A summary of things you should know about Get Big Things Done according to Erica Dhawan: Introduction In this episode Erica Dhawan takes a deep dive into her book, GetRead More
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]]>In this episode Erica Dhawan takes a deep dive into her book, Get Big Things Done, where she unlocks the 21st century secret to getting things done through the power of connectional intelligence.
In her book Dhawan teaches you what is connectional intelligence, how to develop it, and reveals the secrets of how many well-known leaders have used it to achieve their own professional goals. The goal of the book is to help you creatively gain more supporters, drive more innovation, develop solid strategies, and solve problems on a large scale so you can achieve better performance.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who have a growing network of connections and needs a guide for making the most use of their network by building actionable connections.
The idea in the book is a concept called connectional intelligence and it speaks to the quality of the connections we build rather than just the quantity of networks. It helps readers understand that networks don’t easily translate into outcomes. This book teaches a game plan on why some people are better at mobilizing their web of relationships to actually get big things done. This book is about the human ability in a skill that we can all build that particularly 21st century innovators have to maximize all of our connections and put them to significant use.
The book is written in a way where there is a set of stories that walk through how to use connectional intelligence in action across many different industries. But then we have a guide called Putting it All Together and that guide has a quiz, manger guide, and work plans to help you actually use it. So you can start in the end, the beginning or in the middle of the book depending on what your goals are and how to apply the ideas of the book.
There is one major concept that we decoded in our book that I think is incredibly important. That concept is that there are three types of people that use connectional intelligence and the three types of people are thinkers, enablers, and connection executors. These are people that have different types of traits and in the book we have a quiz that you can take to figure out which type you are. By reading this book you can learn not only whether or not you are a connecter and how to use connections but what type of connecter you are and how you can partner with the right people in your community to get big things done.
The book Get Big Things Done has 10 chapters and I’ll give you a little walk-through of what each chapter encompasses and what it’s all about.
The first chapter is called The Big Wave and it answers the question what is connectional intelligence and where do we see it in work at the world. Most importantly this chapter answers how to harness connectional intelligence to get to places that we all want to go.
The second chapter is called The Roots of Connectional Intelligence. In this chapter we explore the historical roots of connectional intelligence and we explore what some of the essential questions are that we want readers to think about that are at the center of connectional intelligence.
After the first two chapters we move into Part two of the book which is made up of a series of chapters that highlight a set of stories of connectional intelligence in action.
Chapter three is called How to Get Big Things Done a Primary and what this chapter does is it explores a typography of connectional intelligence in the modern world. We talk about stories like how a pumpkin farmer in Rhode Island is changing agricultural practices in Indian.
Chapter four is called Connect Intelligently and this chapter continues to walk through a set of stories but it really looks through how the ever changing digital landscape typically now favors the brave, the quick, and the connectional intelligence to get big things done. We have stories in there of entrepreneurs, small businesses, and large businesses.
The title of chapter five is called Courage Builds On Courage and this chapter is where we talk about how connectional intelligence isn’t just about winning big in business or pursuing a big ambitious creative dream. Actually more and more people are using their own connectional intelligence to respond within minutes and hours to natural disasters, to violent aftermath of political events, and to tourist attacks. We look at powerful stories of connectional intelligence and we talk about how using courage is a key attribute of getting big things done.
Chapter six is called Connect and Make Change and in this chapter we talk about how you can use this idea to dramatically amp the reach and the influence of individuals. It’s about how anyone and everyone can tap in to what they care about most.
Chapter seven is called Problem Solving in the Power of Play and it’s all about how one of the most powerful forms of connectional intelligence is how individuals are designing problems in a way that actually attracts people to pitch in and solve them differently.
Chapter eight is called The Power of Difference and in this chapter we talk about one of the most important attributes of connectional intelligence and it’s that it allows people to come together but also stands strong in what makes them unique. We talk about how connectional intelligence actually enables what we call those that might consider themselves an outsider.
Chapter nine is called Why not? Reimagining what’s possible and in this chapter we have readers meet those who are changing the face of healthcare, education, and environmental change.
The final chapter is called Putting it All Together and it’s called Your Get Big Things Done Handbook. This chapter discussed how to apply connectional intelligence to your own life as an entrepreneur, as an initiator of change, and as disrupter.
This book is for everyone and anyone that see’s themselves as being able to use connectional intelligence in a way to get big things done.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 07:31
“Take a dream, add connection, dream bigger, get big things done.” – Erica Dhawan
I am the co-author of Get Big Things Done and I serve as a strategist for Fortune 500 companies, organizations, and small business owners, on accelerating the connectedness of their teams with their customers, their clients, and other stakeholders.
