ist 1: Your Focus List (the road ahead)
What are you trying to achieve? What makes you happy? What's important to you? Design your time around those things. Because time is your one limited resource and no matter how hard you try you can't work 25/8.
List 2: Your Ignore List (the distractions)
To succeed in using your time wisely, you have to ask the equally important but often avoided complementary questions: what are you willing not to achieve? What doesn't make you happy? What's not important to you? What gets in the way?
We have a report card problem in our companies and it's costing us a tremendous amount of time, money, potential, and happiness. It's costing us talent.
Traditional management systems encourage mediocrity in everything and excellence in nothing. Most performance review systems set an ideal picture of how we want everyone to act (standards, competencies, etc.) and then assesses how closely people match that ideal, nudging them to improve their weaknesses so they "meet or exceed expectations" in every area.
Next time little Johnny hands you his report card with an F in math and an A in English, keep smiling and resist the temptation to ask about the F. Instead, ask about the A first. "What happened in English?" you should say to Johnny, "Why did you get this A?" Then let him tell you about how and why he succeeds. What is it about the work that excites him? What about the teacher? How did he study?
Then, if you want him to get a little better in math, you can help him recreate the conditions that led to his success in English.
And when you're done with the report card conversation, it might still be a good idea to get him a math tutor. Because school is about exposure to everything while business is about success in something.
And then, if you want to teach him to harness his particular path to success, make sure to get him an English tutor too.
What are you trying to achieve? What makes you happy? What's important to you? Design your time around those things. Because time is your one limited resource and no matter how hard you try you can't work 25/8.
List 2: Your Ignore List (the distractions)
To succeed in using your time wisely, you have to ask the equally important but often avoided complementary questions: what are you willing not to achieve? What doesn't make you happy? What's not important to you? What gets in the way?
We have a report card problem in our companies and it's costing us a tremendous amount of time, money, potential, and happiness. It's costing us talent.
Traditional management systems encourage mediocrity in everything and excellence in nothing. Most performance review systems set an ideal picture of how we want everyone to act (standards, competencies, etc.) and then assesses how closely people match that ideal, nudging them to improve their weaknesses so they "meet or exceed expectations" in every area.
Next time little Johnny hands you his report card with an F in math and an A in English, keep smiling and resist the temptation to ask about the F. Instead, ask about the A first. "What happened in English?" you should say to Johnny, "Why did you get this A?" Then let him tell you about how and why he succeeds. What is it about the work that excites him? What about the teacher? How did he study?
Then, if you want him to get a little better in math, you can help him recreate the conditions that led to his success in English.
And when you're done with the report card conversation, it might still be a good idea to get him a math tutor. Because school is about exposure to everything while business is about success in something.
And then, if you want to teach him to harness his particular path to success, make sure to get him an English tutor too.
