amazon highlights: Get More Done In Less Time / Beau Norton / 2014

Intrinsic Motivation : If you focus more on the long term rewards and less on the current drudgery, you can much more easily motivate yourself to do unpleasant tasks.

Goal Setting : Setting goals is an extremely effective way to motivate yourself on a daily basis. Most importantly, write your goals down on paper so that you can read them every day. Be as specific as possible when writing your goals. Instead of saying something like “I will be a millionaire,” say “I will have 1 million dollars in my bank account on December 31, 2018.” Set both short and long term goals. The long term goals (1-5 years or more) will supply you with a steady, low-level motivation, while the short term goals will be able to provide you with high energy bursts of motivated effort. Start with goals that are very easily achievable for you, such as daily tasks that take no longer than 20 minutes to complete. The bigger the time frame for completing the goal, the more unrealistic it should seem to you. shorter term goals (1 day – 1 year) should be more realistic and easy for you to believe in. re-write your goals every single day. Goals don’t just give you something to aim for; they give you something to BECOME. You see, by reminding yourself of your goals every single day, you are literally programming your brain with the images correlated with your specific goals. When you BECOME what you desire, you will HAVE what you desire.

Visualization : law of attraction is: You attract what you think about (visualize) most often. We live in a world where “working hard” is praised and encouraged, but how far can hard work take us when our MIND isn’t right? how you think determines how you act, which invariably affects the results you. get in your life. Thought/Emotion > Action > Results. We, as humans, tend to attract into our lives the things and situations that we hold in our minds most often and with the most amount of detail, so it is safe to say that our goals can be more easily achieved by picturing them in our minds as already completed. If we do this on a daily basis and imagine our future selves with extreme detail, then it is absolutely possible for us to create exactly that which we desire. People who succeed tend to spend more of their time imagining what they desire and feeling the emotions associated with that image. People who fail tend to spend more of their time imagining the LACK of what they desire, and feeling the worry and disappointment associated with that image. It’s all in the mind. Learn how to think and ALL becomes possible…

Self-talk : Your priority is what you set out to do in the first place! Have integrity and finish what you start. This is what I want you to do the next time you get distracted by your thoughts: Stop, take a deep breath, and remind yourself of all the benefits you will receive by completing the task that you began. Productivity requires FOCUS. When you find yourself getting distracted, close your eyes and take one or more deep breaths. This will effectively “reset” your brain and prepare it to accept the coming motivational phrase or re-focusing thought. Follow the deep breath with a positive phrase of your choice that reminds you of your end goal and evokes the emotion of having completed the task before you. This phrase can be said silently or out loud, but it should be said with enthusiasm and passion. The tonality that you use will determine how effective the statement is for motivating you. The statement must remind you of your PURPOSE for doing the task in the first place, and this purpose must be significant enough to motivate you at least slightly. If you have absolutely no good reason to complete the task, why are you wasting your time? This may not work every time, mostly because the mind is not an easy thing to tame, but continue to practice recognizing distracting thoughts when they come up. The more aware you become, the more power you will have to consciously create your life and get stuff done!

Time Management:

Morning Routine :

Here are a few things that you might consider incorporating into your personal routine: *Exercise (highly recommend) *Healthy meal (highly recommend) *Meditation or breathing exercises (highly recommend) *Writing or Journaling Reading Listening to audio books *Expressing gratitude . Do not overwhelm yourself by trying to incorporate too many things into your morning routine right away. Start with one thing at a time (10 minutes of exercise perhaps), and then add something else after 30 days or so. Remember, how you start your day is how you end your day. Start your days off in a productive way so you can go to sleep every night feeling satisfied and hopeful for the days to come.

Eliminating Distractions : consider eliminating some distractions from your life if you plan to become a happier and more productive person. A few simple changes to your work environment can make all the difference. first suggestion would be to make sure that your work environment is clean and tidy. If you work in an office, then keep your desk neat and organized. Before you leave your office for the day, spend 5 or 10 minutes to tidy it up so that you can be more focused and productive to start the next day. next suggestion – a very important one to consider – is to remove all distracting technology from your work environment. Did you know that when a person is distracted from their work, it takes on average 20 minutes for them to regain focus and get back to what they were previously doing? 20 minutes of lost time adds up very quickly. If you want to get more done, your work environment needs to be free of the beeps and buzzes of modern technology. People can be some of the worst distractions. A simple “hello” can turn into a 15 minute conversation. Make sure people know not to distract you when you are working. Politely tell them that you will be unavailable between certain hours that you’ve chosen.

