The most effective development tool you’ll ever use is a simple one: a list.
Part one of this post gave you a basic strategy for multiple list building designed to help you get out of the ineffective list building habit. In this second part, I will show you the lists that I personally keep everyday. My lists four main lists keep me on track for my progress, and give me clues to when I’m not progressing like I should so, so that I can fix my focus. I have owned a PDA or smart phone since college, so I have become accustomed to keeping my lists with me for instant review or editing for almost 20 years.
My first list is what I call my Daily Journal. This list is literally a place to jot down everything that I do throughout my day from the moment I wake up to the time I turn out the lights to go to sleep. My Daily Journal allows me to figure out exactly what I have accomplished on days when I know I have worked hard, but end up tired and frustrated because there were no obvious returns from my efforts. It also helps me keep up with the progress of my personal and my professional goals, along with keeping a eye on my health with notes for checking my blood sugar, the meals and snacks I eat, and whatever exercise I can squeeze in. I even use my Daily Journal to help compile a weekly review document of myself I call my Weekly Wrap-Up Log (which is why I have found the electronic method of keeping a journal much easier that carrying and recording in a paper bound journal, despite my love for Moleskine notebooks).
My second list is a basic listing I create every night of things I need to work on the next day, which I call my Daily Dozens. I came up with the name as I was working on creating a product on making lists, and thought it sounded catchy, and that ten spots were never really enough on my personal list. In fact, twelve spots is often not enough, as I’ll find I have accomplished additional things that happened to spring up on me throughout the course of a work day that turn out to be fairly important. Because of this, I have the right to add to this list as many more tasks completed throughout the day as I choose (normally no more that 16). Throughout the day, I mark off the tasks I have worked on with significant progress (but not necessarily completed). This list shows me my task priorities as I say they are, and ultimately what I actually focused on completing.
My third list is my 30 Minutes A Day Log. I created a document that covers the Four P’s of Life Management, with the key to devote at least 30 minutes a day to each P: TO PLAN, TO PLAY, TO PONDER, and TO PAUSE. It is with this log that I keep track of how well I am accomplishing my progress in life management, where some days are much better than others.
My forth list is what I call my Running Notepad, and it doesn’t fall in line with the normal concepts of lists. My Running Notepad is just a file that I use to put down any random idea that pops into my head that I think I will be able to do something with later. I have been carrying little notebooks for ideas since middle school, and the process just got a little more organized (and easier to transcribe) when I started doing more note taking in my PDAs and smart phones. I also use a service called Jott that allows me to leave a verbal note that gets transcribed for me to move into my Running Notepad file if my hands are not available. I am also trying to get the hang of the new Google Voice for recording and transcribing important phone interviews.
The most effective development tool you’ll ever use is a simple one: a list.
While the concept and the proper use of a list are for most people fairly basic, there are some who have taken the art of list building and have turned themselves in the Mozarts and Picassos of productivity and effectiveness. But the majority of us just scribble down a bunch of things and then easily forgets the reason for the list, or the list completely.
In part one of this post, I will show you a basic strategy for multiple list building that should help you get out of the ineffective list building habit. Part two will go in depth into the personal lists that I keep everyday that help me monitor my progress, or can at least alert me when progress is not being made.
Step one is to have a place of prominence to place your list once you’ve created it. Your desk is a fine spot for putting your list…if you don’t allow stuff to pile up on your desk and cover your list. Your list needs to live in a place where you will constantly have access to it. If your kitchen is a high traffic area for you, place it on the refrigerator. If your bedroom is your personal haven, put up a cork board or dry erase board so that you can put your list there. If you carry a smart phone, you can have your list always at your fingertips by keeping up with it in note form on your phone.
Step two is to name your list. Title your list so that it has a purpose (grocery list, tasks for work, Christmas gifts, steps for global domination, etc.) and only put items on the list that fit into that category. If you have a need or a task that doesn’t fit on the list you are currently building, figure out what purpose that need or task has, and make a new list with a new title that fits that purpose.
Step three is to limit your list. While the things you need to do may seem limitless, your capacity to get them done is limited by time, energy, and whatever resources you actually have available to you. Force a number on yourself to stop listing, and if you have more items then slots, eliminate the least important items. When you clear off enough items to make space on a particular list, add the missing items to the list.
