Dan Kennedy on Extreme Productivity
Huge growth is in business is extremely rare. To produce extreme results requires extreme behavior. Like expecting to lose weight by sprinkling a magic powder on your food, don’t expect to make the leap to great productivity and revenue with ease. Killing time is a very apt expression.
1) Ambition
Why are people unproductive? Three reasons:
· 10% is from bad methodology
· 20% is from insufficient pressure
· 70% is from insufficient motivation
Yet, we discuss poor productivity as a time management problem; it is not. Low productivity is mostly an ambition problem – you don’t have enough strong reasons to do what’s necessary.
If your life depended on your behavior, you would behave better. Pretend your child would lose a finger if you didn’t perform at peak efficiency -- you will get stuff done. Goal: Find the right motivation for you.
Case study in ambition: for years, Harvey Firestone never saw a man without money without turning over in his mind how he could transfer some of that money into his corporate stock.
Approach extreme productivity with the same ambition: Be on the hunt every day for ways to do be more productive.
2) Awareness
Where does the time go? You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Measure time daily in Excel or something else, then analyze at the end of the week. This can deliver an instant breakthrough.
· Think: Know thyself. Ask, “How can I extract the highest and best value from myself right now?” Be very aware of what goal you’re trying to achieve, what activity you’re engaged in, and how you’re doing it – are these all congruent? Be aware of what you’re permitting to happen to your time. (Also think of the Tom Hopkins quote: I must do the most productive thing right now.)
· Think: What are the enemies and obstacles of your ambition? Kill them. You must be willing to defend your time aggressively; be intolerant of anything that screws up your productivity, including your own (in)actions.
3) Specific Decisions
Be aware of and exercise control over these elements of daily activities:
· Who: People who work under or with you should be there to maximize your productivity; there is no neutral position
· What, When, Where, How
4) Action -- Key Requirements:
· Immediate: The start matters most. It’s better to get started in the wrong direction than to never start; you can fix the direction more easily than inaction. The best time to plant an oak tree was 25 years ago; the next best time is right now. There is enormous power in starting.
· Visible: it puts you on the spot and conveys decisions to others when your action is visible to others.
· Simultaneous, not sequential: You’ve been conditioned that everything ought to be Step 1, Step 2, etc. Perpetual, controlled chaos is how most high-achieving, high earners live. You never reach the perfect time for things to happen in order, so start doing the right things right away. Most people never complete all the steps anyway. When Schwarzenegger came to America he invested in real estate as soon as he came to America, even though he was essentially homeless; if he had waited, he would not be wealthy now.
· Massive: Put a lot of stuff in motion, with urgency.
· Urgent: The quickest way to create a product is to sell it with a shipping date before it’s made. Also, think of how fast a football team can move the ball during the 2:00 drill; why not play the 2:00 drill every time?
· Congruent: Dress, talk, act like what you want to achieve
· Synergistic: How can you make the same piece of work, relationship, etc. do more than one thing? How many benefits can you get from each action?
5) Common Drains on Productivity:
Doing the wrong work entirely, not based on the facts of where the money actually comes from; doing trivial, worthless work. Example: You may think you need a better ad, but if your refund rate is 22%, you need to focus on fixing the product.
Lost minutes adding up to lost weeks. Example: 10 minutes a day stopping at Starbucks x 300 working days a year = 3,000 minutes … 50 hours … more than one full working week LOST every year.
Confusing the business with the deliverables. The business you run is “the marketing of ____.” Leverage comes when you focus on driving people through the door – the marketing -- not on what happens when people get in the door, i.e., the deliverables.
Doing the wrong work entirely, not based on the facts of where the money actually comes from; doing trivial, worthless work. Example: You may think you need a better ad, but if your refund rate is 22%, you need to focus on fixing the product.
Lost minutes adding up to lost weeks. Example: 10 minutes a day stopping at Starbucks x 300 working days a year = 3,000 minutes … 50 hours … more than one full working week LOST every year.
Confusing the business with the deliverables. The business you run is “the marketing of ____.” Leverage comes when you focus on driving people through the door – the marketing -- not on what happens when people get in the door, i.e., the deliverables.
Failure Environments. Don’t put yourself in a place where you have to battle against bad influence to get good things done. Example: if you’re on a diet and can’t resist eating donuts, don’t go where donuts are. Your time-draining temptation may be the iPhone, email, whatever. Put yourself in a a success environment – a place that’s conducive to what you want to accomplish.
Poor, undisciplined work habits. Don’t get on the phone or go to a meeting unprepared. Woody Allen was only partially right about just showing up. Example: 14 financial planners have met with Dan trying to manage his money, but only one has shown up prepared. In all but two instances, they scheduled appointments in noisy restaurants/public places they did not control; only one person had Googled to learn about him.
· Starting from scratch and a blank slate is bad. The less historical knowledge you have, the harder and slower your present work is. Use past work as starting points for future work.
· Disrupted rhythm is bad. Starting and stopping kills productivity. Example: Dan has never seen a horse race stop in the middle; start, go, finish.
6) Highly Productive Actions to Take:
· If you’re going to work, make every minute as productive as possible. Kill a sky full of birds with one stone. Example: When hired to give a speech, what will you do before, during, after the speech? Can you invite guests to attend, see you, and be suitably impressed to book you later, for example?
· Use tight time allotments, to impose discipline on others and yourself. Leave no time for yourself or others to waste.
· Script everything – plan every minute and every hour of every day, as if you were shooting a big-budget movie and every minute cost big bucks. Because it does.
Resource: If you want to put an end to "feast-or-famine" syndrome in your business, grab your free Client Cloning Kit here.
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