually moves me into a mindset where I can be more focused on the things that matter.


What Do They Say at Your Funeral?


In the exercise above, you envision a living legacy. You can see, hear, feel, and interact with your surroundings. This activity is a retrospective on your life.

There are several approaches you can take to talk about your non-living legacy.  

1.  Think about attending a funeral. It’s quiet and respectful. People are seated and someone is ready to speak at the front. But as you look into the coffin you realize this is your funeral. Consider who you would like to speak and what they would say.

2. Write your own obituary, but include more insightful things than just “survived by” and “lived at.” Go deep enough to bring out your legacy. What you want to leave after you pass on can be a serious guiding post to your core dreams.


Wow. That’s Different Than I Expected


There are some interesting things on my bucket list: trip to Italy, vacation in Tahiti, own a 1978 Porsche 911 Carrera RS, do an Olympic Distance Triathlon, watch the Formula One US Grand Prix Live, race a motorcycle, and many others.

In contrast, the two exercises resulted in things like “Happy, healthy, and wise children and grandchildren” or “a solid contribution in the market of productivity services that saved people millions of minutes over their lifetime.”

Evaluating your legacy gives a clue as to what dreams are truly the most valuable to you.  
Stephen Covey’s 2nd Habit in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to “Know the End from the Beginning.” It’s a fancy way of saying do some planning.

When it comes to identifying your legacy, you’re doing meta planning. That’s effectively asking yourself what matters most and then providing a good solid answer.


The Core is Ready, Now What?


Once you’ve come up with a high, tactile version of your living and non-living legacies you’re ready to address the parts that make the dream happen.

Dreams can be hard to break down into parts because achieving dreams seems impossible. Dreaming doesn’t take any special effort or discipline, but reaching your dreams requires you to decompose the dream into small bite size chucks. For some concrete steps in breaking down dreams into goals and goals into plans, see the previous article, “How to Learn a Productivity System Part 4: Goals.” 


What About My Bucket List?


Don’t throw away your bucket list. Just know how it fits into the priority of things that matter most. 

For example, I had the dream of running a marathon. It was about 5 years of small steps that finally took me to the end goal in 2014. This happened to align with my desire to lead a healthy, fit life, so it didn’t take me in the opposite direction of my core dreams.

Please write a comment about what you discovered while doing these exercises. Did anything surprise you?

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 4: Goals

My kids have awesome dreams for the future. 

One of my kids wants to be a movie producer. One wants to be a famous actor. One wants to travel the world.

For myself, I still dream of being a race car drive (Yes, it’s true I still this dream even as a middle age person). 
These are examples of dreams and dreams can come true.  However, inorder to make a dream a reality, it must be decomposed into a goal.

Dreams cost you very little energy and time.  You can spend 5 minutes envisioning yourself crossing the finish line of a marathon or making decisions as the head of your own company or seeing yourself on the beach with your family in Hawaii or leading a large community of people to serve others or heading up significant a social change in your country or seeing your children live with integrity and principles.



And now the hard parts begins.  

Goals on the other hand, require much more than 5 minutes to write down.  And then they require much more energy and time to achieve once you’ve really put them down on paper and committed yourself to achieve the goal.
Some people have the capacity to keep all their most important dreams and goals totally encapsulated in their heads and then connect those to action. Those people are very rare. 

Most people need to take deliberate action to translate dreams into well written goals and then decompose goals into specific action steps.


Simple Dreams and Goals


Dream: “I want to have more energy and less stress.”


This is a great ambition.

What gives a person more energy?

Studies show energy is rooted in good habits around sleeping, eating, drinking water, exercise and good mental health.

In fact, there is a study showing that active people have about 20% more energy. If that is true, then we can decompose a dream of having more energy into a goal about being active.


Goal (Weak): “I want to exercise so I can have more energy.”


The weak goal above has a couple elements to help a person move toward more energy, but it lacks some critical elements.  The strong goal below includes the extra elements that remove the ambiguity about the frequency of exercise and the duration of exercise which are required ingredients to improve your chances for success.


