Everyone writes about GTD (the Getting Things Done process by David Allen).  I haven’t yet aside from my book review of it here .  I like to take GTD apart into easier pieces and learn them one at a time instead of looking at developing a  whole system.  Knowing and using pieces from GTD has certainly helped me to reinforce and strengthen habits to be more effective and productive.  There is ONE key piece that I’ve come to realize is not only one of my common practices, but an important point from the GTD process and I hope I can share the value of that here today.

So, Ian Peaty actually triggered this in a comment on Bunny’s Got Blog site about the here and now of things.  I really liked that comment, value that same attitude myself and was also then reading through and thinking about another article on the GTD process so I started linking them together.

GTD’s One Key Secret

So, the bottom line is that if there is anything you can do right now in just a few minutes, do it now so you will NEVER have to come back to it again and waste time thinking or reading about it in the same way again.

This is the premise of the GTD filing system for your inbox and minor tasks.  What about applying this same principle in others areas of work and life though?  I find putting this into context of helping others is just as valuable and much more useful in the eyes of others.

Do You Have a Minute?

We all get this question and it’s often seen as a distraction.  Is 2 minutes ever just 2 minutes?   Well it can be, if you think in the principles of GTD for that 2 minute conversation as well.  If you are always willing to take a minute and deal with things as they come up, you can quickly become relied on as the “go to guy” and you will always be seen as someone who is willing to help.

However, the goal here is to just take the 2 minutes required to deal with an issue or question right away.  Aim to be done with that item in 2 minutes.  It might mean scheduling some other time, point someone in a new direction, planning a meeting later to discuss it, or offering a suggestion that might come to mind that that person can still deal with.  Don’t be too quick to volunteer yourself if you don’t need to be.  Offering a suggestion or other resource is a great way to quickly turn a question or issue back to the person asking and still gives them something new to work on with you having helped quickly.

Making it a Habit

There are two sides of this 2 minute help becoming a habit.  On one side, the more people that learn you are able to help them quickly, the more often they will want to come for help.  On the other side, the more often you help them, the quicker you enable them to find their own solutions and resources without needing your help.  To me, that is the whole value in making it a habit.  It is something that gives you a chance to help often and to train others in bits and pieces habits to find resources and solutions themselves.  If people learn that you will not take the work on from them, or that you are always expecting them to have their own suggestions and solutions, they will develop their own habits to learn that.  You should always try to include questions back at that person to have them thinking about the same kind of solutions or suggestions you might have to offer.

Don’t just give your suggestion, always look to lead others to find their own solutions.  This teaches others, helps them to feel they own it and develops habits of their own.  It’s these kind of GTD steps when applied in new ways that allows the process to be taken further with habits for achievement.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 12 Comments »

Many areas in our lives (including our careers), we have things we are working towards and want to be able to see progress in.  Whether that is with our goals, success, financial aspirations, or our career and family values, there is generally a desire to make progress in those areas in our lives.  Unfortunately, life throws a lot of curve balls at us and makes these accomplishments difficult.  This can seem like a repetitive cycle unless you take note to measure every little piece of progress.

Measuring progress is a process aimed at determining whether goals are being achieved.

Defining and Understanding The Goal

If you don’t know what you are working to change, how can you measure progress?  You can’t!  So, you need to put attention to defining your goal and understanding what it looks like along the path to completing it.  You don’t want to have only a single measure, how you or have you not accomplished it.  Instead, break it down into steps and minor accomplishments along the path of completion so that you have many steps and small accomplishments along the way to measure progress with.

Recognizing Progress

Recognizing progress starts by looking for change.  Change is necessary and desirable when working on goals and so change is what you should start out looking for, not static consistency.  Once you’ve made enough progress to achieve your goal, then consistency with that will be important to hold on to it.  Progress means you are moving forward and closer to where you want to be, no matter how small that might be.  This is especially true when looking at breaking habits or tackling difficult goals since its easy to be discouraged otherwise by the time and effort needed to sense some accomplishment

Sharing the progress you make with others is a great way to recognize it as well.  Not in a bragging way, but simply to inform or include others in your journey as its very motivating to have others encourage you to continue and help you recognize the progress you are making.  Find yourself a partner or team to look for progress and show appreciation and encouragement for it.

