Priorities

Priorities

Success minded people at the beginning of their day have some idea of what they want to accomplish.  Those who have been at their craft for many years may be able to keep a list in the mind.  Many of us begin the day with a written list.  For some reason the ritual of making the list imprints it upon the day and the focus is sharper than otherwise.

Stephen Covey

Covey wrote the classic work on effectiveness with his Opus, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”  The book has no peers.  I will summarize the habits below, from memory:

• Be Proactive - No excuses, you are fully responsible for your life
• Begin with the End in Mind - Create the vision before executing
• First Things First - Important things are never subordinated to unimportant things
• Seek first to Understand then to be Understood - This sequence is important for Influence
• Think Win-Win - Think long term when making deals.
• Synergize - If you can get the group into a creative zone, with ideas flowing, you understand this.
• Sharpen the Saw - take care of you Body, Mind, Heart, and Spirit or you will pay the price of neglect.

Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss in his book, “The 4 Hour Workweek,” explains the 80-20 rule of a priority list.  What are the 2 things I need to do today that will give me the greatest output in accomplishing my goals?  No more than 2!  In time, you may get to the higher level of effectiveness where  you only put one item on the list - this is when you know you really have yourself together!  For us mortals, no more than 2 items on the list.  

Priority Means Focus

When I began my career, I followed a training program that a Covey spinoff suggested, using a Franklin Planner.  You would list all the things you had to do for the week, and then put them on schedule for each day of the week.  Then, for each day, you would label each item on the checklist A, B and C.  A items had to be done today. B items may slip until tomorrow, but no further.  C items could be done anytime that week, or could slip to the next week.  

What is the problem here?  There is no focus.  There is a list of crap on paper.  We need to delegate and outsource everything to a point where we have no more than 2 things on our list every day as Priority.  

When you have a list of crap that you “have to do,” most people are overwhelmed and often give up and go back to the “seat of the pants” life of the moment.  This is not good.  You have to write down what you need to accomplish, and you have to do it in a way that you are not overwhelmed.  So, one or two priorities!  There is nothing wrong with a list in the background that you look at every week or so.  But, you cannot be looking at the long list every day, because you will lose focus on the Priority Item - Number one and number two.  

Maturity

Someone famous once said that the essence of maturity is making choices.  When you choose one option, you destroy the alternative.  When you spend one hour eating lunch in New York, you destroy the option of eating lunch in Miami.  Time cannot be gotten back.  

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Freddy Martini  

Burning Bridges

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Burning Bridges

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These are some notes and ideas from the books of Napoleon Hill.

Burn Your Ships

Napoleon Hill spends a lot of time explaining this in his book “Think and Grow Rich.”  When a man has a goal and a plan in his mind, and he sets himself up in pursuit of this goal and blocks all his paths to retreat to the point where he must succeed or fail, this calls upon all resources of creativity, persistence, and efficiency to win.  It is the winning mentality.  Winners set themselves up in a win-lose situation to the point where their hand is forced to win.  

Decide Quickly

This is somewhat related to “Burn your ships.”  Deciding quickly and moving forward contains the secret.  This is because the decision is not as important as movement and action.  We can usually follow a bad decision with a better decision - and that is the point.  Decide quickly, move, and make adjustments when needed.  But, movement and action are necessary - and necessary as soon as possible.  

Making the “right” decision is not the correct approach!

Root of Fear

Hill’s point is that Fear has a root, and to get rid of fear, one must strike at the root of Fear.  Indecision produces Doubt.  Doubt produces Fear.  Thus: Indecision -> Doubt -> Fear.  Strike out indecision, and Fear goes away.  

Think about this the next time you are feeling even a little bit of fear.  Ask yourself, “What have I not decided that is producing this Fear response?”  Identify the Indecisiveness, make a decision, and the Fear will vanish.  Sometimes we are unaware of the things that are producing fear.  With this formula, you may backtrack to identify where you are being indecisive.  It is a simple procedure.

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Stay tuned for the next essay discussing Napoleon Hill’s “The Mystery of Sex Transmutation” chapter from the same book.

