Locations Writing a case study is kind of like being Santiago, the aging fisherman in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. It takes days to catch an 18-foot marlin, and then once you manage it, the sharks eat it. (That is, your case study goes through a rigorous editing and review process). But you get some sleep and live to write another case study.
TIME, sweet, precious, glorious time. I would argue that time is the highest sought commodity on Earth. We are each given 24 hours a day regardless of our age, race, or profession. Between Facebook, the latest TV show, and catching up with friends, we all wish we could have more of it.
A couple of months ago, while browsing the airport bookstore, I came across Peter Bregman’s book 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done. Like most people, I often yearn for more hours in the day, so the title alone immediately pulled me to select it for my long flight. By leveraging his engaging and thought-provoking talent for storytelling (as exhibited regularly in his HBR blog posts), Bregman provides a variety of tools, tips, and techniques intended to help us enhance our productivity and maximize our potential.
Reading this book is like having a personal and professional life coach standing right beside you—providing success tips, keeping you focused, and cheering you on along the way. Here are four of my favorite tips from his book that address how we can achieve our goals and use our time more efficiently:
To accomplish the right things, choosing what to ignore is as important as choosing where to focus. There is an endless supply of information at the touch of our smartphones and computers. The world is moving very fast and will only continue to move faster. How do you keep up with the pace of the action around us? If you are like most of us, you stay awake until 4:00am responding to the 400 email messages in your inbox. “Trying to catch it all is counterproductive. The faster the waves come, the more deliberately we need to navigate,” Bregman describes. Arguably, there hasn’t been a time when it has been more important to choose how to spend your time wisely. For instance, consider declining a meeting if it isn’t aligned with your goals and focus. The other tip Bregman suggests is to create an ignore list. We have to-do lists, but how many of us take the time to decide what should be ignored?
Limit your focus to five areas that will make the most difference in your life. Bregman describes his usual experience with buffets: “A few hours later, I was completely stuffed and couldn’t possibly have fit another thing in me.” Since there are so many choices in life, the secret to surviving is to be strategic about how to spend your time. In his instructions, he directs readers to “focus your year on the five areas that will make the most difference in your life. One way to medicate is to decrease your scope and focus on five areas that you deem the most vital.” What are your five?
Plan ahead so that you can fly through your days, successfully maneuvering and moving toward your intended destination. There are times when we have huge obstacles in our way. They may seem daunting, even insurmountable. Bregman describes a time when he was mountain biking and was attempting to ride over a large rock. His approach to riding over this large obstacle was to focus on the hill itself. After many attempts, he kept hitting the launch and falling off his bike. Then finally, “I decided to focus ahead of me—10 feet in front of where I was at any point of time,” Bregman says. He was able to make it over the rock by planning ahead. What could you accomplish if you were to determine your goals, plan the route, and then follow through?
Spend a few minutes at the end of each day thinking about what you learned and with whom you should connect. These minutes are key to making tomorrow even better than today. The “18 Minutes” in the title refers to Bregman’s suggestion of planning out your day, analyzing throughout, and wrapping up with a review of that day’s events. We often are so entrenched in our world and what we need to get done that we don’t always pay attention to our own development—what are we learning, what is working for us. Bregman suggests taking a few minutes for self-analysis before you leave the office. How valuable could it be to pull out your calendar and compare what you set out to accomplish with what was actually produced?
Ask yourself:
1. How did the day go? What success did I experience? What challenges did I endure?
2. What did I learn today? About myself? About others? What do I plan to do differently or the same tomorrow?
3. With whom did I interact? Anyone I need to update? Thank? Ask a question of? Share feedback with?
By tweaking a few of our actions, routines, and focus points, we can accomplish more than we ever imagined. The author Ted W. Engstrom said it well: “Anything that is wasted effort represents wasted time. The best management of our time thus becomes linked inseparably with the best utilization of our efforts.”
I’ve just begun implementing some of Bregman’s techniques, such as focusing on five areas that will make the biggest difference in my life, and I’ve already seen positive results! So, after reading Bregman’s excellent tips, how will you define your focus, remove distractions, and conquer your goals?