Productive Time Blocks : The 50-10-50 method is designed to synchronize your periods of productivity with the natural cycles of your mind and body. Using this method, you would simply work for 50 minutes straight, take a 10 minute break, work for another 50 minutes, and then take a 30-45 minute break. Repeat this cycle as many times as needed to complete whatever task you are working on. The reason that you work in 50 minute time blocks is because the mind cannot focus for much longer than that before it requires a rest. 10 minutes of rest is plenty to restore the mind to full capacity, however, that 10 minutes must be spent resting, not filling your mind with more distractions. During the 10 minute rest interval, take some deep breaths, relax, and try to think about pleasant things, or nothing at all. If you spend this time in deep relaxation, the next 50 minute work interval will go very smoothly. During your 30-45 minute rest (after two 50 minute sessions) is a good time to check your email, cell phone, and whatever else you need to tend to, but it’s important to not allow those things to interrupt you during your 50 or 10 minute intervals. The 50-10-50 method is perfect for maximizing productivity, because it limits distractions and maximizes focus by providing adequate rest periods. You may enjoy the 90-30 method if you are better at focusing for longer periods of time, but many people find it difficult to work for 90 minutes straight with a clean focus. It really works. Why does it work so well? Because it forces you to focus and be consistent. These 2 skills alone will take you far in life, and the 50-10-50 and 90-30 methods are two of the very best for honing them. experiment with both the 50-10-50 and 90-30 methods. Compare the results from each and decide which one is most effective for increasing your productivity and allowing you to keep your stress levels low.

Creating Incentives : There are two extremely effective ways to use incentives to drive you towards your goal: reward systems and fear systems. Pleasure and fear are the greatest motivators. Fear pushes you forward. Pleasure pulls you. Both are effective. Using one or the other will help you reach your goals faster, but using a combination of both is recommended.

Reward Systems : Reward systems only work to motivate you if the reward is earned and you genuinely feel that you deserve it. Having a reward system set up for yourself will make you actually want to be more productive, because you know that you will be rewarded for it. It’s a great way to motivate yourself to do unpleasant tasks. The “pleasure” of the reward makes the “pain” of the task worth it. the reward can only be received when the task is completed. It cannot be awarded to you for any other reason, or else it will lose all its power to motivate you. Humans are naturally programmed to pursue pleasure. That is why reward systems work so well, however, there is something that is even more motivating than pleasure…Fear.

Fear Systems : Did you know that humans are twice as likely to move away from what they fear as they are to move towards what they desire? To use fear as a motivator, it will help to have an accountability partner. This person should be someone that you trust. They will ensure that you stick to your word and follow through with what you say you are going to do. You can use the fear of losing money to motivate yourself to achieve almost any goal, and this is how you do it: Go to your accountability partner, tell them your goal and the amount of time you are allowing yourself to complete it, and then write them a blank check for $1,000 (or an amount that you would be extremely scared to lose). Tell the person that if you do not have your goal completed by the specified time, they should go to the bank immediately, cash the check, and spend the money on themselves. Make sure the person knows that under no circumstances should they give the money back to you, unless the goal is achieved in the allotted time. How’s that for some motivation? Do this for all the important tasks or projects that you need to complete, and you will never miss a deadline or fail to reach a goal again. Fear is the best motivator. Use it! You don’t have to use money, although it is probably the most effective tool for creating motivation from fear. Another great motivator is the fear of embarrassing yourself in public. For even greater results, use the power of fear and pleasure combined. Punish yourself (in a healthy way) when you fail to achieve your goals, and reward yourself when you achieve your goals on time. If you use fear and reward systems consistently for all your goals, you will find yourself receiving far more rewards than punishments.

Publicizing Intentions : Another simple yet powerful way to motivate yourself is to publicize your intentions. In other words, tell as many people as possible about what you plan to do.

Building Momentum : Momentum is a powerful force. Once you start to gain some, you’ll take off at a high rate of speed. Building momentum involves something called the “law of compounding,” which states that one thing performed over and over again will create a “snowball effect” that leads to exponential increases in all that is involved, whether it be achievements, income, spiritual or physical growth, or all of the above.

Reframing Beliefs : Faith is synonymous with “belief.” It is very crucial that you believe in your ability to achieve all of your goals and grandest desires. Nothing great was ever created without belief (faith). spend a small amount of time every day alone and in silence. don’t take your thoughts too seriously. Since your negative thoughts really never serve you anyway, simply choose to let go of them and replace them with more positive and empowering thoughts.

