by Helena Escalante | Celebration, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity, Sales, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 33 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Passion is nothing without persistence
— From The Art of People: 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want by Dave Kerpen
“Dave from Radio Disney! Are you ever going to stop calling me and singing to me?” asked Brenda Fuentes in a playful, upbeat way.
Fuentes was a marketing manager for Burger King. Dave Kerpen, the author of The Art of People, worked back then as a local sales rep for Radio Disney in Boston. Kerpen had been trying to get in touch with Fuentes for a long time, but she seemed elusive. Yet he had been assigned this account as a target, was determined to get in touch with her to gain an understanding of Burger King’s marketing needs and, ultimately, try to sell her radio advertising and promotion.
Since this was during the early days of the Internet and she worked from home, the only way Kerpen could get a hold of Fuentes was by phone. Kerpen could not get a hold of her, as all his calls would go to voicemail. He thought of the many other sales reps leaving messages and realized that “the one thing [he] had that none of those other reps had [was] Radio Disney.”
Kerpen recalls, “For me, Radio Disney wasn’t just a job; I loved the station and its bubble-gum pop music. It was both fun to listen to and safe for the whole family… I decided to get creative in my persistence… Each time I left a voicemail message, I would sing a parody of a Radio Disney hit song into the phone. Eventually, I figured, this creative strategy of leaving her messages to the tunes of popular songs would get her attention and help me stand out from the countless other phone calls and voicemails I assumed she got.”
To make a long story short, after 37 calls (!) Fuentes finally picked up the phone. “But this wasn’t your average opening sales call. After all, she already knew [Kerpen] pretty well from all those voicemails.” Now it was his time to get to know her and listen to her needs and see how Radio Disney could help Burger King market itself.
It worked. One week later Kerpen had a signed agreement for over $50,000 in revenue. And what’s more, to this day, he still has a great working relationship with Fuentes.
Were there times when Kerpen felt like giving up? Of course! He says he felt dejected and demoralized many times, and wondered if he was wasting his time, not to mention feeling embarrassed when his colleagues made fun of him for his silly songs. But he refused to give up on Fuentes and Burger King, and adopted a persistent approach in a creative way that was memorable and fun.
Kerpen points out, “As it turns out, one of the biggest differentiators between those who successfully influence others and those who don’t is persistence. Many people talk about passion, and of course passion for one’s idea, product or belief is important, but many people have passion. Far more people have passion than have persistence… persistence is what makes the difference.”
And he goes on to say, “Persistence is defined as ‘firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.’ In other words, when the going gets tough, you keep trying.”
“Persistence is trying until you get what you want or go down swinging. Persistence is continuing until you are certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s time to move on and collect the lessons from the failure. Persistence is trying until you drop. Persistence is thirty-seven phone calls.” – Dave Kerpen
ACTION
Note: Both actions below come directly from Kerpen’s book.
TODAY: “Write down something that you really want from someone but that won’t be easy to get. [Who would you like to meet more than anyone? What client would you like to land? What business idol would you like to have lunch with?] Use your passion and your creativity to come up with a plan to pursue this person doggedly in an inventive, original way.”
FUTURE: “Put your plan into action and be persistent. Make as many attempts as it takes to make this vision a reality.”
How about sharing this post with someone you know whose persistence you admire? Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Goals, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 21 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Your external brain
— From a mash-up of two books: Less Doing, More Living: Make Everything in Life Easier by Ari Meisel, and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
“Using your memory to store everything is stressful and unreliable,” says Ari Meisel, productivity guru, in his book Less Doing, More Living. He points out, rightly, that trying to hold all thoughts in our head is inefficient. “The problem with trying to remember everything is that in doing so, you run out of space in your head to actually think about the task at hand. What’s worse, it doesn’t always work.”
How many times have we made an effort to remember something and we still forgot? I’m so guilty of this: I know I tied that string around my finger to remember something, and later I couldn’t remember what that something was… I rest my case.
Enter the external brain. “It stores everything reliably, offers instant access, and frees your mind for more interesting work,” says Meisel.
So, where do I line up to get one of these external brains??!
We all have it at our disposal and it’s more low-tech than you can imagine: “The heart [mind?] of the external brain is note-taking. If an idea is in your head, get it out… we have to create idea flow for good ideas to come out… When you let your ideas flow freely, you get more ideas, and that leads to more good ideas.”