The inspiration starts with my personal story; I am a first generation daughter of two Indian immigrants here in the US and as you can imagine my goal since childhood was to check all the boxes of success. In the 2008 recession I witness firsthand confusion and burnout of my generation and I saw how many dreams and passions were being squashed every day. After the financial collapse I completely switched gears to find more meaning in both my work and to better understand how the next generation and leaders that wanted to stay in Corporate America could leverage our passion and purpose and all of the resources available to us. And what I found through that research was that many of the struggles were similar and the struggle was around how to work intentionally to get big things done. This is what led to me co-authoring research with a renowned business strategist named Saj-nicole Joni.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
Buy Get Big Things Done by Erica Dhawan on Amazon today
Visit GetBigThingsDone.com to learn more about the book
Visit EricaDhawan.com to learn more about Erica
Follow Erica Dhawan on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Getting Results The Agile Way by JD Meier
Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Do Less Better by John R Bell
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Getting Results the Agile Way according to J.D. Meier: Introduction In this episode J.D. Meier takes a deep dive into his book,Read More
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]]>In this episode J.D. Meier takes a deep dive into his book, Getting Results the Agile Way, where he shares a simple, effective guide for achieving long-term and short-term personal goals.
In his book Meier provides a very flexible, step-by-step time management system that offers you enough planning to get you going, but simple enough to change it up as need be. The goal of the book is to help you prepare your life from daily to yearly, find your true motivation, improve upon your productivity, and feed your energy with daily habits to move you forward every day.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who sacrifice their personal life for their work life, constantly live with to-do lists, and are looking for a way to make their daily lives less stressful yet more meaningful.
It’s a couple of things. I think that it’s the fact that it’s about simplicity; I really wanted to create a system that was easy to fall off but then very easy to get back on. I didn’t want people to feel intimidated by the system but I also wanted to be more than just a doing task kind of a system. I wanted it to be a system that focused on us as a person.
This book is designed that you can read it all the way through but I also wanted it to be a really quick reference book. I know that people are starved for time and looking to get quick insights so I also made it so that you can dive in and just get the pieces that you need.
If there is one thing to walk away with it’s the idea of thinking in three wins; thinking in terms of three win for your day, three wins for your week, three wins for your month, and three wins for your year. When you think about winning it adds the fun factor and brings you alive.
In the making of Getting Results the Agile Way the idea was to have it been more than just a book, I wanted to create a system for people and it’s a simple system.
In the first part of the book it introduces you to the system in a very simple way by stepping into the values, the principles, and the practices. It’s about giving you the foundation so that when you look at it you are not trying to break yourself against the system. Instead what you are doing is learning how to tweak the system and make it work better for you.
There are three key things upfront that the book lays out that are the big ideas which are the idea of the rule of three, the idea of hotspots, and the idea of a pattern that I call Monday Vision Daily Outcomes and Friday Reflection. I really focused on the idea that if you could get a day right, you could get a week right and if you could get a week right you could get a month right and if you can get that right you can get your year right. The idea of The Monday Vision Daily Outcome Reflection is meant to be very simple. It’s about focusing on what we could do with the time we’ve got, the energy we got, and the results that we want to accomplish. When you get to Friday you want to be able to list the three things that are going well and the three things that need to improve on.
So that’s the system in a nutshell when you look at it from a week’s standpoint but I wanted to dig a little bit deeper. People can get that very simple frame but I wanted to help them design a day, design a week, design a month, and design a year. So when I designed the day the idea was that you don’t have to design your day every day, instead you have to look for the patterns. The idea in designed your day was to improve your startup routine, your shutdown routine, and find the better times in your day where you might be more productive or creative. In designing your week it was a similar idea but in this case we look at what we actually want out of that week and design accordingly. In designing your month we have a lot of opportunity for course correction so we need to step back and figure out what the three wins we want are and target those wins. I find that designing a month can be a really powerful way of getting a big block of time that ends up working in our favor. When it comes to designing the year I find that it helps to first step back and know the three wins that you want out of it.
The whole middle part of the book is about becoming the whole architect of your life. It’s about what you want your days to look like, your weeks to look like, your months to look like, and your years to look like.
