Hate to say it but most people are ineffective.  They often don’t get the job done on time AND they don’t get home on time.  No one wins.

Effective habits don’t come naturally to us.  Our default setting is ‘ineffective’.  And ‘effectiveness’ was never a subject at school.  It would be ironic in my opinion if it was.  In fact, the very ineffective approach to the way school works ingrains some bad habits in to us that we carry through in to later life. However, effectiveness is learnable.  And over time, the habits can give you a sense of liberation from your work.

Want to get home on time today?  Try this:

You’ve possibly heard Pareto’s Law.  One application is that 80% of our results at work get done in 20% of our working time; that amazing 20% when we’re focused and in flow, getting the job done well.

If you could extract that magic 20%, and only do that, then theoretically you’d get 80% of your work done.  That’s within 2 hours of a 10 hour work day.  Then you could use the rest of the time how you like.

How can we get to the magic 20%?

One way is to use forced efficiency which I write about in a previous article here.  Ask yourself, ‘if I only had 1 hour at work today and then had to rush off, what would I get done in that 1 hour, and how would I do it?’

You’d  probably start by politely telling your colleague next to you to shut up about what was on TV last night.

You’d devote your attention to scan over all that needs to be done, and you’d instantly start recognising the key priorities. You’ll soon pick out the few actions that will have the most impact or consequences to your work.

You’d think about who you could delegate to, what you could defer, what you could just scrap doing altogether.  You’d find existing work that you could re-use to save re-inventing the wheel.  You’d instantaneously be a lot smarter as you consider how to achieve your desired result.  You’d probably write a quick neat list of what needs to be done in that 1 hour.

Then you’d just get on with it with urgency.  And often this way, you quickly get in to that state of flow.

You’ll be surprised by your progress if you start the day like this.  Never mind the exact figures in the theory, they don’t matter.  It’s just probabilistic.  It increases the chances heavily that you’ll not only get your important work done, but also get home on time, or earlier.

Just do it and see what it does for you.  And let me know how you go below.

You might also like these:

1. Learn Productivity From Airlines
2. How to Get What You’re Lacking
3. 4 Decisions to Sort Your Life Out

Most people seem to throw around the idea that you must be a big ‘risk taker’ to make it in business.  It’s a viral message passed between people who haven’t thought about it enough.  Unfortunately it gets passed on to some poor hopeful who is rather risk-averse.  He definitely doesn’t want to risk making himself happier in life, in case it all backfires and he’s miserable.  So he chooses to stay put in his less-than-fulfilling job for the rest of his life.  Oh, the irony.

Let’s not pass this viral message on any longer until we’ve thought about it:

First up, everything you do, every decision is a risk.  So you’re a risk taker.

Second, you’re in business if you’re earning a living.  Whether you’re ‘making it’ or not in your career is for you to decide.

So the idea doesn’t mean all that much anyway.  It just means that you have to make some hard decisions to ‘make it’ in your career.  Yeah we know that.  The thing about risks, is they’re on a scale.  Low risk is still a risk.

And the thing about the majority of successful entrepreneurs and businesses is that they didn’t all take huge risks, despite things appearing that way.  That’s why they succeeded.  They took risks, yes, but they tipped the odds in their favour by researching, measuring, thinking and planning ahead.  It might look like a big risk to the casual observer.

Of course the real big risk takers, many of them failed.  Those who didn’t research ahead, think it all through, measure and act on the data.  You don’t hear so much about them as they tend to keep everything quiet.

Your job is to discover and decide where the risk vs opportunity is relatively low in your career decisions.  Then to do whatever you can to tip the odds even more in your favour.

If you let me drop you by helicopter in the centre of the bush in Australia, you’d be taking a huge risk.  But how could you reduce that risk?  You’d check I could pilot a helicopter first.  Then you’d learn all you can about bush survival.  You’d practice various life saving techniques perhaps and play out various scenarios in your mind to increase your survival.  You’d study a map of the area and take it with you, with enough supplies.

When well prepared, the risk is lower.  The opportunity and potential benefits may seriously outweigh the risks.

So learn, study up front, do your market research and plan contingencies and fallbacks for those big decisions you could make.  And if you don’t have a big decision ahead of you and you value the short time you have on this planet, go ahead and find one now, quickly.

You might also like these:

1. 4 Decisions to Sort Your Life Out
2. How to Make Decisions for Better Returns
3. How to Fly High in Your Work

These books have all made a great impact on my work over the last 8 years or so.  Highly recommend them all.

http://www.epi-learning.com/books.html

Any to share with us that have made a great impact on your work?  Post them below in the comments.

You might also like these:

1. How to Make Decisions for Better Returns
2. 4 Decisions to Sort Your Life Out
3. Free Mind Mapping Software

This is an interesting article about employers retaining employees:

http://www.humanresourcesmagazine.com.au/articles/35/0C066735.asp?Type=59&Category=917

It’s true that it’s cheaper for companies to retain than recruit new people.  If you’re considered high value, your employer is likely to try to retain you.  There’s a lot of talk right now within organisations about retaining ‘talent’.  But what if that ‘talent’ (that’s you) is in the wrong job?  What if you could be much better placed elsewhere?  Don’t let your employer retain you if you’re not totally satisfied with your work, happy with the lifestyle it brings and able to maximise your value in your role. I write this to benefit both employer and employee. Some employers are blowing resources retaining people who aren’t a perfect (or even a suitable) fit, even though they’re skilled to do the job. In this day and age, it’s unlikely to be sustainable.

Towards the end of the linked article are some bullet suggestions for organisations to retain people.  They’re good points, for employers.  You might notice them doing similar things in your organisation.  May they retain well suited ‘talent’.