You’ve heard me quote Seth Godin before as saying, “You can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.” This is exactly how we make that happen. Meisel says the same thing: “Not all ideas are good—out of ten ideas, you may have eight that are bad or irrelevant. But even bad ideas can lead to good ideas. You want to get them out of your head not only because they may be blocking a good idea from coming out, but also because they may come together with some of your other ideas to make a good idea.”
Meisel suggests finding a great tool or set of tools that enable you to capture the info and ideas outside of your head. His favorite app is Evernote. And if you are like most of us who get awesome ideas in the shower, he recommends AquaNotes (water-proof notepad).
On the other hand, in his bestselling book Getting Things Done, productivity guru David Allen, suggests—even for the most high-tech oriented among us—a stack of plain paper to capture each thought in its own sheet or card. Allen recommends:
Write out each thought, each idea, each project or thing that has your attention, on a separate sheet of paper. You could make one long list on a pad, or in some digital application, but… there is a discipline required to initially to stay focused on one item at a time as you process it. So giving each thought its own placeholder, as trivial as it might seem, makes it that much easier.
Go for quantity. It’s much better to overdo this process than to risk missing something. You can toss the junk later. Your first idea may be “Implement global climate change,” and then you’ll think, “I need cat food!” Grab them all. Don’t be surprised if you discover you’ve created quite a stack of paper during this procedure.
According to Allen, “It will probably take you between twenty minutes and an hour to clear your head onto separate notes.” And as you go through this exercise, “You’ll find that things will tend to occur to you in somewhat random fashion—little things, big things, personal things, professional things, in no particular order.” To help you clear your head, Allen has put together a wonderful Incompletion Triggers List that you can review to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything. Also, you can listen to this podcast where Allen guides you through what he calls a mind sweep session to put down, in paper, what is now occupying space in your head.
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” – David Allen
Create your external brain and get those ideas flowing!
ACTION
TODAY: Take some time to figure out the “external brain” system that will work best for you, and then go through David Allen’s list or mind sweeping exercise to get everything out of your mind.
FUTURE: Once you have created a stack of notes, start prioritizing and processing each one based on your goals. You’ll likely see that some are not all that important, and some others become great ideas that you definitely want to act upon. What is the next action that you need to take? Determine it and take said action (it may take a while to get through all, but keep pushing through). It’s important to take this step because if you don’t do anything, the items from the list “will creep back into your consciousness, since your mind would know you weren’t dealing with [them],” says Allen. If there is no next action to take, then he suggests, trash the item, incubate it, or file it as reference material. That will be your action and your mind will now be unstuck and free to produce more ideas.
Please share the external brain with someone else! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resolutions, Time, Tools, Willpower
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 1
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 2
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 3
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 4
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 5
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 46 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 6
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
We’ve come to the end of this miniseries on how to find a minimum of 5 extra hours per week based on the recommendations of the book Learning to Lead. I hope you have learned a lot of different ways that will help you make the most of your time emergency, that way you’ll be able to crush it when you decide to go into monk mode!
Let’s look at the last 3 concepts from Fred Smith’s 20-point checklist:
18. Put curiosity on hold. This is an important one. Smith emphasizes that we are strapped for time we must swallow curiosity and not ask questions. He says, “I make statements [instead]. Normally in good human relations we ask questions. But if we want to save time, we don’t. If we ask, ‘How’s your mother-in-law?’ it often takes some time to hear the whole sad story. It’s just as warm to say, ‘Hey, I’m glad to see you,’ and keep going… [Or if] I see a group in the hallway… and I enter the conversation, I’ll stay and talk—and there goes my time… Curiosity costs a lot of time.”
19. Stay out of sight. The author advises to lay low: “I try to curb my exposure during a time of emergency. If I stay out of people’s sight, I don’t have to offend them with my hurry.” Work out of home fully or partially if you can for this period of time, or stay out of sight in whatever way works best for you.
20. Leave meetings first. The author relays having fun with many an executive on this point. He says, “I tell them the most important person in the meeting leaves it first. Once I finish my speech, that remark empties the hall faster than anything I’ve used before.” And this is actually true: “The most productive people leave a meeting first. They don’t stand around shaking hands and swapping stories… People hang around a meeting to be liked, not to accomplish anything. The business is done; only the social frills are left. […] Busy people using a time battle plan can’t afford the leisure.’