Goal (Strong): “I want to exercise for 20 minutes, at least 3 times per week and do that consistently throughout 2016.”


This is much better and and more potent goal that has the potential to start a good habit.

Breaking that down further results in a plan of action which I talk about in the article, “How to Learn a Productivity System Part 3: Plan

We’ll create a specific plan for this goal of exercising which should put us on the road to 
achieving the dream of “having more energy.”


The Plan:  “I will do (yoga, a walk, a run) for 20 minutes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday right after I get up at 6:00 am.”




More Complicated Dreams and Goals


Dream: “I want to be a CEO of my own company”


Interestingly, I’ve had this dream myself for many years. And as I looked around at the big company I was working for, I was overwhelmed with immense obstacles that seemed to bar the way:  I don’t have an MBA. I didn’t attend Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. I’ve never started my own company before.  

WAIT a minute.  “I’ve never started my own company before.”  What am I thinking?  Starting my own company for the first time automatically makes me a CEO. Right?

After some contemplation I became aware that I didn’t really know what my company would do or what it would sell or what type of service it would provide.
So that dream was a little narcissistic in that I didn’t really have any purpose or obvious value to offer. It was more a ‘dream’ fueled by the desire for prestige.

To build a sustainable dream, you must insist on offering value.  And you might argue that I’m wandering into the gray area of the philosophy of what makes a good dream vs. a bad dream. And you would be right. I think there are principles which should be followed when deciding about which dreams to chase vs. curtain.

Here a restatement of the original dream, but this rendition has a value statement.


Dream: “I want to lead a company which helps individuals and business maximize their productivity.” 


This dream has more tangle value statement and can more easily be generate goals and plans.


Goal (Weak): “Create a business to help people be more productivity”


This goal makes sense in that it provides a more focused idea (creating a business), but the weak goal lacks a time frame in which to execute the business activity, which will enable procrastination rather than accountability.


Goal (Strong): “Have a profitable business that serves productivity minded individuals by 31 Dec 2016.”


The strong goal will provide the qualifiers and deadline that make a idea into a GOAL.The Strong version also provides the necessary ingredients that make up a ’SMART’ goal: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.  

Let’s examine whether or not this goals passes the SMART test:

Specific - There appears to be pretty specific outcome to this goal which is a ‘profitable business’ that serves a ‘productivity minded’ market group.  The term ‘Specific’ is probably one of the gray areas to the ‘SMART’ goal definitions because the definition of ‘Specific’ can be broadly interrupted. However, the strong goal appears to meet this criteria.

Measurable - The word ‘profitable’ is a little loose with respect to measurement.  Does this mean profitable over the whole year or profitable for one month or profitable since the dawn on time. This actually needs work. Let’s propose that this be modified to say, ’…profitable for 1 month in 2016’.

Attainable - Depending on the expenses to run the business and the time allocated to running the business, this could be very attainable or it could be unachievable.  For the context of this goal, let’s assume the expenses are very low and the time commitment for the business is roughly 10 hours per week.  That sounds attainable.

Relevant - I think this hits a home run for relevant category because it flows directly from the Dream.

Timely - There is a deadline on the goal, so this is also spot on.


Takeaway for Dreams and Goals


When it comes to creating goals and plans, there is a cost equations.  
Dream-to-Plan Time = Size of Dream * Goals Creation Time * Plan Creation Time

Notice this is what we call an exponential equation.  That means if you have a big dream, you’ll need to put in big time.  Maybe not all at once, but definitely over the life of your dream.

Let’s consider another complex dream to illustrate the cost principle.


Dream: “I want to have children who live with integrity and principles.”   


You will probably need to spend time working on that dream every week. If you are a parent, you are probably already investing time in this area through many different activities and interaction with your kids. 

Below is one example goal that is decomposed from the dream.


Goal: “Provide daily personal input into children’s lives regarding life principles.”


Let’s break this down and see if it complies with the SMART goal format.

