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Why does your mission matter? Why is your mission worthy of sacrifice or investment? Why should others contribute to your mission? Why should your customers choose you over another brand? Define your theme and you’ll know why.
Define the theme of your business so that you, your team, and your customers will know why your work matters.
Many professionals work hard but get little done. Their frantic activity only serves to move them around in circles. There is one reason for this and it’s that their life lacks focus.
In all my years studying story, I came to believe that a human being’s life has the most meaning when they live it as though they are a hero on a mission. When we are a hero on a mission, we have little room for frantic activity. We know what we want, what opposes us, and what we must accomplish to solve some of the world’s problems.
Value-driven professionals are heroes on a mission. They know what they should be working on and do not get distracted.
The truth is, our brains do not like to be confused about how we are supposed to spend our time. Not being confused, though, takes discipline and focus.
If you want to be a value-driven professional, learn a daily routine that increases your output without increasing your anxiety.
A productive professional starts the day with reflection. Every morning I ask myself one simple question. This question ensures I will not let the day get away from me and that I will make progress on my goals.
In helping his patients live with more wisdom and discretion, he asked them to live as if they were already living that day for the second time, as if they had acted wrongly the first time and were about to relive the day having learned from that day the first time around. In other words, Frankl said, “Pretend this is the second time you lived this day and don’t make the same mistakes.”
Another way to word Frankl’s question is this: At the end of the day, what will you have regretted doing or not doing?
I’ve met very few high-impact people who do not journal or in some way take time to reflect. It’s by reflecting that we edit our actions and design our lives.
Those who do not reflect neither edit nor design—they simply respond. The sad truth about this reality is their lives are still being designed—they’re just being designed by outside forces that do not have their best interests at heart. Most people’s life stories are dictated by friends, family, corporate commercials, or politicians with an agenda. It’s time to take control of your own story.
Create a routine of reflection by asking yourself the morning question: If I were living this day for the second time around, what would I do differently?
DAY SEVENTEEN How to Be Productive—Prioritize Your Primary Tasks A value-driven professional knows how to prioritize their highest return opportunity.
What’s the most important thing you can do today? If you can answer that question, morning after morning, you are in an elite group of professionals.
A value-driven professional knows where to invest hard-earned calories and what work to avoid or delegate. And because they know these things, they do not feel anxiety about their work. They are good and calm managers of their time and energy.
The reason you want to make two lists is because your mind will not know the difference between what is very important and the random tasks that need to be done at some point in the near future. A value-driven professional knows the difference between primary and secondary tasks.
My priority tasks, for example, are normally about creating some form of content. I work on a book or a business course or presentation every day, and only after I finish that writing session will I begin to return calls and engage in meetings.
The reason we only want to list three prioritized tasks is because listing more than three will feel too burdensome and will likely make you want to quit before you begin. Most of my prioritized tasks are small parts of much larger projects. If I’m writing a book, for example, it will take me more than a year to finish, so I need to prioritize little pieces of that book every day.
Beware. Many tasks will present themselves as important, but they are not. You may get word about something that feels urgent, but the truth is that it’s somebody else’s job to handle it. Somebody may be coercing you into a meeting, but the truth is that meeting doesn’t serve your highest priorities.
I like to call these temptations “urgent distractions” because they feel urgent but are truly just distractions.
Every day, we must always know what our three highest return opportunities are, or else low-return opportunities will feel more important. So, how do you know what your highest return opportunities are? To know what our highest return opportunities are, we need to reverse engineer our overall objectives. Any work that moves us closer to our objectives is a high-return ...
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Every day make two task lists. List three items that are your highest return opportunities and then create a separate list of tasks that are not as important as your three highest priorities.
How to Be Productive—Maximize Your “Power Hours” A value-driven professional knows to prioritize their important work for the morning.
Everybody’s brain works a little bit differently, but for most people, especially people over twenty-five, their best work gets done in the morning.
If you take a call or start responding to random emails before starting on your most pressing project, you’re giving valuable mental energy to low-return opportunities and likely wasting the most valuable hours of your day.
Not only this, but if you block time for your important projects in the morning, you get to spend the rest of the day knowing you’ve already completed the important tasks.
Prioritize your highest-return opportunities for the morning, when your mind is fresh.
A great communicator knows what to leave out.
It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? You’d think a great communicator would know what to say, and of course they do, but the harder part is that once they say the right thing, they have to stop themselves from saying anything else.
Early in my career, I made my money through public speaking. I would be paid a decent amount every time I flew somewhere and gave a speech. Soon I realized that the more I spoke, the less I was able to write. And without releasing a book every couple years, fewer people would think of me when they were choosing a speaker. I had to make a strategic decision to turn down good money speaking in order to stay home and write more books. It was a scary decision, but that’s what I did. Within two years, though, I had another bestseller and was able to charge four times my initial speaking fee
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It turns out I’m not alone. Stephen King hardly takes any speaking events at all. This is the primary reason he’s been able to write so many books. King has sold tens of millions of books and could fill his schedule with lucrative meetings and speaking events, but he doesn’t. Each morning he shows up at his desk, turns on his computer, and writes his daily quota of words. And because of this discipline, and the thousands of times he’s said “no” to terrific opportunities, millions of readers know and love his work.
Few people realize that one of the keys to Stephen King’s success is his disciplined ability to reject distracting opportunities in exch...
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What are you saying no to in order to say yes to a focused and meaningful life?
A value-driven professional knows how to block their time.
Blocking periods of time in which you cannot be distracted is the equivalent of getting into the fast lane and pressing the gas pedal.
After your morning ritual of reflection and committing to your highest priorities, continue to block your time for the rest of the day (see Figure 3.5). In one-, two-, and three-hour chunks, you can accomplish a great deal. Multitasking, however, or simply letting the day’s distractions dictate your direction, results in less productivity.
Your entire career is based on increasing output as it relates to your activity. A value-driven professional can get twice as much done in the same period of time as a professional who does not use time strategically.
High-performance professionals block their time weeks in advance. For me, all day Monday, Tuesday until noon, and Wednesday until noon are reserved for writing. Early afternoons on Tuesday and Wednesday are reserved for meetings, and Thursdays and half of Fridays are reserved for podcast and video recordings. I also block out Friday afternoon for personal time and evenings and weekends for friends and family.
Blocking my time in advance allows me to say no to distractions because, well, I’m already booked.
The Right Engine: Marketing The engines thrust the plane forward. In a single-engine airplane, you’d likely only have a marketing budget, but in a dual-engine aircraft, you have a marketing budget and a sales team.
Your marketing effort should come first, even before sales. The reason is—the marketing effort is usually cheaper, and until it exists, your sales team will not have a clear message out in the marketplace that backs up their efforts.
Your second engine is your sales effort. Your sales team brings in even more money so the business can afford to grow and scale.
Fuel: Capital and Cash Flow
Having enough cash to operate your business is, by far, the most important factor leading to business success.
How Do You Keep the Business Flying? If the parts of an airplane are not in proportion to each other, the airplane will crash.
The right and left engine must produce enough thrust to move the plane forward, and the wings must be big enough to create lift. The body of the plane must be light enough to be lifted by the engine and the wings. And, of...
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Based on the simple metaphor of the airplane, here are some things smart business leaders keep in mind as they run a company or a division of a company:
They are resistant to adding costs (especially recurring costs) to overhead.