And there you have it. Now you have the full 20-point checklist to create a battle plan if you ever decide to declare a time emergency. As good as it sounds, the author warns us again, “This plan is not at all about how to speed up. [You] are already going fast enough. What I’m getting at is how to gain some time… you ought to use part of it for loafing. If you’re already panicky, harried, frantic and worn out from the pressure, don’t spend your new time doing more work, or you’ll be right back in the same problem. […] If every time you get an hour you fill it up, you’ll have no concept of what a normal lifestyle is.”
As far as how to use our time, Smith shares some wise advice, “we need to move beyond fighting battles, losing them, fighting again, losing again, and fighting once more. We must move to a new way of life. Waging a battle is certainly better than not winning at all. But battles remain second-best to achieving a lifestyle where we stop worrying about time control… I’ve provided a battle plan. It will work in a pinch. How much better to win the war.”
“Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.” – Thomas J. Watson
I hope you enjoyed this miniseries and learned a lot. What was your biggest takeaway? Let me know in the comments here.
ACTION
TODAY: As you put in place these 20 points for going into monk mode, don’t forget the importance of loafing, as the author says. Resting, exercising and spending time with your loved ones are all important activities, make sure you include them in your newfound hours.
FUTURE: As you go through this time emergency mode over the next few weeks, keep a list of the lessons you learn. At the end of the period review it. Using the war analogy of the author, I’m sure this list will be helpful to point you in the direction of how you can win the war as opposed to focusing on fighting a battle again and again.
Know someone who could use an additional 5 hours per week during a time emergency? Please share this post or the entire miniseries with that person. Thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resolutions, Time, Tools, Willpower
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 1
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 2
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 3
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 4
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 6
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 6 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 5
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
Good morning! How is your time crunch coming along? I hope you are indeed finding/making additional time. So far the points in this miniseries from Fred Smith’s list have focused mainly on external situations or dealing with others. But what about our internal selves and our outcomes? This is as important—if not more—than anything else we’ve seen so far.
Let’s look at how to deal with our energy, our work, and our mind when we are in a time emergency so that we can, optimally, find a minimum of 5 extra hours each week.
14. Protect personal energy. Becoming stressed and pressured for time cuts down energy and alertness, says Smith. “Since I work so much more efficiently when alert, I must protect my energy when time is scarce [so that effectiveness doesn’t suffer].” He emphasizes the importance of sleep, and also says, “I find it very important during such a time to eat less and exercise more.” In terms of the workload, Smith reminds himself, “not to try to accomplish more by overworking. What I can do in fifteen hours is not three times what I can accomplish in five.” Since a person can only have a certain number of productive hours during any given day, it’s important to make them count.
15. Schedule work according to productive hours. Each one of us knows when our most productive and effective hours are (check this miniseries to create the right environment to Be Awesomely Effective). Schedule your most creative and productive things for those hours. You’ll get the most important projects accomplished, and the work you get done will be much more than during the rest of the day.
Want to know when your peak time is? Ari Meisel, productivity guru and author of The Art of Less Doing, has a fantastic (and free!) app for smartphones. It’s called Less Doing Peak Time. Backed by science, Meisel designed it in a way that takes less than a minute every time you tap on it, and over the course of a week, you tap at different times and the app will let you know the window of time when you are at your most productive. Brilliant! (And so easy too!)
16. Compile a list of second-wind jobs. These are jobs that actually refresh you, pull you out of a lull and give you an energy boost or bring about a second wind, hence the name. Smith explains, “Second-wind jobs kill downtime and get me going. I like to do something exciting that I’ve really been waiting to work on… [These jobs] increase my utilization of time.”
17. Discipline self-talk. The author points out that all of us talk to ourselves. The important thing—especially during an emergency—is to discipline the details, and this includes our own self-talk, to focus on achieving the outcome we want. Smith relays an example: “Going to a meeting, I say to myself, What do I want to come out of the meeting with? It’s clear in my mind if I have talked it over with myself. I walk into the meeting with my agenda set and don’t waste time.”
