May 26, 2010

How Mind Mapping Software Can Decrease Your Productivity

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Businesspeople exchanging card, world map in background, close-up

Attention Mind Mappers!

First, Why You Really Should Mind Map

I’ve loved mind mapping for years.  Mind mapping has improved the quality of my thinking and learning, helped me generate thousands of ideas, helped me plan for my business, my work and personal life as well as saved me time and effort in many areas.  I’ve adapted mind mapping to help me in so many situations…but there’s a huge problem, particularly with mind mapping software…

You Can’t See the Wood for the Trees

It’s expansive.  There are no limits to what you add to your map – the screen keeps scrolling on and on.  It’s designed to not break your thought flow. Its very strength is also a potential weakness. This open ended platform for thinking is great for generating ideas, but it doesn’t get you to close any loops.  It doesn’t force you into making any decisions, which puts a halt to your actions and results.  A major mind map idea generating session can also leave you slightly overwhelmed and unfocused when you look over what you’ve done.  And some high value ideas can get lost in all the ‘noise’ of your mind map.


Increase the Quality of Your Ideas and Focus

Mind Mapping software helps you generate quantity of ideas, not necessarily quality.  That’s fine, because to get great ideas you usually need lots of ideas as a starting point.  The quality may come later. But I had an idea myself on how you can force better quality and more focus from your mind maps, and turn your best ideas into action more easily.

Some time back I started transferring my electronic mind maps on to half a sheet of A4 paper.  The physical limits to your paper force you to make decisions on what you include.  It forces you to increase the quality of your thinking and communication, be it choice of words or pictures.  It forces you to think about the important stuff and communicate it concisely! It’s handy of course to keep your writing standard size for this to work.  If you shrink your writing, you don’t benefit from the physical limits, so you’re probably shrinking the quality of your thinking too.

Take it Further Still

You can enhance your focus and quality of thinking even further.  Consider reproducing your mind map on the back of a business card.  What would you include and exclude?  Keep your writing standard size.  This really sharpens your thinking.  You get down to the main important points, and force yourself to make decisions. You gain focus.  Things become clearer.  It kind of tells you what you should be getting on with next.

Some people may already have control of their focus and ideas when mind mapping.  They may naturally manage their mind maps towards making decisions and taking actions.  But I’ll bet most people who use mind mapping software have lots of ideas, thoughts, resources and snippets of information that they’ve overlooked and that get buried in their maps, all because they haven’t forced themselves to make decisions to bring them to the surface and act on them.  I know I’ve been guilty of this, but I’ve really benefit over recent months where I’ve forced myself to make more focused decisions on what I think, learn, focus on, and on what I’ll turn into action, and in particular how I word my ideas.


The Missing Final Step

Plug my business card idea on as the missing final step to your current electronic mind mapping approach and let me know what it does for you.

May 21, 2010

How to Avoid the Job Search Struggle

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a road sign saying career change ahead

Here’s the common long way to do your job search: (afterward, I’ll show you the fast way)

1. start sighing, and begin your job search (sighing every so often to spur you on)

2. find and read tarted-up job spec ads designed to promise you a wonderful career doing wonderful things with wonderful people (ensure you don’t think about your long future ahead at all – instead picture yourself working in that role for just one day in the near future, nod your head, and follow their application instructions)

3. jump through the hoops they lay out for you, with your tongue out and panting if you like, make sure your hope is turned up to maximum

4. tart your own CV/resume up to match the big promises they made on the exciting job ad.  Create a new ‘you’ that makes the real you feel slightly inadequate and uneasy – ask your mate who works in a different field to check it, for some reason.  Spelling or something.  Get ready for him to say “yeah it’s fine”.  Thank him for his role in your bright future

5. realise you don’t understand cover letters properly.  Google to find a lame article that states the obvious and doesn’t really help you any further.  Make sure the article is off one of those vague ‘how to’ sites, because that’s where everyone else goes