The Small Things:

The small things make all the difference. The journey to the mountain top begins with a single step upward. Of course, keep the image of the larger goal in mind, but focus the majority of your attention on the tasks you can complete now. The present moment is all you ever have, and it’s where all the magic happens.  “6 Wins.” Simply put, it is a series of 6 small tasks that I perform on a daily basis no matter what. These tasks take me less than 2 hours per day to complete, and 3 of them take less than 5 minutes each. Committing myself to completing all 6 of them every single day has increased my productivity dramatically. Your “6 Wins” don’t even need to take 2 hours to complete. They can be as small as you’d like them to be, as long as they are things that improve your life in some way. Please take some time today to sit down and plan out your 6 wins. You should start with simple tasks that you know you’ll have no problem completing. You can add to the list over time as you create new habits.

Mastermind Groups : You can surely achieve great things all by yourself, but your journey will be much easier if you allow others to help you. Two minds working in harmony is always better than a single mind. Cooperative effort can yield incredible results that would take one person at least twice the time to accomplish. Finding like-minded people that have similar goals will help you greatly. Ideas will spread and ignite new ideas in the minds of everyone involved. A group of like-minded people working towards similar goals in a cooperative effort is called as “mastermind group,” and you should consider creating or joining one. A mastermind group can contain as few or as many people as you’d like. Your group should meet at least once every couple weeks to discuss new ideas, give suggestions and input, share goals, and support each other. Structure the group in a way that allows everyone an equal opportunity to share with the group. You will find that sharing with and hearing from others that share your interests is a great way to inspire and motivate yourself to achieve more. Never think that you can do it all alone. At some point, no matter who you are, you will need the help of other people in order to achieve your goals. Better to gain that support in the beginning rather than scrambling to find it when you really need it.

Enjoying the Process : Life is a journey, not a destination. No matter how far you get, you will always want to go further, so you might as well enjoy every step.

amazon highlights: What Does Good Look Like? / Giles Johnston / 2018

Approaches to generate a vision of ‘what good looks like’:

·         The Gap – Spotting the elements of your business that are missing and describing what that gap is.

·         The Flip – Taking the frustrations from the working day and creatively inverting them to define a better place to operate from.

·         The Copy – Using the experience and ideas of other organisations to boost your own vision of excellence.

·         The Breakdown – Articulating what good looks like through a small steps approach.

The Gap

·         What doesn’t work in your business?   What loose ends do you have?   What recurring problems do you face? ….. about process

·         What results are you missing?   What performance levels haven’t you achieved that you really need to?   What objectives haven’t been completed? ….. about results

·         Look at the departments that are present in your business. What is their purpose? Can you define it?

For each of those departments allocate a score out of ten. Ten would represent that the department is living and breathing their purpose. Zero would represent that they are as far away as possible as you can get from being ‘on purpose’. Any number less than ten is a gap.
Pull the three lists you have from previous activities together (missing items, results unobtained and departments not living ‘on purpose’) into one document. This next step is going to help you determine a weighting for each of those gap items (and you can use this approach with the other visioning methods too). For each item I would like you to score it against these three factors, to create a score / weighting:

Benefit If the benefit of closing out the gap is really significant for your business, give it a high score out of ten. If, on the other hand, the closing of this gap will make little impact for the business, give it a low score out of ten.

Cost Like the previous factor score this one out of ten also. A low cost / relatively free cost for closing out the gap will give you a high score out of ten, whilst an expensive / resource draining cost will give you a low score out of ten.

Speed A rapid closing out of the gap (such as today / tomorrow) will yield a high score in this area and a long and drawn out affair (several months and the need to go through various committees) will give this factor a low score out of ten.
To calculate your total score (the BCS score as I call it), multiply the scores you have given each gap for each factor together. This should give you a score between 1 and 1000. Once you have the scores calculated for each gap you should then be able to rank them, and this should be your priority sequence as you head into the implementation stage.

The Flip
The simplest thing you can do with your list of grumbles is to invert them. Flip them upside down and try to turn a negative into a positive. Taking the idea of inverting problems a little further, when you tip an issue upside down what else can you do with it? This is an opportunity – for you to take an issue you have, trying to determine the opposite and then embellishing it into something really interesting and useful. Inversion is a great tool but inverting and upgrading of issues can really deliver some interesting opportunities when it comes to using problems to drive the creation of a vision for your business. The inversion method is a great place to start when you are trying to create your view of the future because the pain of today is real and tangible to your team.

