A critical part of getting work done is getting the rest of your life done, too! If you aren’t playing, having fun, and enjoying life, you won’t be able to get things done when you need to. You’ll just go through the motions, waiting for a freedom that never arrives.
This week’s Get-it-Done Guy podcast is all about how to set boundaries at work. Listen and enjoy!
Earlier this week, I began a series of articles on the Harvard Business Review blog site that will deal with the job description of the entrepreneur. The series arose because while people talk a lot about what qualities make up a good entrepreneur, the world is strangely silent on how an entrepreneur should actually spend their time. They always run around like the sky is falling, and they’re busy beyond belief. But doing … what? And how do they know what they’re doing is actually moving the company forward, versus just being whatever activity caught their eye at the moment.
Read my HBR.ORG blog post on Advanced Entrepreneurship: The Entrepreneurial Job Description.
Many programs check to find out if they have an available upgrade when you run them. If so, they have a little upgrade notice that pops up then and there to tell you. Helpfully. This is convenient, courteous, just-in-time behavior, right? Wrong.
When you start up a program, there’s a 99% chance that you’re starting it because you want to use it. You have some task that requires the program in order to accomplish. You’re in work mode, with a specific goal in mind.
That’s exactly the wrong time to distract you with a software upgrade notice that forces you to think about a choice: Not Now, Install, or Cancel (what does cancel even mean in this context?). If you should decide to install now—after all, who’s going to remember later—then you’re treated to six hours of debugging when this minor upgrade from v 5.62 to v5.63 accidentally wipes out your hard drive. Your original task gets lost.
As a user, don’t let upgrades hijack your mind! Adopt a simple, yet effective habit: when a piece of software offers to upgrade, immediately jot down at the very end of your to-do list, “Upgrade silly program” and choose Not Now. Then treat the upgrade as you would any other to-do item: do it only when it fits into your schedule. If it’s an urgent upgrade, fine, put it on your calendar for a free time block today or tomorrow. But keep your focus on the task and hand and don’t let upgrades hijack your mind!
(Author’s note: This blog post was inspired by an offer for me to upgrade that interrupted my train of thought for a blog post I was going to write. Sadly, I don’t recall what the original post was going to be. See how those offers can knock us off course?)
Someone just subscribed to my YouTube channel. Yay! Now I feel more pressure to get more videos prepared and posted. YouTube helped out by sending a notice telling me someone has subscribed. It went on to suggest that I “return the favor and subscribe to person?”
The favor? Excuse me? Subscribing is something you do because you find my content valuable. Subscriptions to the Get-it-Done Guy productivity tips newsletter and the Stever Robbins YouTube Channel are staples of every good, productive, worthwhile, competent, achievement-oriented, life-fulfillment-seeking, smart, insightful person on the internet. It’s only a favor to me in the sense that I’m trying to build an audience. If someone is subscribing to “do me a favor,” that suggests they aren’t subscribing because they find my content useful. Thanks for the insult, YouTube.
And now that YouTube has insulted me, it wants me to subscribe back as a favor. Now YouTube is insulting my viewers. Bad, YouTube! Show more respect! My viewers, as noted above, are good, productive, smart people.
When a web site suggests you subscribe to something without knowing if you like it, you’re being asked to promote the web site’s agenda, not yours. Every subscription you have means more stuff piling into your inbox. Sometimes, that makes sense; you can never get enough Get-it-Done Guy content. But that doesn’t mean you should subscribe to every person who subscribes to you.
If you think a person’s content is relevant and useful, subscribe. If you don’t, then don’t. Subscribing isn’t a favor to be returned; it’s something a person does because they find it valuable. Keep your information manageable!
(Subscribing to the Get-it-Done Guy newsletter will help you do that… 
Today’s Get-it-Done Guy episode is about choosing how to be productive on airplanes. Most of us just assume that bringing as much work as we can is the way to go. Not necessarily. The airplane environment presents an increasingly rare opportunity to concentrate on certain kinds of task. You can find today’s Get-it-Done Guy episode by clicking the links in this message.
A key element of working less and doing more is preparing enough for the future so you have systems in place when the demands on you grow.