6. wait to be accepted for interview.  Know full well that you really should keep job hunting, but instead decide to relax a little in case you get the offer on what you’re waiting for.  You don’t want to waste your efforts after all

7. fail to get the offer.  Get a bit annoyed at them for judging you like they have.  They probably didn’t even read your resume properly, idiots.  Tell your mates that the competition is high for this sort of thing.  Ensure you don’t even consider the limitations to how you come across once your colourful personality has been drained of it’s colour and you’ve been squashed into black ink on white paper, like everyone else

8. repeat steps 1 to 7 quite a few times

9. get an interview offer from one company and start getting nervous because you’ll have to pretend in person that you’re the star you wrote about in your resume. Check your resume again to remind yourself how you must act when you meet them

10. attend interview and act your way through it.  Whatever happens, don’t think about the 4 grey walls you’re working hard to secure a position between for the foreseeable future.  Ensure you do wonder what the people who work there are like, but don’t ask to meet any of them in case you look nosey

11. fail this interview, and a few others, go back to step 1 and repeat until you get accepted by one eventually

12.  discover to your astonishment months down the line that this isn’t what you thought life was all about.  Wonder why your life has come to this.  Come up with some reasons why your colleagues are annoying.  Tell your friends all about it

13.  get caught crying, but pretend it’s something in your eye so that your work friends don’t laugh at you


Or, you could go about your ‘job search’ this way:

1.  starting with a clean slate, identify your perfect career. Know exactly what it is – you can find your perfect career using my e-course

2.  identify who you most want to work for, and what you could do for them, whether they’re employing people or not right now. Research them thoroughly using contacts, the media and relevant websites.  Find out what’s ahead for them, what challenges they may be up against, what their competitors are up to,  and where you could probably add value. Note this

3.  know that because you’re aligned perfectly to do this sort of work and provide this sort of value to this sort of company (because you’ve planned thoroughly and arrived at this conclusion) then securing employment with them is going to be much easier than it would be applying for any other position anywhere else, and certainly much easier than the conventional job search process.  You’re a round peg in a round hole

4.  use Linkedin or similar social networking sites to locate a decision maker who’s as close as possible to your desired role and who might connect you to this company.  Learn about them as best you can.  Then start working for them right now, from home if you can.  Huh?  Come up with some plans, ideas, or improvements to something related to this person or the organisation, if you can.  Provide them with some relevant value somehow.  Demonstrate what you could do for them, just as a taster.  You love doing this anyway, so enjoy yourself.  Now’s also a good time to gather any comments or testimonials from other people who you’ve done similar work for.  Anything to back up your case

5.  contact them and share what you’ve been working on with them, and your testimonials if you have any.  Offer to work for them for free for 1 or 2 weeks.  This is less time than you’ll likely spend on your conventional job search, and it’s more enjoyable and productive too.  Tell them it’s your perfect career, and tell them why you’ve singled them out as being the best company to work for (and why you chose them over their competitors).  Tell them (or show them) that you’re practically born to work for them, and ask to work either for them directly or for one of their direct reports, for free, for 1-2 weeks

6.  Polish yourself up, make a plan to knock their socks off, get plenty of feedback and over-deliver to them for 2 weeks (loving every minute of it because it’s your ideal career).  Give yourself some good reasons to feel proud.  Ask to meet the decision maker for lunch at least once a week.  Ask questions, and seek problems that your boss and colleagues suffer from that you could solve.  Make as much impact as you can and as many contacts as you can whilst working there. Be very nice to everyone.  You’ll do this almost automatically because you’re so passionate about what you do.  Passion like that can’t help but shine through.  Don’t forget to tell them that you’re really keen to work for them full time and ask how you might go about getting full time employment there

7.  Get the good work you’ve done noticed by the decision maker somehow.  Try to work out a plan or job role that you could take on moving ahead with this company.  Have the conversation with the decision maker to work out next steps, and ask for more contacts

From that strong position, you’ll most likely find that you land a job in your perfect company in your perfect career in much much less time than you would have spent doing a conventional job search.