The Copy
What the other business or industry does is less important than the principle behind the activity. In some cases the application will be identical and you can transfer it straight into your business. In other cases you might need to spot the underlying principle and then translate the idea into your business. Every methodology that you can read about, or can witness for yourself, has principles sitting behind them. Spot these and you can apply the essence of the idea quickly and easily to your business. Now that you have some ‘new’ principles to apply to your business the next challenge is to bend and flex them so that they can become meaningful for your business.

The Breakdown
To get your vision development process moving with this method I am going to invite you to chop it up into a number of smaller pieces. The size of the pieces is up to you and will depend on how your business is structured.

5W1H stands for: What Where When Who Why How. These headings in their own right can help you to become more explicit with each segment, prompting you to describe what good looks like for each of these words. For each segment you have identified for your business answer the questions of who, what, where, when, how and why and see what you can create. Answering these questions can help to improve ownership of specific activities (who), improve the way an activity is carried out (how), reinforce the rationale and purpose of an activity (why), help to define business routines (when), confirm any location specific issues (where) and the specificity of the action itself (what). Pull all of the 5W1H articulations that you have created and voila, you have another approach to creating a vision for your business. Ensure that you looked at each area of your business and defined what good looks like for each area.

Picking Your Vision Strategy
The tools that I have shared in the past few pages can be applied in different ways, to different levels within your business, for different purposes. Again, you can layer these approaches to suit the needs of your business and ensure that ‘what good looks like’ cascades its way effectively through your organization. The way that you apply your operational visions is, of course, up to you. A combination of all three levels (business, departmental and individual) serves most of the clients I work with and could be a good mix for you too. A broad picture being painted for the business, with a detailed vision for the individual areas that are under-performing and supportive explanations of what good looks like for members of your teams that are struggling with their current roles is a powerful combination.

Business level - high level view of what performance should look like.
Departmental level - how the functions should work properly, and with each other.
Individual level - what a good day looks like and what standards need to be achieved for a specific team member.

Putting these ideas into action and designing a business that constantly moves toward its vision. Where are you right now? Is your business in a good place? Are you wanting to make some minor changes, or are you looking for a complete overhaul? Do you have target areas to address quickly? Do you have longer term objectives that need some focus and attention to move them along, right now? Knowing where you are right now is essential so that your plan to reach your vision is effective. The other main reason that I want you to be clear about where you are right now is so that you can reflect on the journey that you have travelled. Are there any anecdotes that you have about your current level of performance? Are there any stories that summarize the way things are today? If you need to reinvigorate your improvement activities at any point in time, look for the quick wins.

The Future
Using milestones is a great communication tool with your colleagues, your team and your superiors too. Thinking of your change program as both a one trip linear plan and also a virtuous circle can provide different ways of thinking about your plans and give you a different outcome than just thinking in one way alone. A few people will need most of the results that you generate, so make sure that you keep them happy. Know who needs what from your change project and factor this in to your plans. Be realistic about how the people in your business will react to the change.

The Change
Getting a team together. Choosing who you team up with is vitally important. There might also need to be other people that need to join your team, in different roles to help the project along. Creating an action plan.
An alternative way to plan is to start at the end (with the objective having been achieved) and imagine your way back to your present situation. The linking question is ‘because I’d…’ and you use this to link your objective back to its penultimate action and then keep repeating until you end up at today. make sure that you are aware of the Kaizen principle (small steps helping to build confidence and momentum) and that you consider breaking up the first few steps of your action plan to help take advantage of this approach. Introduce these elements into the action plan template by adding in the following items to the list I mentioned under the 5W1H sub-section of this chapter:   Outcome (Check). Change in approach? (Act).
The simplest approach is to gain agreement with a key stakeholder of your project before you start as to what they want to see at the end of the project. Without a formal signoff you run the risk of not completing your project, but just stopping without any benefit. Making a project plan visible can make a big difference to the progress made on it.