Use All Your Resources

Considering all your resources involves looking around you to ensure you have multiple ways to measure your progress.  Just relying on your own opinion as a measure is not enough since the mind loves to play tricks on us and your thoughts from just a single day can shift so quickly, its dangerous to trust only a single source.  Ask those around you that you live and work with to help you guage how well things are going and look at other tools available to measure progress.  Having multiple opinions and many smaller factors to measure makes progress much more evident.  If all you have is the end result, its easy to miss progress along the way and be discouraged.

Let Progress Steer Your Path

While you don’t want to loose sight of your goals and visions which got you started along your path, other seeing progress along the way can help you to adjust and redirect your plans from what you originally intended.  Perhaps you learned some new things and have changed your mind about your goals or your approach to accomplishing those.  That’s OK, and in fact, its great to experience these changes and know that the progress you are making proves that you are changing.  As you measure your progress and see where things are leading, adjust your goal, your plans and actions to accomplish it and continue to work towards it.  Put value on the small progress steps that you continually make and know that stepping and looking forward, even if its just one step at a time, still has you moving on a forward path.  Be swift in your adjustments and keep progressing and measuring along the way.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 4 Comments »

There are so many challenges we face everyday it is no wonder we easily find ourselves falling into the trap of saying, "I can’t ."  Its an extremely negative response and really does nothing for us as it’s more of an easy excuse than a real useful reason.  Without getting into all the specifics as to why you should have a more positive outlook I’m going to focus on doing just one thing more positive.  That is to change your thinking and response anytime you would have said, "I can’t" to "How can I?".  There are 4 major areas I’ll explore around the benefits of changing this response.

Stay Open to New Things

Saying "I can’t" will immediately shut down any opportunity as you don’t even consider any way to work with the suggestion.  Changing that response to look at how can I do something is far more positive.  It allows you to look for ways and if nothing else, think about ways to do that.  Even if you don’t act on those new things, staying open minded about them keeps options available for the future.  You never know when you will change your mind and want to focus on that very thing you otherwise would have said, "I can’t" to.

People learn from your responses and if you have a habit of saying "I can’t" then others remember that and come to you less and less frequently with those new opportunities.  "How can I" lets you question it yourself and gives you a chance to see those new things from different perspectives.  People will be much more likely to come to you again with an idea or question if you look for ways to do it instead of simply shutting down the idea in the first place.  Keep your interaction with others open and welcoming simply by changing this response.

Don’t Limit Yourself

Keeping that open mind lets you experience new things, new relationships and lets you see areas to make changes in your life.  Some of these for the better, some not so, but keeping the choice available is useful.  There is no point in limiting your choices in life and that’s exactly what "I can’t" does.  It becomes a mind set to you and others that you are not willing to even try and that you give up easily.  This is not a limiting belief that anyone should have!

Find and Offer Help

My favorite reason to never say I can’t and instead ask the question How can I is that it is often a way to find or offer help to someone else.  Most of the things we say we can’t do are because we don’t believe we have the ability to accomplish something on our own.  This is a perfect chance to then find some help and to see the same situations for others where you can offer help.  Offering help is easily a substitute for saying, "I can’t" as well since you are still willing to be involved but perhaps at a simpler level, just offering help.  This is very powerful in the workplace since even though you may already have a full workload, offering some help can be a huge benefit to others while requiring little of your own time.  Obviously this depends on how much help you are offering, but there is nearly always something you can do to help, even if it is just a few minutes of your time.

Accomplish More

As others discover you have a habit of looking at ways to accomplish something instead of avoiding it, you will keep them interested in coming to you.  You will have more accomplishments under your belt as well since as you develop a way of looking for solutions and ways to achieve things instead of ways to avoid them.  Balance this using priorities with your other work and focus on the most important tasks only will keep you from being overloaded can give you a massive boost to accomplishing many things.  Keeping some time available to always ensure you can offer help or ask when needed will allow you to ask that question of "How Can I?" without feeling overwhelmed by more new tasks.

Posted by Mike King under Life | No Comments »

There are countless books, movies, blogs, and speakers talking about how to get what you want in the sense of achievement. If you’ve looked into self help and self improvement content much you’ve probably found this already. There is definitely a number of angles that these many resources list as ways to get what you want and I want to outline those that I have encountered both in that content and from my own experience.