I’ve been talking to a lot of my friends who are stagehands lately, and as the summer concerts are beginning to be planed, and my mind got caught up in thinking about goals and planning.
When a band sets up a stage for a performance, they have to scout out the venue, determine their basic wants and needs for a show, figure out if the venue can actually allow them to do some cool extra things (more lights, split level stages, pyro, whatever), and then determine what the end result should be. If the band is comfortable with themselves and who they will be performing with, they know how well they move together on stage, and can easily set up a performance and tear down for a quick getaway once they know how much room you have to work with.
Take this to your work team or even personal goal planning. Think about yourself and the teams you work with, and take a closer look at the current level of talent in contrast to the limitations that have placed on you (budgets, time, authority, priority). Your limits make up the size of your venue, and whether it is the equivalent of a small club or outdoor stadium. That sets you up to gage the size of stage you can manage in the space, how much equipment and what type of equipment you can allow on stage, and the size of a crowd you have to pull into the venue to make your performance pay off. Your bosses may see a lot of potential for crowded theater shows, or they might not think your ready to come out of the garage. You’ve got to figure out what venue they’re trying to book you in before you try to negotiate a bigger room and more of the door money.
And you have to be especially honest about the level of talent you are currently working with. You can argue about the Beatles being the greatest band of all time, but they didn’t begin the British Invasion a few months after they formed. They spent years learning themselves and their audiences, and they started with humble beginning of playing in some of the smaller and more seamier dives all over Europe. They had designs on sellout arena crowds early in their career...but they to build themselves up to reaching their superstar status. And they had to build smaller steps and occupy smaller stages along the way until they could demand the biggest and the best. Don’t get fooled by your potential. Let your potential be your booking agent to bigger gigs in a timely manner.
Your first challenge is to see the venue for what it is, and plan the biggest possible stage and grandest show setup you can imagine for it. That becomes your target goal, and their is nothing wrong with taking that goal to an insane extreme. You might not sell out Madison Square Garden, but you’ll never come close if you don’t keep a few open dates in case the opportunity just happens to pop up.
Your second challenge, and what is the real hard part, is to be consistent in building the steps to that bigger stage, and not hope that talent or luck will allow you to leap from a smaller stage without the proper support. Having a team that is willing to do what it takes to sell out the Garden is great. Having a team that has the talent to pull off the show is wonderful. Having the team that has worked its way up, step by step, to grow its talent and fan base to sell out the show is what you really want. That is something special.
I’ve worked with people who have looked at the big stage and shied away from it, despite great talent, and chosen to stay in the smaller venues or even get out of the business altogether because of the time and expectations of people who perform on the grand level. More frustrating are the people I’ve worked with who you have looked at the stage we are working on and the steps we had built so far, take a chainsaw to them, set them on fire, and then drive over the whole thing with a steamroller. Then, they would stand on top on the ashes and complain that were not building an even bigger stage than the one we had previously destroyed. I have worked with far too many of the latter types of people than I care to think about, because it drains my personal energy when I have to think about the time and energy wasted in the build up. But each experience is a learning experience that you have to take something good away from.
While the drawbacks of getting sucked into reading seemingly random inputs from seemingly random people you follow on Twitter are pretty obvious, the possibilities for focused input, or even a true focus group, are amazing.
When I was an Acquisitions Officer in the Air Force, I worked for about 8 months on a program that processed security clearances and was given a team to work all the data on how fast the process was going, and presented daily metrics to the government agency in charge of the program. The words my boss told me when he gave me the duties, “The guy who reports the metrics can prove just about anything he wanted to,” turned out to be so truthful it was a little frightening.
The experience has made me a numbers and info junky on par with die hard rotisserie baseball geeks. And Twitter is filling that addiction to information like no other analytic tools ever has.
The magic is in its mission statement, a chance for people around the world to instantly share with others what they are doing. It also gives you the chance to look into the minds of those same millions of people, and see what they are doing, thinking, buying, or dissing.
This power is easily seen in the quick Twitter chatter scene during big television events as people who are looking to be a part of the mass experiences fire off snarky comments as an organic commentary track. This power has been most prominent in watching the ups and downs during the 2008 presidential election and the early days of the Obama Presidential Administration.