Timings, resources and sequences
From a timings perspective; do the deadlines look appropriate to the needs of the business, the workloads of the people working on the activities and the overall success of the project? From a resources perspective; do you have the right tasks on the right people at the right time, or is it overloaded in some areas? From a sequence perspective; are the activities linked in a logical manner that allows for the most effective and efficient route to the finish line? Support and sponsorship. The New Habits: good habits are essential to making change happen

Killer Questions a list of questions that were to be either answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’. No narrative, no stories, no supporting information. The questions were focused on key parts of their business process and were used to great effect to focus people on the right activities (which of course means that the questions need to be balanced out for the operations of your business). Killer questions are a great way to convert the design of your new process activities into day to day action.

Metrics The right measures can direct your team into living and breathing the new vision as part of their normal working day. Many businesses will only consider ‘ouput’ metrics, telling you a story of what happened in the process. ‘Input’ metrics can be really useful to help you gauge what is happening with the start of the process, and whether it is being triggered correctly. The other type of metric, process, is similar to the input metrics with one small difference. Depending on where you are in the process itself will determine how much control you have over the outcome of your process. There will be some fundamental measures that you will want to always have in place (e.g. safety, profit, on time delivery, quality, costs etc…), but there will also be some temporary measures that you would like to have in place. Temporary measures are exactly that, something that you need to focus on until the actions that produce the result become a habit. Measures are a means to an end; if you don’t like what they are telling you, change what you are doing. I refer to analogue metrics being things that can be measured on a scale (such as supplier on time delivery) and digital metrics refer to activities that are either present or not (such as holding a meeting, or not). many organizations develop them in a very one-dimensional way, one suite of measures that the top management use. This is a good place to start but having different measures at different levels in the business can help your teams to behave and operate in the way that your vision requires.
There is no issue with using the word target with your team, for many it will work well. The reason I like the term reasonable expectations is that it instantly gives the feeling that it has been thought through and isn’t some ridiculous figure plucked out of thin air (unlike when a Finance Director once asked for raw material stock targets to be less than minimum working capital…). Metrics are a great way to help drive the right behaviours and develop the right kinds of habits.

Reporting lines Formal reporting can take the format of regular written reports, presentations at agreed intervals, weekly email updates, one to one meetings (with a fixed agenda), agenda items at routine management meetings, visual management systems and more. Informal reporting usually takes care of itself, hence the name. the formal reporting has got to yield a greater return than the effort / time it takes to produce and review the reporting.

Routines can help translate parts of your vision into day to day activity, bridging the gap of how you get from A to B. Cause and effect thinking can be a useful approach to take when thinking about making a shift in your performance; routines are great when they are focused on activities that generate specific outcomes (in this case, your vision).

Formal Reviews Having a time out from the day-to-day busyness to look at all of these (or whatever combination you opted for) can really help you to spot opportunities for improvement. A regular time slot with a standard agenda is the key to making this approach work. The meetings don’t have to be long, just long enough to ensure that you cover the main points, review any actions from previous meetings and capture any new actions that you need to see happen.

The Implementation
Execution Without execution nothing happens. Tiny steps can be used to great effect if the project seems too much to handle for some of your team. Dedicating time to individuals, or small teams, to work on the business change activities can just be a matter of discipline and doesn’t have to just come in large chunks. Leading on from the last point, preparation is often undervalued and underestimated in terms of how it can increase the effectiveness of delivering a change program. Keeping the tempo of the execution is the final point

Project reviews How do we get our tasks back on track?   If your tasks aren’t behind schedule then ignore the question, close the meeting and get on with your day. Stopping on a regular basis to take stock and to evaluate your current efforts versus results is important to make sure that you are doing the right things in order to effect the right change.

Learning variation on the PDCA model and is called CARL, which stands for: Challenge Actions Reflection Learning. The way that you use this model is to periodically stop and consider your personal effectiveness at effecting the changes that your plan is requiring.

General project monitoring General progress should be tracked by a regular team meeting. This isn’t the review meeting that I mentioned earlier in this chapter, this is the nuts and bolts review of looking at the deadlines and asking the person assigned to that task for an update on the deliverables.

Looking for the signs As you progress through your project you will want to keep an eye out for signs that you are moving towards your vision. Most people find that these types of projects are difficult when you consider them as a whole, but when you treat them as a series of small projects all linked together they can become more manageable.

Achieving and developing ‘what does good look like’ Don’t forget to celebrate with your team; the performance your business will now be achieving and the style in which is does it should be (considerably) different to how it was before you started. This leads to a very logical question – what does good look like now?

Tangible results For the majority of your changes the improvements you make should lead to an improvement of the money your business has to play with. making the place a more pleasant place to work will potentially improve a financial aspect of your business through better productivity or performance.