Specific
- Very specific


Measurable - The measurement is to do this everyday. 

Attainable - Seems reasonable

Relevant - Very relevant toward the dream

Timely - This is a bit redundant with measurement in this case.  It’s a daily thing.

And then there is a plan that comes out of this.


Plan: “Read a quote or article or affirmation at breakfast that captures a life principles and briefly discuss.”

As a parent, you might say, “I do this as a course of everyday living.  I teach by example. I teach at every opportunity.”  And I think you are correct.  Keep up the good work. 

Sometimes it gives you a boost if you can do something very intentionally rather than in a reactionary situation.  Intentional situations are usually more relaxed and the child’s brain is ready to receive input.  In reactionary situations, such as teaching in the heat of the moment or when something went wrong, is often frustrating and much of the energy and training is waisted because the emotional situation constrains the brain and learning doesn’t happen well.

I really love to hear from you about the your biggest challenges setting goals.  What do you find the most difficult in goal setting?

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 3: Planning

“Soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the greatest crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme Allied Commander 

These were the words spoken before the D-Day invasions were executed.

In light of the immense planning that was required to pull off this amazing multi-nation, multi-front, humungous battle for freedom, another famous quote is also realized.
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”Dwight D. Eisenhower.

D Day Invation

At home and at work I believe this quote about planning to be spot on.  It’s interesting to see how your brain works differently in a meeting or during an activity if you’ve done some planning versus when you wing it.


Consider Two Scenarios


Scenario #1: You receive an e-mail meeting invitation from a colleague titled, “Acme Contract” and the meeting is schedule for tomorrow. The body of the invitation says,”-Thanks.” You’re aware of the Acme Contract and you know you’ll be working on the Acme contract. If fact, you have some very specific feelings about the Acme Contract and how it will impact you and possibly others on your team.

You show up to the meeting and your colleague says, “We’ve got to update the contract and bid based on new input from my boss.  I’m showing the spreadsheet on the overhead. 

Let’s update the info to reduce the overall cost.”
Scenario #2: You receive an e-mail meeting invitation from a college titled, “Acme Contract Updates.”  The body of the e-mail says,

Goal: Review and Update Acme Contract Cost and Assumptions to Reduce Overall Cost.
Agenda: 
1. Review current contract and bid.
2. Re-assess assumptions
3. Update bid based on new assumptions
See attachment for current contract and bid assumptions.

You show up to the meeting and you know what the outcome is. Your brain has already been working subconsciously on new assumptions and ways to save costs. Your brain has a slight edge over Scenario #1.  

Ask yourself this question, “Assuming a 1 hour meeting, how much time is saved in Scenario #2 over Scenario #1?”

What do you think? 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes?

If there are 3 people in the meeting you would minimally save 15 minutes total for your company and 5 for yourself.

If there are 5 people in the meeting and you save 30 minutes, you just saved 150 minutes for your company and 30 for yourself.  WOW. Do you think it’s realistic to save your company 2 1/2 hours of time?  

Surprisingly, I think you’ll find it’s very realistic and practical. If you do this, you’ll be a hero among your peers and in the eyes of your superiors because you’re creating more value in less time.

You might be saying, “Sounds pretty idealistic and like it will take a lot of work to create that goal and agenda.” 


A Mechanism to Train Yourself to Plan



1. Commit to never sending a meeting invite out unless you have at least one sentence in the body of the meeting notice, The GOAL: “Goal: ……”


It will take 1-5 minutes to write this single line but you will ALWAYS recoup that time by saving a minimum of 5 minutes in every meeting you host.

When you write the Goal statement in your e-mails it will force you to think just a little deeper. 


2.  Always include a concrete outcome in the goal statement.  


You would not use “Goal: Discuss developing a new app” as a goal statement. The word “Discuss” is not a concrete deliverable. The real PURPOSE of a meeting is not to discuss something. The PURPOSE of a meeting is to come to agreement and record decisions and action steps.  