Towards the end of the book it gets pretty hardcore and it’s more of a drill down. Now that you know what your want out of your days, weeks, months, and year, we drill down into some of the key results, patterns, and strategies, the things that we can do that help us spend our time more effectively.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:16
“Where the life is a bowl of cherries and you get the pits or the world is your oyster and you look for the pearls, you decide. So choosing your mindset in metaphors is one of the most powerful things you can do to shape your everyday experience and ultimately your life.” – J.D. Meier
I work at Microsoft and been here several years but what I’m really focused on is helping businesses change. I’m in the business of business change but I also help people thrive in work and life.
The big thing was that I saw too many people living in pain and not doing the things that made them come alive. I saw people that simply didn’t flourish when I knew that they could and I want people to be all that they’re capable of. I really wanted people to be able to think, feel, and do their best.
Work from the Inside Out by Nancy O’Hara
Buy Getting Results the Agile Way by J.D. Meier on Amazon today
Visit GettingResullts.com to learn more about the book and exclusive content
Visit SourcesOfInsight.com to check out J.D.’s work and life blogs.
Follow J.D. Meier on Facebook and LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Do Less Better by John R. Bell
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Morning Routines of Very Wealthy People
10 Bad Habits That Successful People Avoid
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Procrastinate on Purpose according to Rory Vaden: Introduction In this episode New York Times bestselling author Rory Vaden reveals all his insightsRead More
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]]>In this episode New York Times bestselling author Rory Vaden reveals all his insights on his book, Procrastinate on Purpose, where he provides a guide for mastering time-management and productivity.
In his book Vaden shows you how the greatest leaders in the world have figured out how to literally multiply their time giving you tools and techniques that will empower you to master your productivity. The goal of the book is to teach you how to manufacture more time into your day, become more effective at work with less stress, and how utilize procrastination to your advantage.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs that are managing multiple projects or businesses at once and need an effective time management strategy that adds more time to their day.
The opening sentence of the book says that everything you know about time management is wrong. And as we have been working with our coaching clients we’ve noticed that most of the clichés that you hear about time management and productivity frameworks that people use were developed in the 80’s and 90’s. It’s been 15 years and think of how the world has changed since then. There are two core things that make this book different from every productivity book. The first one is that everything that you read about time management is all about logic, its tips and tricks, tools and technology, calendars and check lists. What we noticed is that today time management isn’t just logical, it’s emotional. We really tackle the human element of productivity and it’s a fascinating journey and discussion about how feelings of guilt, fear, anxiety, and worry drive our decisions about how we spend time. The second difference is that this book introduces an entirely new era of thinking.
This one is designed to be read from front to back.
The whole book is all built around this one sentence and the sentence is you multiply your time by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that give you more time tomorrow.
This book shows you how to literally create more time. The way you multiply time is by giving yourself permission to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow.
The first part of the book gets you to understanding how to multiply your time. The second part of the book is how to do it and we introduce a diagram called The Focus Funnel. This funnel has five strategies each of which that multiply time and we created a vision framework for that. And each of the five strategies has a corresponding permission.
Strategy number one is Eliminate because by saying no to something today it creates more time tomorrow because it means tomorrow you are not doing something that you would have otherwise been doing. But the emotional element comes in because most of us struggle with saying no and so we end up saying yes to things that we really should say no to. Anytime you end up saying yes to one thing you are simultaneously saying no to an infinite number of others. Now when you have that insight you have a foundation to give yourself the emotional permission to ignore which is the first of the five permissions. And from that standpoint you can now start saying no to things.
The second step of the focus funnel strategy is Automate which is the permission to invest. The third strategy is Delegate and that is the permission of the imperfect. And if a task cannot be eliminated, automated or delegated than the task shoots out the bottom of the funnel. At that point you know that you have a task that must be done and it must be done by you.
So there is only one remaining question but it’s one that most of us don’t ask because we have a fear of coming across as lazy. The remaining question is simple should I do this task now or can it wait until later? If the task must be done now than it’s not a eliminate, automate or delegate task it’s what we call concentrate which is the permission to protect. You are giving yourself permission to protect because that moment you have run task through the methodology and you have absolute conviction that it is the thing that must be done, it must be done by you, and it has the greatest impact of the longest period of time. But if the answer to that question is yes than I am encouraging you and challenging you to not just eliminate, automate or concentrate but to procrastinate on purpose. And that is where the title of the book comes from.
So Procrastinate on Purpose is really just one of the five strategies for multiplying your time. So what you do is pop that activity back to the top of the funnel and that activity is going to enter into a holding pattern where it is cycling through the funnel until at one point one of the other four strategies will come in to play.
The book isn’t so much about what you need to do with your life it’s about how to think and creating the next level of results in your business requires the next level of thinking.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 10:04
“Automation is to your time exactly what compounding interest is to your money.” – Rory Vaden
I am the Co-Founder of Southwestern Consulting and a New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs.
