Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors: Covert Techniques for a Remarkable Practice

by David C. Baker

The idea is to divide your week into three kinds of days. The first kind (Preparation), which will comprise three or four days of each week, are the days when you get things off your plate or clear the deck. I call these Preparation days because they are designed to enable you to do something else. These are full of all the little things that won’t change your life but must get done anyway. You’ll do 20 of these in a day and it’ll feel good to check them off, but all together they don’t amount to much real impact. Think of these as the things you do so that you can concentrate without distractions during the second type of day. The second kind of day (Contribution), which will only be one or two days per week, is when you get real work done. These are the days when you are changing your world. You write your marketing plan or you invent a new service offering or you shape some original research for a talk you’re going to give. It’s uninterrupted time because you’ve cleared your plate in order to do some deep work that isn’t otherwise possible. Maybe it’s in the office or offsite. The third type of day (Perspective) is the weekend, for most people. It’s when you become a normal human again, reconnect with people, pursue hobbies, do physical labor, read, and largely forget about work. They are Perspective days because they keep you grounded. You soak things up like a sponge, often learning things that have nothing to do with your professional expertise.