If not, you’ll have the experience to build upon by repeating the process with another company.  If the decision maker turns you down for now, they’ll almost certainly write you a glowing appraisal and give you further contacts to help you along your way.  But only if you ask for this.

Almost everything about this process makes more sense than doing the conventional job search which is tiring, and hit and miss.  You’re playing a different game this way – a game that you can win.  You’ll increase your chances, get in a stronger position, and you’ll get your ladder up against the right wall.  All you then have to do is climb it.

The Great Career Escape will help you find and get in to your ideal career and provide you with plenty more ideas like this to help you create a highly rewarding living.

May 13, 2010

How to Create Better Quality Teachers (For Yourself, Your Organisation and Your Kids)

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Graduating Teacher Holding Eyeglasses and Chalk

I’ve met a lot of teachers over the years who want to get out of teaching.  Why?

I’ve also met and worked with lots of people over the years who consider teaching for one reason above all else: because it’s great for the holidays.  What?  What about the longer working part?  And the effect it has on your personal life?

Of course, you’re sending your kids along (or at least you probably will be) to spend much of their time with people who either don’t want to be there, or who only want to be there because they can’t wait until school’s out.  (This might ring alarm bells in your own work too).  That’s an awful lot of people who don’t really want to be there teaching your kids.  I don’t know about you, but it scares me.  I don’t want someone helping to grow, develop and teach my children, when their heart isn’t in it.  Because when their heart isn’t in it, then their performance, energy and results aren’t in it either.  The impact on your child’s learning, results and life, is huge.

For the record, I’ve also met a handful of teachers over the years who are in their ideal career, working not for the holidays, but for their passion and enjoyment for teaching and helping integrate children into the real world.  These people are the bridge to accelerating learning.  These people are driven to make it work.  They really care about their pupils and seem to put the needs of their pupils before their own.  And they tend to be remembered by their pupils. You may remember some of yours and you may even have the urge to get hold of them if you could, to thank them.  They made impact and they made learning enjoyable and powerful too.  A couple of my teachers stood out like that.  A couple, out of about 50.

Please note, I don’t blame teachers at all and I’m not having a go at teachers.  Because what’s going on here is going on in your field too.  My advice to teachers though who don’t really love their work is to get out and find and get into something that really makes you bounce out of bed in the morning and give it everything.  Something you’re driven to get better and better at and something that puts you in the best position to really help others doing what you do best.  My advice to everyone else (especially if you have kids) is to help teachers you know who are considering a career change to see it through.  They might be very pleased to hear of www.thegreatcareerescape.com.  Getting in to their ideal career will make them happier more productive people, and it will make way for teachers who were born to teach well.  They are out there, possibly working in the wrong job.  Think of the number of children’s lives this will positively influence over time.

And while you’re at it, consider how and where this is going on in your own industry too.  Perhaps some strategic repositioning will positively change your life and the lives of your customers?

May 7, 2010

The First Step to Your Ideal Career

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Newborn chicken

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? No idea. Which came first your career or your lifestyle? Erm… well, your lifestyle had a say in your career choice of course. But your career choice has determined your current lifestyle and will continue to do so.  So, do you enjoy your lifestyle inside and outside of work?

If not, you need to change your career. Its your lifestyle engine.

So how do you know what career is the right career for you? Well its the one that gives you the lifestyle you want, inside and outside of work, short, medium and long term (high quality decisions take the short, medium and long term into consideration).

So you MUST start then with your desired lifestyle in mind first. To overlook this is a huge mistake. Then you work backwards.

There’s a lot to think about that makes up your ‘lifestyle’, and you must think about it if you want to make the right career choice. The Great Career Escape process walks you through the entire thought process step by step, having you apply as you go along. By the end of it you’ll know exactly what career path will lead you directly into this lifestyle, earning and spending your time and money where, when and however you want.

May 3, 2010

How to Leap Ahead in Your Career

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Hand holding chess piece

I’m going to show you how you can make a huge leap of progress in your career.