If your business is lucky enough to be on a growth path, you still have to deal with setting up operations before the growth happens. Otherwise, you get caught unable to deliver on the extra sales you’ve generated. If you need examples, look no further than AT&T’s inability to deliver adequate data coverage in major markets since the introduction of the iPhone, five years ago. I was interviewed by Latino Business Review on the preparing for operational growth. It’s interesting that the article characterizes me repeatedly as “conservative” in my business practices. I wouldn’t consider my advice conservative; I’d just call it common sense. If you’re growing into a country or product line you have no experience with, why in the world would you make a huge bet with no data? Far better to make a small bet that lets you collect the data, and then commit major resources.
Read the article here: http://www.latinobusinessreview.com/business-features/operations/think-medium-term-planning-operational-growth
There are two kinds of being overwhelmed. There’s the chaos that comes from having no systems, so everything is an emergency. That’s relatively easy to deal with. The more pernicious type of overwhelm happens when you actually commit to more than you can possibly do. Then, no matter what you try, you can never catch up.
My current Yahoo! HotJobs column discusses how to make sure you’re not fundamentally overcommitted. You can read my HotJobs column on how to stop overcommitting by clicking here.
It’s my birthday today! I thought up a rather fun way to spend some time celebrating. Here’s my game:
Think of your age 10 years ago, 20 years ago, etc. and write down all the things you appreciate about the younger “you.” Spend some time pondering what’s been constant, what’s changed, and how that younger “you” contributed to who you are now. This is an exercise I’m designing for a speech on Living Your Life for younger people. If you’re willing to share, please chime in. What did you like about younger-you? What’s been constant? What’s changed? (What, that you thought would be constant at the time, changed?)
We pigeonhole ourselves by our job title. It makes conversation go quicker, but plays hell with our ability to manage our external image.
I just attended a conference where each name tag had our name and the name of our company. I don’t really have a company name at the moment, other than “Stever Robbins, Inc.” Since that would look weird, I had them put “Just ask…” in the slot reserved for company name.
Some people said, “‘Just Ask?’ I’ve heard of you. Aren’t you some kind of web search engine.” No. I’m not.
Some people said, “What am I supposed to ask?” I thought that was a fine question, and we jumped right into fascinating—if self-referential—conversation.
One woman stands out, however. She said, “Why did you write that on your name tag?” “Because right now what I do doesn’t fit into any neat box and I didn’t want people to leap to assumptions and pigeonhole me in the wrong box.”
Amazingly, she then ran down her mental list of boxes and tried to fit me in one: Are you a marketing person? No. Are you running a startup? No. Are you a musician? No. When that failed, she rolled her eyes and went on to the next person. Happily, his job title fit neatly into a box and she was able to resume her networking rhythm. What never seemed to occur to her was asking me, “How do you spend your time?” (A question that evokes much more interesting responses than “What do you do for a living?”) That would have led to a real answer. But even then, a real answer sometimes didn’t work. I’m not really doing anything that gives people a good hook to relate to:
Them: What are you doing right now?
Me: Preparing to promote my book on personal productivity.”
Them: Oh. That sounds very interesting. Have you ever read The Four-Hour Work Week? I love Tim Ferriss.
Me: Well, I …
Them: looking over my shoulder Oh, look! There’s someone who has a real job. I’m going to go talk to them. Bye, now.
The next evening at dinner, a young man sat down at our table at dinner and introduced himself. It was, of course, Tim Ferriss. We had a lovely conversation about body-building, self-hypnosis, allergies, and the mind-body interface. We never once discussed personal productivity.
Our final performance for Creating Cabaret: Storytelling Through Song was last night. My 1st time singing solo before an audience. The high F#s in my piece are well within my range, but they’re also just at the point where the slightest relaxation of my frame causes them to break. Hit every one, and my ending note (F#) filled the room. My Professor said afterwards, “You caught the bug. I can tell.” She is so right…
During our dress rehearsal, I’d been sitting in front of the stage watching one of the other performers and while I was being a perfectly good little doobie, listening to my compatriot’s song, my sneaky, dastardly brain offered up a thought: “This is where you belong.”
The last time I had that thought, it scared me so much I (inadvertently) used self-hypnosis to wipe out every memory I had of performing, including the seven years I spent doing comedy improv. I think this time I’ll keep it and find out where it leads…