In Take the Stairs we talked about three different times of procrastination and we talk about classic procrastination. Classic procrastination is about consciously delaying the things we know we should be doing. There is another type of procrastination called Creative Avoidance which is a little bit different than classic procrastination because it’s unconscious. Also, in the book Take the Stairs we mentioned this new type of procrastination that we started noticing not in the lazy people but in the movers and shakers and we call it Priority Dilution. This new procrastination affects the entrepreneurs, the go-getters and yet it’s the same result. At the end of the day our most significant priorities are left unchecked, not because we are lazy but because as our star rises we unconsciously or consciously allow our attention to shift to less important but perhaps more urgent tasks. We decided that topic was such a hot button that we needed to dedicate a few years’ worth of research to solving the priority delusion problem.
Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
Buy Procrastinate on Purpose and Take the Stairs by Rory Vaden on Amazon today
Visit ProcrastinateOnPurpose.com to learn more about the book and watch the special webinar
Follow Rory Vaden on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland
The Now Habit by Neil Fiore
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Now Habit according to Neil Fiore: Introduction In this episode Neil Fiore takes a deep dive into his book, The NowRead More
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]]>In this episode Neil Fiore takes a deep dive into his book, The Now Habit, where he reveals all his insights on one of the most effective programs to combat procrastination.
In his book Fiore offers a comprehensive plan and actionable strategies to help you lower your stress and increase your time to enjoy guilt-free play. The goal of the book is to help any busy person start tasks sooner and accomplish them more quickly, without the anxiety brought on by the negative habits of procrastination and perfectionism.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are struggling to get things done in a timely manner and are looking for an effective strategy to become more efficient when it comes to large projects.
The other books come from what I call a puritanical view where you have to work harder and longer. My book works more strategically and psychologically in shifting around motivation and how to talk to yourself in a voice that is a voice of an affective but compassionate manager.
You can jump in where needed.
Focus your mind specifically on a time to start for about 5 to 15 minutes. This will replace the usual getting things done idea or I have to finish idea.
One of the reasons we procrastinate is that we have created a since of a burden that our life is just a long list of to-do’s. The typical way of trying to solve our problems in this society that we live in is to create greater pressure which only creates more rebellion. So one of the big psychological concepts here is that choice is a third place, it’s neither have to or want to. When you look at chapter one, Why We Procrastinate, you are probably going to identify yourself about having a long list of have-to-do’s and being unrealistic about your time.
In chapter two we talk about how we procrastinate. I have a schedule there which is you taking a few days or a week and writing down how you spend your time and where it goes. You will hopefully find some productive time but you will also get a sense of what your default habits are that take you away from focusing on the top priority issues.
In chapter three we go over a major concept of how you talk to yourself. If you are saying you have to, want to or need to, you are not telling your mind and body when to start or what to do.
From there I’ll skip to chapter six which is titled The Unscheduled. This chapter is called the unscheduled because it has two parts. In part one I give you a blank schedule that is 168 hours and you start off by not filling in work but play, meeting time, commute time, and sleep time so that you get down to a possible maybe 60 hours to work on your projects. From there you schedule in more play time so that it’s on your schedule and therefore it’s legitimate. In part two you use your schedule like a time clock and you begin to punch in and out every time you need at least 15 to 30 minutes of quality focused uninterrupted work.
The last chapter in this book is dealing with the procrastinator in your life and it has some very specific recommendations on gaining someone’s commitment rather than forcing them to comply.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 10:40
“Procrastination is not your problem; procrastination is your attempted solution. It’s your attempted solution for dealing with the stress and anxiety of starting or completing a task that is overwhelming or boring” – Neil Fiore
I was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey and that’s relevant because coming from a working class family without a lot of money I started working fairly young. By the time I was in high school I was working 15 hours a week at a local supermarket and in college up to 20 hours. I had to learn how to be a lot more efficient than my fellow students and I learned to start writing right when I was assigned an assignment and flesh it out on the bus going to work and finish on the bus coming home. So without realizing it I started to develop those skills very early.
The Now Habit was written while I was on a new job at the University of California. I was working 40 to 45 hours a week, enjoying California, and putting in 15 to 20 hours a week to work on my dissertation so I was extremely focused while busy. I was attempting to work with doctorial students and graduate students and noticed that they were procrastinating. So I realized that I had something valuable that I had taken for granted and wanted to help other people by sharing it in this book.
Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Buy The Now Habit by Neil Fiore on Amazon today
Visit NeilFiore.com to learn more about Neil and all his books
Follow Neil Fiore on Twitter and YouTube
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Habit Stacking by Steve Scott
SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>Who is David Allen and what you can learn from him: David Allen claims that he has had 35 professions by the age of 35. These include: a waiter, magician,Read More
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]]>David Allen claims that he has had 35 professions by the age of 35. These include: a waiter, magician, travel agent, vitamin distributor, gas station manager, karate teacher and another 30 more.
Obviously he didn’t succeed or master all of these professions. Nonetheless today he’s one of the world’s most renowned productivity experts and his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity has sold well more than 600,000 copies globally.
Besides being an author, David Allen is also a successful businessman who consults Fortune 500 companies. In the online arena, he’s known as the “The Godfather of Productivity.”
What entrepreneurship lessons can be learned from David Allen?
According to Allen, “Anxiety results from a lack of organization, preparation, control and action.”
Here are five thought-provoking lessons that entrepreneurs can learn from him and his book.
David Allen writes that it makes intellectual sense to start your business mission on a high note, but if your daily tasks are distracting, you may end up failing to focus on the bigger picture. Taking care of your inbox first and gaining full control of that will free up your mind to think bigger. If your home is what you are talking about, the equivalent of your in-box may be the laundry room calamity, the mail that piles up or the clutter which gets in the way of your bigger plans for your family and household.
David Allen mentions that in the face organizational, it will benefit you to do away with the list making habit, although he swears by it. Rather, he recommends having a calendar that is kept free of miscellanea with the following types of listings:
In his book, Allen writes that your filing system should be simple and easy to navigate through such that if you need to file something, you can pick it from your mail stack or email print and place it in the proper file within a minute. He further on explains that if your filing system is easy, fun and current, you will procrastinate and make the clutter worse.
He recommends having an A to Z filing system which will reduce search time, and must be within arm’s reach. He also states when your filing system reaches ¾ full, shred or recycle what’s outdated and consider digitalizing some.
Whether you are stay a at home mom, self-employed, retired or in the workforce, there are certain things you must do. Allen proposes a four criterion analysis to determine what you should do with your time.
Although this little nugget is buried deep in Allen’s book, it is however possibly one of the best pieces of advice. He explains our tendency to become overbooked for both our personal and work lives. He writes, “You will have to say no to more things and more often to stay comfortable and afloat.”
For this he recommends a section called ‘The Weekly Review’ where you put aside an hour or two to reflect on what you did the past week, what needs to be done the following week and if there’s anything that went by without being attended to. The review will help you view how you managed to commit yourself to different tasks and what you can do about your level of commitment in the future.
To conclude, would-be entrepreneurs can employ some of these tips if not all to ensure productivity and efficiency which will eventually lead to quicker project completion times and higher revenue.
Buy Getting Things Done on Amazon today
Get a behind-the-scenes look at Getting Things Done with David Allen himself
Visit GettingThingsDone.com to learn more about David, his book, and exclusive content
Follow David Allen on Twitter and Facebook
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Stuff I Wish I’d Known When I Started Working according to Fergus O’Connell: Introduction In this episode Fergus O’Connell takes a deepRead More
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]]>In this episode Fergus O’Connell takes a deep dive into his book, Stuff I Wish I’d Known When I Started Working, where he provides the tips and tools you need to work faster.
In his book, O’Connell teaches you how to avoid the common mistakes of other aspiring business goers and skip a few rungs on the corporate ladder. The goal of the book is to help you be more effective, more accountable, more visible, and less afraid.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who want learn from the mistakes of other successful people and need a fast-track guide to getting more done in less time.
We looked and found that there were no other books out there that came at work from this particular angle.
This is a jump in and jump out kind of book.
It’s not talent that gets people where they want to be its commitment and perseverance.
In the book we have identified 24 areas where I have written the kind of stuff that I learned along the way. A couple of the chapters are about things like aiming high and a second chapter is about appreciating life. It’s all right to have very ambitious dreams but you have also got to live in the moment. There is another chapter about why it is good to be creative and another on why it’s good to fail. There are 8 to 10 chapters that take an idea and try to sell the reader on that particular idea.
In one chapter I talk about the four things that I have learned about bosses. The first thing that I learned is that bosses are actually human and since they are human they will make mistakes. A second thing about bosses is that they like to have their problems solved. I’ve also learned that bosses tend to be delusional. And lastly bosses seem to think that long hours are productive which is not true.