I meet plenty of people through my work, all at different stages in their career.  It doesn’t take me long to decide which of three general attitudes they have towards their work:

1.  There are those who think they’re on a moving walkway in their career.  They think that just because they’re employed in a certain position, that all it takes is time for them to move up the ranks, and that in 30 years they’ll be in a successful, senior position.  It happens to some, but not to most (how can it work for everyone when there’s only a few places at the top anyway?)  If that’s you, then you can leap forwards in your career by understanding my next point…

2.  There are those who realise that there’s no moving walkway, and that no one owes them anything, that it’s not a fair playing field they’re playing on, and that they won’t get their ‘turn’.  They realise that if they want more back from their career, their employer or their life, then they’re going to have to get up and make it happen themselves.  You have to earn what you want.  Their priority is to get their hands on what they need to learn, and then put it into practice as fast and effectively as possible. They can leap forwards in their career by learning how to learn twice as fast (they need their employer to provide them with something like this) and learning how to manage themselves effectively to apply what they learn fluidly and consistently.

3.  There are those who just don’t care.  They just potter along.  They just go to work because, well you have to don’t you?  They’re in the wrong job.  Because when you’re in the right job, you do care.  You’re compelled to make things happen and do a great job, because you enjoy doing just that, and you’re proud of the results you create.  Unfortunately, those who don’t care about their career progress because they’re in the wrong job are unlikely to be reading this blog post.  So you might need to point them towards what they need, which is this.


Join the Queue?

Brian Tracy says that you only have to do 2 things to get to the front of a queue, or to advance your career:  ‘Get in line and stay in line.’

The truth is, you don’t have to stay in line where you’re at.  You can jump the career queue, and the beauty is, it’s a fair jump too. You earn the right to jump the queue by becoming more valuable to those who pay you (and to your colleagues too).  And it’s not a single line anyway.  It’s a mass huddle of people.  It’s a crowd.  It’s like a chess board full of pieces, and you can move like a knight.  You can jump people sideways, if you like, to get to where you want.

Just follow these steps:

1.  work out what position you want to be in and why (make it a position you really care about and will be proud of)
2.  work out what value you’d need to provide to who (and how often) in order to earn the right to be in that position
3.  work out what you need to LEARN and then APPLY in order to provide that value
4.  learn it
5.  apply it
6.  repeat

Of course there are plenty of stumbling points along the way, and there are ways to move through these steps faster, more easily and enjoyably too. If you’ve got a question for me related to this, please post it below or email me and I may blog my response.

April 26, 2010

Pick a Game (or Career) You Can Win

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Are you playing a game you can win? Are you currently playing in a league you can win? If not, choose a game, or league, or career that you can win. Choose your competition so that you can win in certain areas (and get rewarded appropriately).

Of course at the same time you want to push yourself in new desirable areas to see if you can win there too. But at all costs, if it’s evident you’re in a position where you’ll never win, or you aren’t really bothered about winning, then you’re eventually going to lose somehow. So get out and play in a new game that you can win. Then get better at it and move up to the next league. Employers and customers look after the winners first. They’re less inclined to pay those who don’t win, even if they like them. The better rewards are attached to winning a league no matter how big or small.

Pick a Game (or Career) You Can Win

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Are you playing a game you can win? Are you currently playing in a league you can win? If not, choose a game, or league, or career that you can win. Choose your competition so that you can win in certain areas (and get rewarded appropriately).

Of course at the same time you want to push yourself in new desirable areas to see if you can win there too. But at all costs, if it’s evident you’re in a position where you’ll never win, or you aren’t really bothered about winning, then you’re eventually going to lose somehow. So get out and play in a new game that you can win. Then get better at it and move up to the next league. Employers and customers look after the winners first. They’re less inclined to pay those who don’t win, even if they like them. The better rewards are attached to winning a league no matter how big or small.

April 23, 2010

Are You About to Lose Your Job?