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Freddy Martini  

Random Notes 20150321

Random Notes 20150321

Friday, March 20, 2015

Body-Mind

Life coaches such as Tony Robbins have posited that the Mind and Body are closely linked.  To change your mental state, begin moving your body differently.  When you speak over the phone, the other person will hear and sense on a subconscious level your facial expressions and your body movement even though they cannot see you - you cannot fake this.

If you are depressed, you body is turning inward and drooping.  Change your body and you can snap out of it (assuming no underlying medical condition).  

To get in Peak State every morning I do a variation from the following menu:

• Shadow box each fist until the count total gets to 20
• Resistance tubes 5 times on bicep, forearm and squat
• Do 80 jumping jacks
• Push fists upward, then pull into chest violently and shout “Yah!!”
• Make a foot fist with each foot alternating with each step and count to 20 then stop.
• 20 sets of Breath Walking (look it up on youTube)
• 5 very deep breaths imagining that water is pouring over you and in and out your lungs.

In summary, the body and mind are linked tightly.  Change your movement and you can change your emotional and spiritual state.

Napoleon Hill

Hill claims that the secret to wealth will reveal itself only when one is ready for it.  This is true for many things.  The clarity of seeing large areas of the Earth from a plane comes from being high above the ground.  In the same manner, age brings us, in a way, to a higher view of things that we did not see when younger.  I recall at the age of 16 when my brain suddenly expanded to the point where I understood things at an astonishing rate that I had not gotten before.  The same experience happened when I began the practice of focused meditation around the age of 32.  Now, at the age of 40, I am more “ready” for some ideas that five years ago I would have considered absurd or silly.  What are some of these things?  

• Peak State is not a luxury, but a necessary practice to get exponentially better results.  Being in Peak State is a hell of a lot of work, but well worth it.
• Spirituality is necessary for higher quality strategic thinking.
• Drama is Truth for some people - for these people scientific reductionism has no meaning at all.  And, they are correct in more ways than one.
• Decisions are made on an emotional level.  We merely use logic to justify what we have already decided to “get the story straight.”
• All human endeavors involve Body, Mind, Heart, and Spirit.  We can also say, in other words, Material, Mental, Emotional, and Meaningful.  Neglect of any of these will lead to the destruction and poverty of the souls participating.

East versus West

After years of studying philosophy, history, theology, the split between the East and the West comes down to Plato versus Aristotle.  Plato’s world is that of an imperfect physical world as an opaque reflection of the perfect realm of Ideas, or heaven; Christianity is Augustine’s “City of God.”  Aristotle’s world is that of Four Causes: Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final causes.  The Protestant and Catholic West is Aristotelian, interpreted through Thomas Aquinas.  The Eastern Orthodox is Platonic, as interpreted through the Fathers.  The West takes argumentation very seriously.  The East takes the City of God concept very seriously.   

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Freddy Martini  

Pareto Winning Strategy

Pareto Winning Strategy

The 80/20 Rule is Divine

• 80 percent of the outputs are caused by 20 percent of the inputs.

People have changed their life upon discovering this principle of personal effectiveness.  Tim Ferris in his book, “The Four Hour Workweek,” made a big deal out of the Pareto Principle.  Stephen Covey, the guru of personal effectiveness, called this Quadrant Two, in his popular book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”

Stephen Covey and the Seven Habits

Stephen Covey popularized the now famous Matrix with Urgency on the X-axis and Importance on the Y-Axis.  Quadrant One is both Urgent and Important, while Quadrant Two is Important but not Urgent.  He recommends retooling our lives to spend most of our time in Quadrant Two.  Many important but not urgent things often get dropped like relationship building, creativity, recreation, exercise, and planning.  But these things give us the biggest bang for our buck - they are the 20% of inputs that give us the greatest output of 80%.

Pareto 20% causes 80%

Pareto noticed something interesting.  The ration of 20/80 applied in many areas.  80% of the wealth is owned by 20% of the population.  80% of your revenues come from only 20% of your customers.  80% of your problems come from 20% of the people you interact with.  Focusing on your top 20% priorities will give you the biggest bang for an 80% return on effects.