We have chapters in the book which are how-to chapters and for example there is a chapter on common sense. The seven principles of common sense are firstly that many things a simple. The second principle is the importance of knowing exactly what you are trying to do. The third is planning and figuring out the sequence of events in advance. The fourth principle is that stuff doesn’t get done if there aren’t people to do them. The fifth principle is that things rarely turn out as expected. The sixth thing is that things either are or they aren’t. And the last principle is the golden rule of looking at things from other people’s point of view because if we did we would get a much clearer understand rather than just seeing it through our own eyes. I encourage the reader to spend a week or two applying these ideas and seeing the world through this prism.
“Commitment gets you started and perseverance keeps you going.” – Fergus O’Connell
I graduated with a degree in mathematical physics and then I went in to software development and worked in that for about 10 or 12 years. In 1992 I started my own project management consulting and training company and that’s one of the things I’ve been doing ever since as well as writing books in the area of project management and time management. I have this alternative life as a novelist as well.
I was thinking one day about how I’d like to be 19 again and to have all the knowledge and wisdom I have now. I was thinking of it in terms of life generally but then I thought a book which thought from the perspective purely of business might be a good thing to do.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner
Buy Stuff I Wish I’d Known When I Started Working by Fergus O’Connell on Amazon today
Visit FergusOConnell.com to learn more about Fergus and all his books
Follow Fergus O’Connell on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Getting Things Done by David Allen | People Tools For Buisness by Alan Fox | Habit Stacking by S.J. Scott
Relevant advice and tips: 7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Hit The Mark according to Erik Fisher Introduction In this episode Erik Fisher shares his book, Hit The Mark, where he givesRead More
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Hit The Mark according to Erik Fisher
In this episode Erik Fisher shares his book, Hit The Mark, where he gives you practical and motivational advice on handling focus, approaching your goals, and maximizing your success.
In his book, Fisher outlines tips to help you improve your focus, strategies to help you get the most out of your time, energy boosters to make you feel better, and techniques to make you not feel like a robot. The goal of this book is to improve your focus, boost your energy, and crush time management.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are having trouble getting the most out of a day’s work because of fatigue, low motivation, and continuous distractions.
There really is not another book out there that is as focused as this one is about doing your work and continually doing it even when you don’t feel like it.
I think it’s best to read the whole thing straight through.
You have to look at where you are not hitting the mark and analyze why you’re not hitting it. Through trial and error figure out why you’re not and how you can.
Everyone has something that they need to do, something that needs to get done. Knowing what needs to get done is half the part but actually doing it is what really matters. As we go through the book we talk about where energy and time intersect for focus so that you can find your sweet spot and assign the right amount of time to each task at hand.
We talk about mental distractions, focusing on your strengths and what motivates you so that you can bust through and blaze past those distractions. It is a lot of walking through what you think and feel. When you rationalize things as real work, that aren’t real work, you instill bad habits in to your routine and end up not getting anything done.
“When you work at the right time you get more work done.” – Erik Fisher
People may know me from the internet as a person who writes, podcasts and is community manager over at Social Media Examiner. I podcast at beyondthetodolist.com and the most recent book I co-authored was Hit The Mark.
The idea was that we want you to improve your focus, boast your energy and make the most of your time. We knew we needed to go to a place where we talk about those things that help you continue to move forward and have forward momentum on those goals.
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Buy Hit The Mark by Erik Fisher on Amazon today
Visit BeyondTheToDoList.com to learn more about Erik’s book and podcast
Follow Erik Fisher on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Limitless Energy by Brandon Epstein | The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod | The Upside of Your Dark Side by Todd Kashdan
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Scrum according to Jeff Sutherland Introduction In this episode Jeff Sutherland shares his book, Scrum, where he brings you a thought-provoking bookRead More
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Scrum according to Jeff Sutherland
In this episode Jeff Sutherland shares his book, Scrum, where he brings you a thought-provoking book about the management process that is changing the way we live.
In his book, Sutherland lays out his widely used project management system called Scrum which is a simple framework for solving the most intricate work problems effectively. The goal of the book is to simplify your work life, increase productivity, and get more done in less time than before.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are struggling with managing small teams, increasing performance, and making forward progress with large projects.
If you go to Amazon you will see that this book has moved up to the top of the list on time management. Scrum is about getting things done with teams and teams are much more powerful than the individual.
It’s specifically not designed as a reference book but designed to tell the stories about why Scrum works. Any way you read you will find a very interesting story focused on a critical issue for teams getting work done.