My advice to you for each of these points; don’t try to fit your employer’s plans if it violates your own plans.  Your goal is to align you own plans with your employer’s plans, and if you can’t then change role or career so that you do.  That’s the most important part of your job.  Most people haven’t even made their own plans.  They just live each day working on their employer’s plans (and believe me, employers are planning).

You do have your own plans don’t you?

P.S. If not, subscribe to my posts and I’ll help you

You might also like these:

1. Should You Sack Your Employer?
2. How to Make Decisions for Better Returns
3. How to Get a Result Immediately

On reflection I’m not so sure Winston Churchill was right when he said, ‘never give in, never ever give in’.  When he said this in context, it’s fair enough, but the stand alone quote can be dangerous if just blindly followed.  That’s true of many quotes of course.  In context, they’re fine but isolated they can be misunderstood.

Never giving in can lead to flogging a dead horse.  Sometimes certain strategies, products or services should be quit.  Google (Notebook), Coca Cola (New Coke), and Sony (Betamax) know this.  They’ve all quit on products or services.  The guy down the road from me struggling to sell a heavy paper based time management system designed in the 80′s doesn’t know this.  He may have mastered his time, but the future of his business makes me apprehensive.  He might think he’s comfortable selling what he knows, but things for him are about to get increasingly uncomfortable.  Knowing when to quit and when to stick is a smart business skill that many of us struggle with.

Part of the problem is we enjoy a positive vision of an outcome, and our initial energy and excitement on a project sees us making great progress in the earlier days or weeks.  But then, we hit difficulties.  We lose energy to other distractions.  We see problems ahead that we never saw before.  Our markets change in time and we don’t always stay engaged with them and their needs.  After a while we begin to notice progress slows.  Then the initial excitement is replaced by resistance and frustration.  And then?  Most people quit.  When perhaps they shouldn’t have.  It’s the same old pattern.  Don’t be surprised by it, it was part of the deal of taking your project on in the first place.  It was in the small print that you didn’t read.  Most successes require enduring and getting through this phase.  If the phase didn’t exist, we’d all be highly successful in anything we chose to do.  It’s the phase that sorts out the winners from the losers.  Seth Godin calls this phase and his book about it ‘The Dip’ (click here), and I highly recommend it.

But sometimes you should quit.  So how do you know when to quit?  Here’s how; you define the circumstances under which you’ll quit before starting your project.  Define the circumstances or feedback you’ll get that tell you that you’re truly at a dead end on this project, and that there’s no way around.  Define the information you’ll receive that says there’s no longer term gain in it.  Be thorough.  Write it down and frame it; “I will only quit when…”   Then stick to it.  When the going gets tough, the tough read their pre-defined quitting conditions, and then they get going.

But be careful.  If you do think it’s time to quit a market or a major vision of yours, there’s still room for error.  Consider quitting your various approaches, products and services first and replacing them with better approaches.  You don’t usually have to quit the ‘big’ thing.  You can quit plenty of the small things, until you find what works and what suits your resources.  Google, Coca Cola and Sony know this.

I think the guy down the road should quit the heavy paper based product and work out how to get it online, or for hand held electronic devices.  His core market for paper based time management systems, if not already, are soon going to have plenty of time on their hands anyway.  If there’s no wind, your kite won’t fly.  He shouldn’t quit his market, or his desire to help people manage their time if this is his passion.  He can still do that, and if he cares about his market he should provide the tools that suit them, not him.  Unfortunately, many people fail to see this and when the going gets tough end up quitting their whole business, or the market altogether.  Perhaps it’s time to quit doing that?

You might also like these:

1. The Slump
2. How to Make Decisions for Better Returns
3. Should You Sack Your Employer?

A great resource on mind mapping and visual thinking/organisation software:

http://www.mind-mapping.org

You can refine your search based on your operating system.

You might also like these:

1. A Lucky Mind

Many people just don’t think things through before throwing themselves in to something.  You have…

Your inputs:

• 24 hours a day – less now after reading this
• $x
• x energy

Your desired outputs:

• money
• enjoyment (or positive feelings)

Every second of every day uses some of those inputs, and you get guaranteed outputs, but those outputs aren’t always all good.

How are you outputs currently shaping up?

If they’re not too good right now, you might not be making smart decisions.  So listen up…

You can invest your inputs in to either:

• learning something (useful?)
• doing something

Your options:

1. You can choose what you both learn and do to try to INCREASE BOTH your inputs and outputs
2. You can choose to do something else that decreases your inputs and outputs

That’s your free choice, and an opportunity to be smart.

But here’s the thing; your outputs keep coming.  Like the ripple effect when you throw a stone in a lake.  Your outputs come in the short, medium and long term.  That’s the part most people neglect to think about.

You can use your inputs in return for rewarding outputs in the short term, but negative outputs in the longer term.  You’ve got to occasionally.

You can use your inputs for lower returns in the short term, and higher returns long term.  You’ve got to do that too.

You can do things that are costly and are not really that enjoyable.  A lot of people waste their resources doing this because they don’t think.

You can do things that are cheap or free, and are really enjoyable and good for you in the short, medium and long term.  People don’t do enough of that.  They’ve forgotten that it’s an option.

Have a look at the variables I’ve laid out here and think around them.  What things could you do that you’re not currently doing that would increase your inputs AND increase your outputs in the SHORT, MEDIUM AND LONG TERM?  How could you make better decisions?  What’s the next project, event or invite you’re about to get that you might make a smarter decision on?  Maybe you could put your resources elsewhere?

P.S.  One that works well for me is reading plenty of useful business books from the library.  I order new ones in.  I love speed-reading them, I love applying what I learn, they give me more energy, give me ideas to free more of my time, and I love the fact that it brings in more money and enjoyment in the short, medium and long term.

What ideas have you got?

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