Years ago, my friend Patti DeNucci, author of The Intentional Networker (we will see some ideas from that book in here soon), taught me the power of setting intentions before going into meetings, events, etc. Just as Smith asks above, as you are planning to go to an event/meeting, etc., ask yourself what your reason is for attending and set an intention. You will now have a purpose to be there and to work deliberately in making it happen. This is a great practice, not just for time crunches. Also, as you are approaching your entrance to the venue or meeting/conference room, remind yourself of your intention and you will be focused the whole time on accomplishing it before you leave. Try it out, it works wonders — thanks, Patti!
Come back tomorrow for the last part of this miniseries. We will learn, among other things, why it’s important to leave meetings first.
ACTION
TODAY: Attending a meeting? Going to an event? Having a conference call or just a plain business phone call? Set your intention. What do you want to get out of it? Then focus your time on making it happen. It always works (as long as it’s a good intention for all involved, of course!).
FUTURE: Make sure that you are taking appropriate care of your energy, stress and sleep over the next weeks while you are in monk mode. Go back to this miniseries on how to create 2 awesome hours of work every day. This will help you enormously to get through your time crunch and crush your goals effectively.
Know someone who could use an additional 5 hours per week during a time emergency? Please share this post with that person. Thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resources, Time, Tools, Willpower
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 1
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 2
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 3
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 5
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 6
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 18 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 4
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
How is monk mode going? Are you making progress towards your 5 extra hours per week? I hope so!
I also hope that, as I share these ideas with you in this miniseries, you begin to see why it makes sense to apply them only when you are in a time crunch. Albeit, there are some points that I believe can be applied also at other times to make our work much more efficient, such as #11 below.
I’ll let you select your favorites from this installment of the 20-point checklist from Fred Smith’s book Learning to Lead. Happy monk mode!
9. Know your limitations. You do not have to meet with everybody that asks to see you. Smith tells a story of a person who wanted to go by and talk to him. Since he was busy, he asked, “What do you want to see me about?” And upon hearing the response, Smith realized he could not help him and did not see him. “I didn’t need to sit down and talk to him thirty minutes, and then disappoint him. I told him very quickly by phone, without being brutal.” Smith explains, “When I’m pressed for time I must pinpoint the counseling situations where I can uniquely help and then push the others to someone else. But a lot of times, we will see someone out of curiosity… just to find out the story.” Don’t give in to curiosity. Recognize you’re pressed for time and know your limitations.
10. Ask permission to say no. This is a brilliant approach if you’re concerned you’ll disappoint or seem rude by saying no. Smith explains, “When I need to decline something, I want to say no as simply and graciously as I can. When I ask for permission to decline, people generally give it to me. I don’t say ‘If you only knew how busy I am, you wouldn’t ask!’ I just say, ‘Let me ask a favor. May I say no?’ […] I handle it once, cleanly and clearly, and save a lot of time that way.”
11. Distinguish between information and relation. This book was written in 1986 when there was no email, chat, text messages, social media, etc., but the approach Smith mentions applies perfectly to today’s digital communications too. “Those who say to answer every letter when you receive it are missing a very important point. Mail and phone calls come in two kinds: information and relation. When I divide them up, I find most of my mail and calls are information. I can handle them once. But I don’t want my habit to cause me to handle relational things that way.” Smith says he takes care of providing the information that is required once, as it can be given at that point or later, and thus he avoids handling informational requests twice. However, if someone asks a personal question, he avoids saying the first thing that comes to mind: “I ask myself, How will this strike this person?” And given that this approach requires more time and energy to think about, he suggests postponing all relational questions until after your emergency period if you can.
12. Utilize [an assistant] for informational things. In today’s world of automation and optimization, you can use the help of an assistant. Be it an electronic device, an online program, a website, a Virtual Assistant that works remotely, or a person who works next to you, let them handle all requests for information.
13. Deal only with the “driving wheels.” Smith explains, “Every organization has some people whose thinking and action control everyone else’s thinking and action. In order to save time during a period of emergency, I only deal with these driving wheels. They may not be the title people. But if we know our organizations, we can identify the driving wheels and the people I call the ‘idling gears.’ […] If I’m in a hurry, I spend time only with the people who make things happen, who form the opinions. I put the other relationships on hold for a while.”
Come back tomorrow for another installment of this 20-point checklist where you will learn about creating a list that can help you make the most of your downtime during this crunch.