The key issue is that within every person and team is a spirit of greatness that lays untapped and to tap that trying to use a traditional management style will not work. You must become a different type of leader and scrum gives you an organizational structure to bring out from the team that greatness that is within.
The first chapter of the book is titled The Way the World Works is Broken. Research shows that most people hate work. The only thing that is worse than going to work is being sick in bed. The reason I believe is the fundamental driver of this problem is that people can’t get stuff done. The whole idea of teams self-organizing to get great results is key to Scrum. So this chapter explains why things are broken and how Scrum fixes them.
That leads us into the second chapter which explains the origins of Scrum.
In the third chapter we get more focused on the teams. A lot of managers don’t understand that the difference in the best performers and the worst performers as individuals is 1 to 10. But if you look at the difference between the best teams and the worst teams it’s 1 to 2,000. So the team effect is two orders of magnitude bigger than the individual effect. So as a manager if you take a team and try to increase productivity person by person it will take you a long time and maybe forever. If you implement Scrum with a cross functional team and you focus the team on the goal they can double their production in a few weeks. This chapter focuses on how you can get teams to do twice the work in half the time.
The fourth chapter is all about time. You need to measure production instead of hours and in this chapter we show you how to plan.
Chapter five explains what happens when you are focused on measuring hours. If you measure hours you get a lot of waist. People think they have to hang around at their desk and punch their clock by doing nothing. We show systematically in this chapter how to build a cross functional team that gets on a self-improvement cycle that is continually removing waist from the system and accelerating faster and faster.
From there we move in to planning and Scrum uses reality base planning. This chapter gives the entrepreneur the nuts and bolts on how to get this implemented in the company with a lot of stories and examples the planning and implementation.
In the seventh chapter we describe how to get employees so motivated and happy that they never leave your company, they get twice the work done in half the time, they have fun while doing it and they are making sure the company objectives are being met. The bottom line is that happiness drives revenue and we show lots of stories on why that works.
Scrum in the art of getting twice the work done in half the amount of time.
“The entire armed forces need to get agile.” – Unknown
I am a CEO of a company called Scrum Inc. I had a career as a fighter pilot which is part of what led to the book we are going to talk about. I spent 11 years in the air force and what I learned flying over North Vietnam is imbedded in my book. When I got back I completed an advance degree in medical school and was a professor of radiology, biometrics and preventative medicine. I was then hired away from the medical school in to a large banking company and when I looked at what they were doing in software I implemented what I learned from medical school and the military and that resulted in the creation of Scrum.
Several years ago I wrote a book called Software in 30 days and in there we focused mainly on IT and software development. There is still a debate on what works and doesn’t work and I wanted to amplify on that. I also wanted to talk about how Scrum is moving outside of software development and tell all the great stories that I couldn’t get into my software book.
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
Buy Scrum by Jeff Sutherland on Amazon today
Visit ScrumInc.com to learn more about Jeff, his company, and Scrum
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: How To Succeed in 12 Months by Serena Star-Leonard | Getting Things Done by David Allen | Smartcuts by Shane Snow
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Business Failure Now that you have started a new business, brace yourself for failure. Sounds a little pessimistic – doesn’t it? Well, every entrepreneur needsRead More
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]]>5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Business Failure
Now that you have started a new business, brace yourself for failure. Sounds a little pessimistic – doesn’t it? Well, every entrepreneur needs to be prepared for the worst. Even super successful individuals such as Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Colonel Sanders, or Henry Ford didn’t succeed at their first attempt.
In fact, it took most successful entrepreneurs and leaders multiple attempts to reach their goals. What was the likely key to their ultra success? It’s their approach that differentiated them. As Edison summed it up – “I haven’t failed; I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work”.
But the question is – why do startups fail often? The reason is simple – you just don’t have the necessary experience to run a business. This leads you to make many mistakes, and soon they start to make a significant impact on your day. No planning, forgetting taxes, emotional pricing, wasting money on unnecessary details, and so on lead to trouble.
And if you don’t identify your mistakes and rectify them on time, you end up as a failure. But if you think it is the end of the road, you are seriously on your path to a letdown in your life. It is at this time that you need to think and act and turn your failure into success.
How do you do it? Here’s how I’ve learned that top entrepreneurs overcome business failure:
Switch to a positive mode
No, it doesn’t mean you try to fake a smile and look happy even when you feel down in the dumps. It implies that you treat your failure as a life lesson. Don’t fight it; embrace it. Only then you will be able to understand what an experience it was. Create a spreadsheet and write down what you did right and what you didn’t.