Strategy for Success

Tim Ferris in his book, “The Four Hour Workweek,” describes something very similar to the following.  The night before you begin you next day, sit with a notepad and write down all the things you think you are supposed to do for the next few days.  (Do not use a computer or any other electronic device for this task as electronics will distract you and even cause you to write 100 tasks, which is ridiculous.)  Hone down the list to the top 20% that will push you toward your top 3 highest priorities.  Write down only 2 tasks on this piece of paper to do tomorrow.  Do not end your day until these items are complete.  If you do not complete one of these two, perhaps you need to think more carefully about what really is important for that day next time you perform this evaluation.  Take at most 2 hours to perform each task.  Force yourself to complete each task within 2 hours or fewer.  This is Parkinson’s Rule per Tim Ferris.  When you force yourself to perform a task within a limited or even insane amount of time, you cut out the unnecessary fat from the task, leaving only the essential.  Non-essentials are exactly that: not essential!  So, why do non-essential things for work?  Save this time for recreation and relationship time, or study time.

What to Ignore

We are granted 24 hours in a day.  We must spend this limited amount of time on something.  When we choose to spend it on X, we choose not to spend it on Y.  We must understand this clearly.  We cannot do everything we want to do in one day.  We have to focus on things that give us the biggest return on investment - the biggest bang for the buck.  So, ignore people when they say foolish things like “Everything is important!”  No, not everything is important.  The word important suggests priorities, and priorities suggest that our time is better spent on some things rather than other things.  We are capable of filling our schedules with crap - and this happens by default unless we control this process by focusing on our highest priorities.

So, as yourself at least 4 times per day, “What are the top 20% of important things that I should be spending time on?”  Look at your bottom 80% of low priorities and cut them out completely.  Do not hesitate if you want to be a high performer.  Letting unimportant things slide is the more important skill in setting priorities and goals.  Forget the bottom 80%.  Forget it!  Perhaps you may delegate it, but under no circumstance are you to act on the bottom 80% of your priorities.

Focus on your top 20% of priorities and forget the bottom 80%.

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Freddy Martini

Effectiveness: Avoiding Procrastination

Effectiveness: Avoiding Procrastination

It is a man’s responsibility to conquer his world.  This involves setting goals, planning, and execution of such plans.  It also involves constantly updating goals and plans, and strategies of execution.

One problem is the setting of goals.  How does one know which goals to choose?  I tend to come from the Stephen Covey School of personal effectiveness, and it has not failed me in the pursuit of long-term goals.  One needs to assess both one’s self and the outside world.  Thus, a man needs to evaluate three things:

• Strengths
• Skills
• Market Needs  

Do not try to make complicated elaborate schemes at this point.  As in war, the simple plans are complicated enough, and a complicated plan has too many facets involving risk management when one is first beginning with this exercise.  Look at this diagram:

This Venn diagram can take you very far, and it helps you to keep things simple.  The Sweet Spot is where your skills are strong, and these skills are in your strength zone and the market demands your skills.  This is the best place to be, and every man needs to pursue the goal of getting in the Sweet Spot if one is to be successful.  The old Biblical concept of “what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul” is implicit in this diagram.

So, do you procrastinate?  This is s signal that this particular thing is not within your strength zone, but you are pursuing it for some reason.  Often it is a dead end job for which we think “we need the money.”  Sometimes it is the pull of family into tasks that are not suited to our nature.  In any case, this usually puts us into the Burnout Zone.  When any market demands of you something you are good at, but for which you have no passion in your soul for it, eventually, you will likely burnout on this task.  Perhaps you should delete this task from your list.  Perhaps you can outsource this task to someone else, or hire someone to do it.  There is a danger in staying in the Burnout Zone too long.  One loses perspective, strength, passion, and one can become depressed.  In fact, being depresses, lacking any physical problems usually, usually has its roots in burnout, and burnout almost always involves doing things outside of our Strength Zone.

What are you to do?  Find out where you are on the diagram above, and draw an arrow from where you are toward the direction of the sweet spot.  Then evaluate your life on how to move in line with this arrow.  And, evaluate yourself every week or so.