A better goal, then, would be, “Goal: Create a Development Plan for the New App.” Now I have a pre-defined output for my meeting. At least for myself I know what I expect to get out of the meeting. At the end of the meeting I should have a draft plan to get from zero to new application.  

It works even better if you reiterate the goal at the start of the meeting so the brains of all the participants are tuned into the PURPOSE of the meeting. It’s like a magnet. The GOAL is one side of magnet and the people’s brains the other side of the magnet. Now the magnetic forces align.

Magnetic Attraction

Often when I write the goal it requires me to dig deeper so I actually do some thinking and PLANNING. Within 1-5 minutes I clarify my intentions for myself and for others and my return on investment will be much greater than the time it took to do the hard work of thinking.

People don’t like wasting time in meetings, but when you put together a 5-minute meeting plan and you execute that plan and you get the necessary buy-in and collaboration with multiple people, you really create a win-win.

In fact, I consider holding and conducting meetings as a productivity enhancer because I can actually get a high level of collaboration and alignment from group sessions.  When you have strong and capable people working on complex projects, you might need more meetings to get alignment. But you don’t want meetings that result in throwing around random off-topic ideas or bringing up the baggage of how, “it didn’t work last time we tried this, so it’s doomed to fail this time."  

You need to get the creative energy FOCUSED on solution-oriented thinking. The GOAL will guide you to that end. Facilitation training can also be very useful. Read more about that skill in a full-scale facilitation process, “Change Your Meetings and Change Your Life with Meeting Facilitation (aka Meeting Magic).”

Please let me know the outcome of your experience using the “Goal:…” statement in your meetings.  

Monday, May 2, 2016

How to Learn a Productivity System Part 2: Actions

The past 2 weeks were a disaster for my productivity system.

As a software project manager I oversea about 10 projects.  A couple of the bigger projects have a release cycle of 2 weeks. Effectively that means there is no down time, there is no week off because one project releases on even weeks and the other project releases on odd weeks.  The other 8 projects are smaller research projects, which require more hand holding because they have significant risks and exposure to the company’s senior leaders.

One of my colleagues was off for 3 days so I did a little filling in. Then the following week we on-boarded a new project lead which, in the end, is going to help tons, but requires a bit of time to properly train a new person.

During this 2-week period my inbox went from 0 to 357. And my stress level pegged the ‘overheat’ mark so I knew I was loosing a few things along the way. The really urgent things didn’t get lost because some of my co-workers reminded me through e-mail and phone calls that they needed something (which is kind of embarrassing to be asked twice or three times).  

In the end, the urgent and important got done, the important but not urgent things got done, most of the urgent and unimportant things were ignored, and the not important and not urgent items were totally ignored.

For a really detailed description of the time management matrix, see the article “How to Save a Million Years of Time in a Life Time.
Time Mgmt Matrix
How does one setup a system that manages his or her time, ensuring the important things done in life in spite of a continuous flow of stressful weeks?


One effective strategy: Train thy self


Take special-forces training as an example. In the series “Surviving the Cut” special operations forces training includes: 

 
  • Ranger School
  • Air Force Pararescue
  • US Marine Recon
  • Special Forces Divers
  • Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD)
  • Marine Sniper










Another great training example series is “Navy SEALs: BUDS class 234.”






Even if you haven’t seen these series, most of us have an idea about the rigor of this type of training.

What’s interesting in many documentaries that I’ve seen (including books and post mission interviews), is the comments from special operations veterans about how they execute and survive in very stressful combat situations. Many veterans say, “I trusted my training”.


"I trust my training"


Isn’t that interesting.

In the heat of battle these amazing individuals with highly tuned senses and unwavering courage and amazing tenacity relay on TRAINING.  

This is a huge lesson for us. So let’s get trained in our daily routine so we can handle office stress. Here’s is the training you need to keep it going.


#1 Setup the Routine and Tools


Routine is key. Almost every day of the year I’m reminded how important it is to have 
routines or systems to keep on track. After listening to podcasts with very successful people, you quickly see they incorporate systems into their life in order to achieve their desired results.  