I know each and every person that has ever looked for the next job/career has spent time combing through newspapers (for those of you still old fashioned) or on-line sites for that perfect job description. Searching, reading and knowing that thousands of other people are doing the same thing. Taking extra time working on your cover letter, trying to pick the perfect words to standout from all the others. Knowing in your heart you will land in the middle of a huge pile of resumes that are trying to get in front of that same recruiter who holds your future and happiness in hand.
Always left with ‘What else can I do?’
Here is my suggestion… NETWORK. This is such an under realized and underutilized resource. What better way (or easier way for that matter) than to ask someone who knows you and can help to put your resume on the top of ‘that’ pile. Whether you give them a bullet point version of your experience or your full resume, just make sure you give them enough information and insight about you to talk to your skills and the direction of your career. There is nothing worse than getting a referral that has nothing to do with the company or any of the open positions. So remember, this is not to add work for others, it is to streamline your efforts. So don’t leave anyone guessing about what you are good at. …and for goodness sakes, don’t forget your contact information.
I am telling you this really works. After all, I practice what I preach. How do you think I ended up here at Projectline?
I am attending the New Media Expo in Las Vegas for 2 1/2 days of interesting presentations from a variety of speakers. So far I’ve heard from Michael Geoghegan, who produces Disneyland’s podcast, Gary Vaynerchuck, podcaster for Wine Library TV, and Scott Whitney, a professional podcaster.
One common theme through their presentations was to make sure that recordings are spontaneous, passionate, and emotional. Vaynerchuck shoots his video for tv.winelibrary.com in 20 minutes in one take every day without editing. Geoghegan admits that he doesn’t know much about Disneyland. When he learns a new Disneyland fact in his podcast he’s genuinely excited and interested, and it shows up in the podcast. Whitney coaches his clients not to read from a script when he interviews them, and will stop an interview to encourage interviewees to speak from the heart.
In catching up on my RSS feeds over the weekend, I found myself staring at a short New York Times article that suggested a long story left unwritten. How does anyone build a viral campaign that succeeds out of any force other than blind luck?
Believe it or not, there is an equation for just that purpose:
[Be Amazing] + [Act Amazing] = [Get Amazing]
Viral is really that simple – just be worth talking about and do something worth talking about. The only catch is you have to have both to succeed. Notice also that I’ve not mentioned timing anywhere. There is a reason for this: Great campaigns always make their own timing.
So I want to tell a short story about a gal who approached me on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. She said she was in the beginning stages of her career search and thought she would take a chance to see if I had any words of wisdom. (How could I turn that down). Anyway, we scheduled some phone time and I ran her through a series of questions to see how I could possibly offer her direction. After a really impressive conversation, she proceeded to tell me she applied for the Campaign Desk Coordinator position and was not moved forward. Needless to say, I scheduled a face to face interview with her and she just met with the Campaign Desk Team on Friday.
My point to all this… if you really want something, think creatively on how to get yourself closer to the goal. She didn’t just sit back and wait, she thought, she took action, she put herself out there… and now she has a shot that she did not have before. I cannot guarantee that she will get the position, but I will guarantee that if she ever needs advice or a wall to bounce ideas off of, I will be there for her.
WAY TO GO MRM, I take my hat off to you.
Move to an edge. Declare your edge the center. Let the world reorganize around you.
The great misconception of marketplace leadership is that success comes from saddling up and blazing a new path for all to follow. Intuitively, we all know it doesn’t work like that.
People don’t connect with an idea because some commander inspired hearts and minds – they connect with an idea because it makes sense on a fundamental level. Something works better/faster/easier/cheaper. It’s more fair or honest or viable or responsible. It’s more exciting, or makes them more exciting.
Modern leadership is about taking a fresh idea and committing to it – and allowing people to find their way to the best solution. It isn’t push. It’s pull. The greatest successes in this generation haven’t tried to drag a marketplace with them, rather they’ve focused on building mp3 players and social networks and powertrain systems that deliver more value than the status quo.
This truism applies in equal measure to brands and marketers as it does product designs and program developers. Unforgettable work requires establishing a center apart from old Madison Avenue, rethinking the rules for engaging your audience, raising a new flag and allowing people to find their way.