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I just finished reading Harvey Mackay’s new book ‘Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door’ which in my opinion had some useful tips in, but was nothing particularly ground breaking.  There were two major points that stood out to me that people should take on board above all others.  The rest of the points in the book were really tactics to get a job.  Useful if you know for sure what you want.

Here are the 2 major points you should think about:

1.  The title is a major tip in itself ‘Use Your Head’. It’s where most people seem to stumble.  I watch people around me almost every day looking for new jobs and trying to get in to something else, and few of them seem to use their heads.  Most just seem to clumsily grab hold of the traditional job search process, and wade through like everyone else.  This is not smart thinking. You’re doing what everyone else is doing, so your competition via this approach is very high and hard to break through.  The people getting the jobs are no doubt doing or at least demonstrating something very different to everyone else.  If you use your head to get the job, then your smart approach tells your prospective employer a lot about you already too.  It may demonstrate your thinking, problem solving, creativity, determination and potential value.  If you go down the common job application road, it still says a lot about you, but what it says isn’t all that exciting.  It says you don’t think beyond the norm.

If I was employing people, I’d be tempted to set up the standard application process to filter all the people I didn’t want to employ into a ‘pot’.  Anyone who tried to get the job I was offering via a smarter more innovative approach would get my interest, attention and more respect, and probably get the job.

Think about it.  Use your head.

2.  A quote, right near the end of the book.  Harvey Mackay said,

“When it comes to a job, if you don’t love it, you’re likely to lose it”

His point was that the people who don’t love what they do stand out in many ways, and in this day and age, are the first to go when they’re making cut backs.  If you don’t love your job, be afraid!  And do something about it.

It’s your real job, in fact it’s your duty to get yourself into work you love and are best at. You haven’t lived until you do.  You get one shot at life, you have to earn a living, and you really should strive to maximise your enjoyment and what you get out of your work.  No excuses not to do this. No point defending your ‘right’ to be misplaced and miserable.  Whatever you’ll come up with won’t make real sense and will just sound lame.  There’s a solution to get you into your ideal career here, if you’re prepared to put some planning and thinking time in.

April 21, 2010

Caught Up in Anything? How to Get Out Quickly

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Cornish Fishermen Deliver Directly To Londons Finest Restaurants

I think this is a great question to ask yourself every so often.  I ask myself this question a lot.  This post shows how I escape what I’m caught up in.  It works.

There’s nothing worse than being (or feeling) caught up in something, whether it’s work, relationships, business, your environment, whatever.  If you feel that way, then something’s not right.  And the default first step for most of us is to complain about it, or feel hard done by.

The first reason people stay caught up: they feel the pain and just spend their time and energy complaining about it. Many people never make it past this step.

Ask yourself in what areas you feel hard done by, or what you’ve been complaining about recently, and you might realise what you’re caught up in.  Some things you’ll realise will pass by, so you can just shrug your shoulders at those.  But some are unlikely to just pass by.  These are the things that you’re frustrated about that you really are temporarily caught up in.  Of course the remedy to your frustrations and worries for these is to get yourself out as carefully and as smartly as possible.

At this point, many people start throwing out the excuses and reasons why they can’t get themselves out.  But most of these excuses just sound lame when you really think about them.  Each of these excuses are effectively you casting another vote to continue to spend your short life caught up in something you’re unhappy about, instead of voting to get the hell out.

The second reason people stay caught up: they dish out excuses or reasons why they can’t get out, each one significantly decreasing any hope or chance of escape.  Of those who get past the complaining stage, few get past this stage.

The reality is usually that you can get yourself out if you drop the excuses and just go for it.  The first step then is to contemplate what you’d do if you did just drop those excuses.  If you have trouble doing that, then answer this: how would an actor in a movie play the role of you once you’d dropped those excuses?  Consider acting like that.

Obviously consider the consequences on your life and relationships in the short, medium and long term of both staying in what you’re caught up in, and getting out of it.  Then weigh up what you’re prepared to live with.  Then decide.