Appraise your assets
Be it an office space that you have leased or great relationships that you have created – don’t ignore their potential. Consider what worked splendidly for your startup – was it your employees, or, your certain client relations, or, your intellectual property? Draw up a chart to understand and evaluate your best assets.
Sell off whatever you can
Whether you want to give away your business or sell it, you need to get in touch with the right people. If you think that it may still work, keep a percentage in it. If not, just give it away to a new entrepreneur. If you decide to sell, don’t be shy; contact everyone you know to see who you can sell it off to.
Read up
Akio Morita began Sony selling a rice cooker. But it burned the rice. Yet, Sony is one of the best success stories of today. Fred Smith almost failed his business management course with his business idea. It later developed into FedEx. And good old Edison actually failed more than 9000 times before he made the light bulb.
Most importantly, start again
Now that you have failed, you have two choices – you can leave it and go back to where you were before you tried entrepreneurship. Or, you can get up, brush off the dust from your fall and tread along towards your next venture. And when you choose the second option, you will have the lesson you learned to guide you.
Success in business, quite similar to success in life, is not dependent on whether you make it at the first jump. It relies on whether you have the courage to get up and get going and make your failure just a stepping stone on your journey to success.
The Art of War for Small Business by Becky Sheetz-Runkle | Listen to my interview with Becky here
The Road To Reinvention by Josh Linkner | Listen to my interview with Josh here
Getting Things Done by David Allen | Listen to my interview with David here
Invent Reinvent Thrive by Lloyd Shefsky | Listen to my interview with Lloyd here
The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz | Listen to my interview with Mike here
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Getting Things Done according to David Allen Introduction In this episode, best-selling author, David Allen provides a deep dive into his bookRead More
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]]>In this episode, best-selling author, David Allen provides a deep dive into his book Getting Things Done. In his book Allen gives you a step-by-step guide to create a model and methodology to approaching and addressing the world we live in today. Through his 5 stages you will learn how to set an idea or project under control ensuring that your productivity is not costing you dearly. This book is a must have for all entrepreneurs who are in need of some guidance for crafting a well-organized work ethic.
My book is relatively timeless, meaning the principals are as old as dirt and they tend to be true no matter who uses them. This methodology starts with where you are, not with where you should be.
Your head is for having ideas, not for holding them.
I start out by talking about why the old methods really don’t work very well given the kind of world that we are in these days. I spend some time talking about why we need a model or methodology to approach and address the kind of world that we are in today.
There is a chapter in the beginning where I talk about the five stages that you need to engage in in order to get something under control. It turns out that there are five stages we all go through in order to be able to really get something under control and to be able to make it work. The first stage is to be able to collect the things that have your attention. What is it that’s on your mind? The second stage is how to process the things that you’re captured by. Stage three is how to organize the results of that thinking.
Stage four is how to step back and review and how to engage with these lists that you have collected.
Stage five is how to make the appropriate choice out of all the options of calls you have to make, errands you have to run, and things you need to handle. Once you have a project or a situation I introduce people to what you call a nature planning model. Our brains naturally plan and they do it automatically but the natural model is not the normal model. So the first part of the book is a way for people to get a quick grasp of what this methodology is if you were to apply that. As simple as those things sound, we are not born doing any of that.
In part two I tell you if you were to buy in to this idea, how would you go implement it, what would this really look like? I walk people through the coaching process that I developed over 20-30 years and describe what that process is.
The last part of the book is oh by the way because a lot of people want the model but I couldn’t resist saying there is a lot more to this that meets the eye. There are a lot of incredible and powerful things that start to happen once people start to implement these fairly simple behaviors that goes way beyond what you might think.
“Your head is to be freed up to make intuitive decisions about your options, not to remember or remind them.” – David Allen
I wrote a book called Getting Things Done after 20-25 years of doing the work that the book is about in my own consulting practice and in the corporate training/coaching world. I have a small company still doing coaching and training around the world and that’s my professional of who I am and what I am doing.
It took me 25 years to figure out what I figured out. I found things that really worked and I also wanted to create a model that worked for everybody so that it didn’t matter either what level you were at or what kind of industry you were in. Overtime I discovered that it didn’t seem like anybody came up with the same model I did and the model turned out to be bulletproof.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Buy Getting Things Done by David Allen on Amazon today
Visit GettingThingsDone.com for an interactive look inside the book
Follow David Allen on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Habit Stacking by Steve J Scott | Work Smarter by Nick Loper | Smartcuts by Shane Snow
Relevant advice and tips: 7 Productivity Tools for Entrepreneurs to Make Life Easier | The Advantages of Technology in the Life of an Entrepreneur
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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