As a metrics nut, I like to lot watch the Twitter feeds during big events on TV, like new episodes of 24 and live performance shows nights on American Idol. But the real fun has come during President Obama’s television news conferences. Especially the ones that delay prime time television. Instant praise, instant hate, and instant color commentary is available to anyone willing to scroll thought a few pages of tweets.
Any marketer or sales manager can do a Twitter topic search on their company and find out exactly what is being said exactly when people are thinking about it. That was a good thing for the marketing team at Skittles that decided to make their Twitter search page the actual corporate product website, and a bad thing for Motrin after the Motrin moms took to blogosphere over a commercial that didn’t go over so well with them.
Monitoring your Twitter conversation does give you lots of insight into the thoughts of your brand or product. Just be ready to dismiss some of the more silly or snarky comments. After all, we are still talking about people using the anonymousness of the internet (even if it’s getting harder and harder to stay anonymous) to be a little to open and honest, with little regard of the consequences of the words going out to the world.
The fourth P is finding 30 minutes a day TO PAUSE. Time to relaxing and unwind from the stresses of the past day so that you can prepare for a fresh one, also the proper time for reflection and putting it down on paper. Whether you call it meditation, prayer, or just finding a way to get out of your own head, the time you spend in a PAUSE from the everyday world will help you separate the important things worth having to worry about from the more mundane life aspects not worth the effort. You’re likely to learn that your life is unnaturally controlled by the more mundane items.
The third P is finding 30 minutes a day TO PONDER. Time spent reading, learning, and researching to promote mental growth. Your PONDER time is the equivalent of your brain signing up for a mental gym membership and seeing if it will take full advantage. With enough time, you can work through a solution to just about any problem that you find yourself facing.
I love it when I have a spare 10-15 minutes to sit around and fool with Twitter (where you can follow my seemingly random muses and rants at http://twitter.com/djazzycool1, and blog specific updates at http://twitter.com/fastforwardlife). A quick explanation for those of you who haven’tcomeacrossallthepress on the micro-blogging service, Twitter ‘purpose’ is to answer the question, “What are you doing right now,” and share that answer with a few thousand followers instantly, and allowing those followers to potentially share that answer with the millions that have signed up for the service. Twitter has allowed me the chance to get back into the chat-room experience minus the hassle of chat-room moderation. In the past week I was able to have sustained conversations on the TV show 24, Terrell Owens’ signing with the Buffalo Bills, the Obama stimulus plan, and coffee. In any spare 10-15 minutes I can see what is going on in the lives of thousands of real friends, friends I’ve only met on the internet, and other random people (and more than a few celebrities) who are interesting, entertaining, or informative.
But there is always a con to every pro, and my con for Twitter is that since I am ease dropping with permission on a lot of diverse conversation, I get sucked into skimming through a lot of promotional garbage at times. I ironically also contribute to that garbage with various completely useless random thoughts of my own (@djazzycool1 is threatening to turn on the air conditioner) along with blatant blog promotions. Sure, all those who receive my information have given me permission to blab as much as I want to type. And I have given the same permission to all that I follow to push whatever they want my way in 140 characters or less. I can stop following any overly chatty personality with a few mouse clicks, and plenty of people that get tired of me stop following me as well.
It is only when Twitter is the only means of communication that I have with people, and for some people it truly is, completely dropping a follower becomes a problem. That is the basis for the hate part I have with social media. Other issues:
- Back in the day when I though it might be cool if people would fill out there profiles Yahoo! so that it would be easier to communicate, nobody wanted all that personal information just floating on a server somewhere in California. Now, the only what I communicate with some old friends is thought social networking sites.
- A year ago I asked a friend who was going through a rough path how she was doing. She told me to check out her MySpace status. She said this as she was standing right in front of me.
- I talk to my teenage cousins through MySpace and text messages, and since they only talk/type in text speak, I have no idea what they are saying most of the time.
- I have held hour long conversation with people sitting next to me in IM spaces because it was more convenient.
And so on and so forth. I’m sure you have your own loves and hates with communicating in the realm of social media. But for all of the drawbacks that come with being attached with living on the internet, the positives outweigh the negatives by leaps and bounds.
