The title of this post is a little arrogant because I have no empirical proof or research to back me up. Experience and common sense are on my side.
Here are the three disciplines that can lead to greater effectiveness, regardless of whether we’re talking about sales productivity or any other area of life:
- Schedule the activities that you can’t stand doing but know that you have to do. This is the “eat your veggies” and “run stairs” discipline. Schedule it. Put it in your calendar.
- Identify what you should NOT be doing, but only do because you want people to like you. Stop doing that stuff.
- Identify the effective activities that you enjoy: Load your calendar up with those things.
Life’s too short to spend too much time doing effective, but miserable, activities. And it’s definitely too short to do stuff you shouldn’t be doing or don’t want to do or that has no bearing at all on improving your mind, heart, or soul.
I repeat:
Schedule the activities that are vital, but no fun.
Stop doing the stuff that you only do because you’re nice (i.e. saying ‘yes’ way too much)
Identify the effective and enjoyable activities. Do those things as much as humanly possible.
I’ve been reading Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown and those items above are my initial reaction to what I’m reading.
Some things have to be done, so we must schedule them and do them. Most things are others’ priorities imposed on our lives. We need to be vigilant that we don’t get overrun by these things. And once we identify what we can be passionate about doing that also moves us towards our goals, then we can go all in.
How about you?
What helps you be your most effective?