Simply Ask For What You Want

This is by far the simplest, yet unfortunately, its usually ignored. Most people are truly afraid to ask for what they want because of their fears of rejection, or from being embarrassed, feeling inferior and many other emotional and fear based reasons. I’ve written before on the topic of asking for help in my article, "Ask For Help Already… " Very often you will find that others are more than willing to simply GIVE you exactly what you want. You might not get exactly what you’re asking for and you will likely not get it the first person you ask, but if you persist, you will get what you want. You might get a portion of what you ask for, or help or guidance to get you closer to what you want or perhaps just encouragement to keep asking others, but asking for help will always bring you closer to getting what you want. There is little or nothing to loose to ask for what you want and the clearly you are and more persistent, the better!

Focus Your Thoughts on What You Want

There are many books and programs available to learn to focus your thoughts. All kinds of books like Think and Grow Rich which I highly recommend reading to The Secret , which has great concepts presented in a unique way. While focusing your thoughts on what you want, it doesn’t really do anything completely on its own. Its not quite as automatic as some would like you to believe. However, there is definitely advantages from focusing your thoughts and that is to help you notice, concentrate, and think about everything that relates to the things you want because of your thoughts. You will notice more people to help or that can help you, you will see more examples of ways to get what you want and you will have those thoughts in many more situations. All these thoughts trigger small actions which is what really makes the difference. It can be simple conversations, a small amount of planning either on paper or in your head on a more regular basis, and just the continual reminders in your head to make the changes needed to get what you want are what make a difference here. Its not the thoughts themselves, but it is everything that those thoughts help make happen.

Set Goals and Take Action To Make Them Happen

Of course a major way to get what you want is to set goals and act on them. I’ve written a number of articles and a series on goal setting if you need more help with them. The real point of goals for getting what you want is to set a plan and put action to it. It doesn’t do much good to have a bunch of things you want if you are doing nothing to achieve them. They aren’t going to simple appear for you and you’ll need to put some effort into making those things happen. Countless studies and stats show the benefits of writing down and using goals to achieve what you want and that is certainly one of the best ways I’ve experienced as well. Sometimes the wants you have are very grand and take great courage to make progress towards them and that is the whole point of setting goals. Its something to work towards and if done properly, gives a way to measure progress towards them which accelerates progress and gets you motivated to keep the momentum going towards what you ultimately want.

Count on the Law of Reciprocity

This one is one of my favorites, not because its the best way to get what you want, but its the most satisfying and not intended really to even get you what you want. That reason doesn’t make much sense for being on this list unless you know what the law of reciprocity actually is. Reciprocity is that you get back what you give. So, don’t wait for things to happen, step out on a limb and be the first to give. Be generous to fulfill others’ wants and sooner or later, it will come back to you. Don’t expect it, don’t wait for it, just enjoy the giving in the first place and only marvel at the joy and satisfaction that it can give you immediately. This will pay off in the long run as well and its a sure way to ultimately get what you want with nothing but a joyous journey getting there.

Use Your Passion and Be Enthusiastic

Passion is not something that can easily be contained and is exactly why it goes hand in hand with enthusiasm. Its a contagious trait and will influence others you encounter to more readily help you. People are generally happier to donate, help or give things to a person or cause who absolutely LOVES everything about that and truly wants to make something out of what you have to give. If you share your passion and demonstrate a high level of enthusiasm for what you want, you are also more likely to get what you want.

Never Give Up

Its far to easy to become complacent and satisfied with a comfortable easy life in our rich society and so unfortunately, there are a growing number of people who roll through life never going after what they really want and giving up far to easily at chasing their real desires. Things you can do here to help with this is to look for progress and track and recognize any improvements or advancements towards what you want, instead of only looking at the end result. Value any progress made no matter how far you are from having what you want and you can motivate yourself to continue. Some of our great leaders had this attitude to never give up and show perfectly how it is needed to get what you want.

"If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed."
"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

–Thomas Edison

Posted by Mike King under Life | 5 Comments »

Category: Books
Genre: Business & Investing
Author: David Allen

This is a excellent book and the content is superb. It is a valuable guide to improve your organizational skills and focus on completion of tasks. Unfortunately, the book is somewhat boring and cumbersome to read with the level of detail included. Its much more like a textbook than a pickup and read through book. The technique and ideas that Allen teaches are proven to be effective and used by thousands (just search google for GTD).

Basically, the premise of his technique is not redoing the same thing over and over in dealing and sorting with a busy schedule and instead, turning everything from a pile into a managed set of simple actions. Sorted and processed according to your schedule and priorities. If these actions are followed through on, you become more focused on completion of your tasks and you simply avoid repetitive work. I like the technique, practice many parts of it, just haven’t taken it to the level of detail (some might say ‘anal’ detail) that Allen recommends.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 1 Comment »