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Friend Feed, LinkedIn, and other online connectivity services allow the average person a chance to connect to every single one of the over 6 billion people on the planet. You can ask a question and get answers from experts almost instantly. And the reach of businesses large or small, even with the amount of exploitation that is used, makes it less of a necessary evil and more of a daily annoyance or chore
Which is a long winded way to bring us to the title: promoting versus annoying. You wouldn’t think of driving around your neighborhood, knocking on every door, and announcing that Tuesday is tuna fish day for lunch. But you can do that in your online neighborhood. In fact, it might even be encourage as a way to foster a more community feel.
You would also be hesitant to go door-to-door selling your wares in today’s society. But inbox-to-inbox, as long as you have permission and are not overly annoying, is perfectly acceptable.
But there has to be balance. Unless you’re an entertainer or comedian, you can’t get by with just dropping funny quips. Unless you have the greatest product in the world or truly don’t care home many people you annoy to make a sale, you can’t just pitch links to your affiliate marketing programs.
It is okay to be a citizen, salesman, and statesman to various degrees within your online social networks. But just like in real life, a message can get really old and offensive a lot quicker that one may suspect. Expect to lose a follower or friend occasionally for various reasons, but try not to give them your excessive status yapping as a reason.
A lesson you learn pretty quickly in the military is that when the people who are supposed to take care of you take care of you, you focus on the results achieved and not the method used, because sometime you really don’t want to know.
I picked that up as a young Air Force officer, and was blessed to have dedicated staff of enlisted airmen and civilians that knew how to get things done and how to keep me out of trouble. I just had to give them the outcome preferred, a list of resources I knew I had available, and a timeline I wanted to pursue. Then, I could just sit back and let the experts at their jobs do their jobs the best way they knew how. I was really blessed early on to have teams that rarely failed, noting that that they actually overachieved about 85 of the time.
When I took me first position that allowed me to really take point on projects, I got a reinforcement of the basic tenants of ‘I got it done, but don’t ask me how.’ I now had a general presenting me his plans that he wanted executed, along and the desired outcome. His staff, knowing the general, stressed the importance of following his plans. Twice I follow the general’s plans for a project given to me, and presented the results that were well below the expected level of results. The first time the plan was blown off, but the second time, the general asked me why I would follow such a stupid plan in the first place. As tactfully as possible, I let the general know that I was given the rough parameters that I had to follow, although I really wanted to say he had given me the stupid idea that I knew wasn’t going to work, but was told has to be followed anyway.
From that point on, I stopped listening to ‘orders’ and starting listening for ‘outcome.’ Whenever that general offered up a plan, I ignored the plan completely, but I made sure that what the general said he wanted and what the troops in the field were expecting were one in the same, and deliverd that. I would put a plan into play that was solid, and ensured that I had over performed on the task when it was time to present. And I always gave the general credit for ‘his director in the formation of our plan of attack.’
I was able to impress myself with the ability make things happen when left to my own devices, and learned quickly to respect the output you can receive from subordinates when you give them a mission and then just let them achieve it with constantly meddling.
Since leaving the military, I have worked for several different managers, some good and bad. I am constantly amazed by managers who push a personal agenda that from the outside looks like a losing campaign. Their insistence on having high achievers do it ‘their way’ quickly becomes a problem, and the projects and tasks almost always come up as failures. And if the manager is spiteful, they’ll usually destroy the moral of the high achiever for failing to live up to some loftfull standard, even thought that standard is wholly unachievable, and should be blatantly obvious to most. If the manager is just foolish, the high achiever will usually ignore that person until they are replaced, or just leave the company to suffer their own fate without him.
If you’re a manager, do yourself a favor. Give your veterans and high achievers their assignments and then back away and let them do amazing work for you. Give your rookies a little guidance and instruction on a way to get their work done that works, but assure them if they find a better process, give it a try.
The second P is finding 30 minutes a day TO PLAY. Time spent exercising with some level of intensity to improve your daily energy levels and overall health. Your PLAY time will ensure you have the strength and stamina to stand up to the rigors of your day, and extend your life to allow you the chance to live that life to the fullest.
Finding Time To Plan: The Four P’s Of Life Management Part 1
You are looking for a way to gain control over your life.