One of my favorite podcast of all time is Tim Ferris’ interview with Scott Adams (Creator of Dilbert). In the podcast Scott Adams expresses how critical his daily systems are to his success.

In “The One Thing” by Gary Keller he says, “The more creative a person is, the more they need a system.” You’d think it would be the opposite of that. But Keller argues that without a system you will just become distracted instead of productively creative.

Suggested routine for home

Wake up on time. It’s key to force this behavior. You’ve faced more pain in your life than getting up, so you can do it.

Refuse to read e-mail or watch TV or even read the news. Getting distracted from your routine is easy, so make sure you keep the first part of your day clean from tempting distractions.

Work Out. (I alternate between Yoga and Running). This is important to your longevity, mental health, and ability to feel good and have energy.

Eat breakfast with your family.  I’m big on pouring into my family’s life first thing in the day. It helps myself, my wife, and my kids enter the day with a mindset of thankfulness, thoughtfulness, kindness, and a spirit that is eager to learn.

Go to work.


Suggested routine for work


Look at your Calendar first. Your time is a map of your daily activities and you need to know the landscape.  Don’t be distracted by e-mail inbox.  Look to the calendar first.

Designate the biggest appointments you need to accomplish today as “all day” appointments. These are not meetings, they are deliverables that you need to make. (e.g. “Schedule training for the software team,” “Make sure that contract is signed by Pete,” or “Get the Bid to Joe for Atlas Project.”)

Put these on your calendar for each day of the week.  Many of these come in e-mails. I’ve created a special button in Outlook to create meetings from e-mails so I can plop these items into the calendar quickly.
If you get projects and direction through e-mails put as many as possible into the calendar to keep yourself aware of the non-meeting deliverables.

Put non-urgent emails into an “!Action” folder at the top of e-mail box.
If the action comes in some other way besides e-mail, a phone call or post-it note, write yourself an e-mail for those actions and either put it into your “!Action” folder or into an “all-day” calendar event on the proper day.  


Too many “all-day” events


Don’t get bogged down with too many daily assignments. Challenge yourself to reduce the number of daily events down to 3. Distribute the rest to different days or delete them altogether. Or perhaps put them in the “!Action” folder to deal with later.

If you are frantic at work, you won’t be able to become less frantic without FOCUS. FOCUS requires elimination. FOCUS is the result of shedding things so you can become immersed in one thing. 

Review and update appointments daily.


#2 Refresh Your Mindset at Every Possible Interval


It’s so easy to get distracted during the day. Each time I come back to my computer from a meeting or discussion with my colleagues, I look at the calendar first, then at my e-mail inbox.  


All Day Calendar First


Put the three big things at the top of the calendar. These are the “Big Rocks” in the parlance of Stephen Covey’s 3rd Habit: First things First. Stephen does a seminar exercise where he has a glass bowl half full of small pebbles and then another bucket with big rocks. The big rocks have labels on them like, “work out” or “time with family” or “write a book.” Stephen asks for a volunteer from the audience to come up to the stage and attempt to put all the big rocks into the bowl with the pebbles. People usually start stuffing the big rocks into the glass bowl only to find they won’t fit. There’s a lot of struggling to push rocks into the pebbles, digging around pebbles, and finally total frustration. The big rocks won’t all fit, unless…

Stephen Covey suggests the person pour out all the pebbles into the bucket, put in all the big rocks and pour all the pebbles on top.  

Guess what. It all fits perfectly. That is why the big rocks must be done first.


Meetings on the Calendar Second


What is the next thing on my calendar and how can i prepare for it?


E-mail Third


Triage the incoming mass of information.
If I spend more than 5 minutes on triage and think I’m getting distracted, I go back to All-day events on my Calendar to make sure I can complete the Big Rocks.

Now you have something that looks like a routine.  This is the training you can fall back on. We are lacking a little of the supporting philosophy, but that will come. Understanding the philosophy is often the next level of training. 

Please leave a comment or send me e-mail and let me know what Big Rock you’re struggling to get done?