The third reason people stay caught up: they fail to decide to do something about it.  They may get as far as dropping all excuses and they may feel they’ve plucked up the courage to act.  But somehow, they just don’t make the decision.

And of course, verbal decisions (or passive decisions in your mind), in my book, can’t really claim the title of ‘a made decision’ until you act on them.  Only then have you really decided.

The fourth reason people stay caught up: they don’t plan some steps to take to get out as carefully and as smartly as possible (with minimal damage), and they don’t act on these steps.  Of those who decide to do something about their situation, few make it through to actually doing something about it.

So there it is.

Once you notice you’re caught up in something, do this:

1. Stop complaining and re-direct your time and energy…
2. Drop the excuses. Either plan a way around them, or just drop them (but consider the consequences, and weigh up whether you’d prefer to stay caught up for the rest of short your life or not)
3. Decide to act
4. Make a plan and act on it
5. Notice what happens
6. Adapt your plan and actions with what you’ve noticed and learned and keep taking actions until you’re no longer caught up

Now, depending on what you’re caught up in, you may not know what outcome you want, how you’ll plan to get it, or what you need to learn to be able to get out.  But they’re just excuses.  (See point 2 above).  Work it out.  Use your resources.  Use your contacts.  Talk to me.  Talk to each other.  Use your brain.  (What really?  Yeah yeah.  Honestly, it works)

If you’re caught up in your career, here’s your plan, map and all you need to learn and do to get out – click here

P.S.  Don’t forget to do what it takes so that you don’t get caught up in the same situation again

April 19, 2010

How to Be More Productive Than Your Computer

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Be Productive

Really?  You can be more productive than your computer allows you to be?

Yep.  Well, of course your computer is the right tool for certain jobs.  But it’s all too easy to get lazy and try to do everything via your computer.  Ultimately, using your computer for too many things chokes your productivity.

Ever heard of Maslow’s Hammer? Abraham Maslow once said, “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail”

I think that the computer has become the new Maslow’s Hammer.  It’s not always the right tool for the job.

Here’s how you can beat the productivity of your computer: don’t use it so much.  Get off the computer more often.  And I don’t just mean to take a break.  I mean get off the computer and invest more of your time doing these, which will make you much more productive:

  • thinking – take an hour a day out to think away from the computer.  Think to answer this question: How could I change how I work to make much more positive impact on more people who pay me, more often?  Jot your thoughts down
  • reading and learning – take an hour a day out to learn whatever you need to learn to be able to do your job twice as well as you do it now.  If you could work twice as well as you do now, what would you most need to learn?  Learn it for an hour a day away from your computer (read, listen to audio, attend courses or chat to experts)
  • planning your next 3 months, your next month, your next week and tomorrow (the objective of your plan is ‘what would I have to do to earn myself a forever increasing supply of TIME, MONEY or ENERGY?’  I’d just pick one of those for now and make your plan to achieve that
  • doing physical activity
  • consider calling some people with the objective of getting ‘an answer’ instead of emailing them (I’m not suggesting to always call instead of email, I’m suggesting that each one is the right tool for a certain job. Emailing can be too passive.  Calling can be too intrusive.  Get the tool right to create a win:win where you can).  You can even start the call cheerily and say, ‘I’m spring cleaning, I’m organising my time for the months ahead – I’m tidying up all unmade decisions around me so that I can focus my efforts on what’s definite’  This tip is about asking for what you want. You’ll be amazed the impact it has on your progress towards more TIME, MONEY or ENERGY.  Most people don’t get the things they want (and deserve) because they don’t ask
  • just resting

Each of those are healthier for you, your mind, your eyes, and your body and each are an investment with potential high returns in the short, medium and long term.  They will make you much more productive.  Since most people don’t do them, you’ll be well ahead of your competition if you do, and you’ll be rewarded appropriately over time.  It’s not rocket science this, it’s pretty simple.  Just turn what I’ve told you here into some actions, schedule to take them, and when the time comes, just get on with them. Then come back and let me know how you went.

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