The answer lies in finding the time everyday to devote to the Four P’s of Life Management. The key is devote at least 30 minutes a day to each P.
The first P is finding 30 minutes a day TO PLAN. Time spent evaluating the days and actions that have already past, and planning and looking ahead toward the future. Your PLAN time will help you build the basics of a road map to future success.
Simple Life Coaching: Your Four Step Guide To Success
While I would never suggest that the route to full and lasting success can be obtained by the magic of the following four steps, the magic in the steps can go a long way of helping you to focus on your desired goal.
Step 1: Ask yourself what you truly want to be or achieve.
Step 2: When you wake up every morning, ask yourself if you have become what you wanted to be or have achieved what you wanted to achieve.
Step 3: If the answer is no, immediately come up with at least one thing you can do in the next 12 hours to get you closer to what you want to be or achieve.
Step 4: At the end of your day, review what you have done that day to help you become what you wanted to be or have achieved what you wanted to achieve.
From weight loss to success in multi-level marketing, anyone not asking themselves the simple question of what they actually want to achieve, and then not coming up with some sort of plan and holding themselves accountable to it can never expect to really make it.
One of early members of child was wanting to be President of the United States. Then, I wanted to be President of NBC. Then a DJ. Then a center for the Atlanta Hawks. Somewhere along the way I ended up going to college to be study to be an engineer, and ended up being an Air Force Acquisitions Officer, to give it all up to become a DJ.
Never once did the thought of becoming a fireman cross my mind. But that is main role with my company, despite every effort I take to make it otherwise. This becomes more apparent every time I take a true day off like I did Tuesday...then came back to mass insanity of half-projects yesterday...which lead to me working about 6 hours (so far) on work related project on this supposed day off...and will drive probably drive me insane as I am slated to take off every Tuesday and Thursday in the month of December to burn my vacation days.
Because the real reason I hate taking the day off and being to myself: I can effectively schedule a productive day for myself. I can also be flexible enough for interruptions and emergencies. In fact, I found I could make a list of things to do for the day, and then could chose to blow off every activity on the entire list, and would have found some way to accomplish something.
At work, I often begin with a long list of things to get done, and find myself quickly confronted with various ‘emergencies’ that take me away from my list that after completion didn’t pan out to be exactly emergencies. And I always end the day by leaving work late, and always leaving work frustrated from not making any actual progress in the job.
Unfortunately, I can not change my fate at work (oh, have I tried...) at this moment, and as I choose to continue showing up every morning, I am stuck with the weary and tireless (yes, I know they mean the same thing) life of a fireman, keeping a corporation from coming down on itself.
But for you, I offer some advice. If you find yourself stressed out at work by maximum effort but minimum, if any, progress, steal a moment to yourself and think about what your workday might be missing:
A Routine: the act of following a ritualistic daily routine will help you easily gage your progress in your daily tasks...unless you routinely never get anything done.
Proper Focus: the ability to focus on a single goal as you move toward it, or even focus on a single task as you try to finish it, will do wonders for your sanity and productivity.
A Score Card: I might not have mastered getting anything checked off my daily master list, but I still attempt it. Your to do list becomes your roadmap to success, or at least a way to gauge when you have finished something.
A System To Keep People Away: If you don’t plan out what you are going to do with your time, someone else will easily fill that time up for you. But if you have bosses that respect what you do for you company and themselves personally, they will find ways to divert some of the problem children and their problem projects far enough away from their office aces (you are an office ace, right?) to minimize distractions. If the boss can’t help, partner up with a co-worker to work a little misdirection for each other. And if you are lucky enough to be a supervisor, make sure you take good care of that assistant who is able to say “no” in just the right manner to get the point across.
Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will chronicle the next phase of mis-adventures of my life. Thank you for staying on the ride, and for you newcomers to the inside of my mental mania, I will do my best to make sure the trip is both entertaining and educational.
Life In Fast Forward: The Blog is still a bit of a work in progress. Keep checking in for new posts and site updates.
About Blog
This blog supports some of the thoughts and interjections from the folks at Fast Forward Business Properties. Our ideas, things we test, and a few random thoughts will show up here.
Name: J. Cleveland Payne
Home: Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
About Me: News is my profession, so it only fits that I am a news junkie. I'm a radio show/segment producer for a news/talk radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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