ACTION
TODAY: Think of a time in the past when you met with someone out of curiosity. Now think of the time when you met with someone for a specific purpose. Be aware of that part of you that gives in to curiosity so that, during this period, you are not tempted by it.
FUTURE: As you are moving through this period of time emergency, think about getting assistance for those things that you do that someone else could do, e.g., handle the requests for information. Give that some thought and implement the way it works best for you.
Know someone who could use an additional 5 hours per week during a time emergency? Please share this post with that person. Thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resources, Time, Tools, Willpower
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 1
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 2
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 4
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 5
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 6
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 0 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 3
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
So far, In Parts 1 and 2 of this miniseries, we’ve looked at some important basics, such as letting people know that they’ll be seeing less of you for a certain time, cleaning your desk, eliminating the news, being selective on our reading materials and waking up a bit earlier. Today we are going to continue looking at the next installment in Fred Smith’s 20-point checklist as it appears in his book Learning to Lead.
6. Work on the majors only. “Some people have the unfortunate habit—and it is a habit—of listing everything that they have to do as if it were equal with all the others. […] Not everything in life is of equal importance… make a hierarchy of priorities to keep [you] from allowing emergencies to top the list. […] Write down the two, three or four major things [you] simply cannot slight, and be sure only to work on them. These are [your] current majors, the items of greatest importance today. Everything else has to be pushed aside to work on the majors.”
As it relates to this point, on this post, Greg McKeown (author of Essentialism) emphasizes two things:
(a) The idea that we can do all or have it all is a damaging myth because “it results in stressed people trying to cram yet more activities into their already overscheduled lives.”
(b) Prioritizing (or focusing on the majors only) doesn’t mean just saying no. It entails “purposefully, deliberately and strategically eliminating the non-essentials, and not just getting rid of the obvious time wasters, but cutting out some really good opportunities as well.”
Be careful as you work on the majors, as some decisions will be very hard to make and require lots of careful thinking, especially when the opportunity in front of you is very attractive. Try to postpone those opportunities for later, when you are done with your emergency period.
7. Make no radical changes. “The object of the battle plan is to pick up time, not to change.” Since radical shifts require much time to implement, Smith advises against them: “I wouldn’t try to review my habits for spending time. These are my reflexes, and it takes too much effort to change them. I wouldn’t attempt to rework the organization or correct others’ mistakes or get people mad at me and have to go back and apologize. I call these kinds of things ‘rework.’ I save the rework for the general war and concentrate on winning the present battle.”
8. Avoid the wood-hay-and-stubble activities. “Things that flatter [your] ego, satisfy [your] human ambition, make [you] liked—social affairs—are wood, hay, and stubble. If [you] have time for them, they’re perfectly all right… [but] they can drain a lot of time.” Smith suggests making a list of the meetings from which you can stay away comfortably. Lunch with [an organization] every time it meets is not mandatory as you can catch another of those lunches in the future. Under emergency mode, Smith points out he might go into a meeting and say, “Folks, I’m pressed for time. I’m going to have to ask your indulgence. Give me 15 minutes to cover my subjects. You talk them out after I’m gone and then write a memo on what our plan should be.” But he reminds us to do this only during an emergency crunch. “They might let me do it for as long as six weeks, but I would be neglecting my responsibilities if I tried every time.” So just determine what is wood, hay, and stubble for now and avoid it during this period.
Come back tomorrow to read the next installment in Smith’s list on finding 5 extra hours. You’ll learn why dealing only with the “driving wheels” is important during this period. Are you enjoying this miniseries? Please let me know in the comments here.
ACTION
TODAY: Make your hierarchy of priorities and focus on working on your majors.
FUTURE: As great opportunities present themselves during this period, you’ll be tempted to say yes. Think whether they are essential and contribute to your goal during this time crunch or take you away from it. If they take you away from it, politely decline (you’ll learn a great way to do this tomorrow!) or, if possible, postpone doing them until the time you are out of monk mode. Write these opportunities down in a piece of paper and put them in the same box with your unnecessary reading. Once you are done with your emergency period and come back up for air, you can examine them and decide what to do about them.
Know someone who could use an additional 5 hours per week during a time emergency? Please share this post with that person. Thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
