Get Organized with One Sheet of Paper
The Pocket RoadMap™ is a single sheet of paper folded into six small panels that puts you in control of your life and time. Download the PDF file and print the two pages back to back on one sheet of paper.
Whether you are using GTD or ZTD or any other productivity system the Pocket RoadMap will keep you focused on the most important items each week. Download it for free and give it to your friends. This is a tool your entire team can use.
Video showing how to use the Pocket RoadMap coming soon.
The team will only buy into a vision they create. If the boss does all the planning, they will have to do all the work. Ask the team to identify the three biggest changes that need to happen to make the team more successful. Say nothing and do not critique their choice.
Then ask them to identify the next action necessary to make each of the three changes a reality and have someone other than the boss be resonsible for completing the action in the next seven days.
You may suggest they block off time on their calendar to accomplish the task. Assign one task for each of the three changes. Then sch the meeting for the next week.
Tell each person assigned a task to come to the meeting prepared to answer two questions.
1. was the task accomplished? yes or no
2. what is the next task that needs to be done to move the project closer to completion.
This should take 5-15 minutes of your weekly meeting. The rest of the meeting can be used for each department or team member to explain what is on their plate for the week.
The purpose of the meeting is to focus the team on the most important tasks and make sure everyone knows what the team workload looks like.
Imagine a Zero Inbox. Below are the steps to create one.
1. Open a new email.
2. Ask yourself, “What is it?” and “Is it actionable?”
3. If it’s NOT Actionable, then delete it, store it in a Reference email folder, or incubate it on Someday/Maybe if you think you’ll have action with it in the future.
4. If it IS Actionable and will take you multiple steps to complete, ask yourself, “What’s my desired outcome?” Track that outcome on a Projects list.
5. Now ask yourself, “What’s my next action?” Then you’ve got 3 choices:
1. Do it now (if it will take less than 2 minutes)
2. Delegate it now (if someone else can do it, track on Waiting For if you need to)
3. Defer it to a Next Action list or folder (if it will take longer than 2 minutes and store that email in a place (other than “In”) you know you can easily get back to when you need to take action.)
If it’s got multiple next actions that can be done simultaneously, track each one of those. If you have “future actions” or dependencies, and this is a project, those can be stored with your project plans.
Source: www.gtdtimes.com
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
Mark Twain quotes (American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer. 1835-1910)
How often do you look back at the end of a day and realize though you were busy all day long, nothing important was accomplished. Too often we spend our entire day in reaction mode. One simple action can change that forever.
continue reading…
The following is a sample letter you can change to you own words and email to your clients. Include the full hyperlinks to the articles if you do not email. Add your clients first name for Client and your name for Advisor.
We are lucky today to have two great resources from knowledgeable experts to help us focus during these turbulent times. The Fed Chairman Bernanke Spoke to the Economic Club of New York, NY on October 15. Read it here: He made four important points:
1. This is not 1929-32 - we learned from our mistakes. Hover waited three years to respond and then tightened money. Fed acted immediately and loosened.
2. Fed Reserve has doubled in size, giving it a greater ability to impact the economy positively.
3. Everything hinges on the banks lending money again.
4. Therefore the Fed’s money will be used to stimulate the economy, if a bank does not lend money they will not be given money. They will learn quickly to start lending.What controls the market? What makes the Market go up? Cash flow. What makes the market go down? Lack of cash flow. Cash flow into the economy is cash into the market. The infusion of $800 billion into the US economy by the Federal Reserve will be a stimulus.
The press continues to encourage investors to watch what the institutional and hedge fund managers are doing as an indicator for what they should do. And because they are selling, so should the investor. This is foolish advice, because institutional managers, during the extremes of the market, are never doing what they personally want to do. Because of redemptions during crashes and infusions of new money during rallies they are forced to liquidate or invest against their own best judgment. Investing is counter intuitive. One of the great counter intuitive investors is Warren Buffett. Read his letter to the New York Times here.
If you feel your risk profile has changed and would like to redo your risk profile analysis, we will be happy to help you.
Over the past several weeks we have talked to many people who are worried and fearful. They had no one to help them understand their situation. If you know someone you respect and value who is worried, there is no need from them to be in that situation. We’ll be happy to take them through the same analysis we use with each of our clients, at no cost or obligation, to make sure that they know where they are today, where they want to be in the future, and have a plan of action to get there. We do not what someone you care about to be afraid. Send them an email and say, Client I want to introduce you to Advisor, Advisor I want to introduce you to Client. Here is your contact information, you two should talk.
Follow this letter with a call to the Top 25 repeating the last paragraph.
Below is an email from the Manager of Advisory Services of a corporate client, following the Attract Clients workshop we did last month.
Lloyd, I just got off the phone with one of our Financial Advisors. He had a meeting with a $50 million prospect Friday. He used, as he called it, “the Lloyd approach” at the meeting and let the prospect talk about himself for an hour and a half. At the end of the meeting, the prospect commented on how his FA at another firm never gave him the opportunity to speak about things the way he was allowed to do that day and felt like the other FA was not proactive in coming up with investment recommendations that were appropriate for him. At the end of the meeting, the client agreed to move his account. Thanks for the inspiration!!!
Congratulations to the advisor. The one topic clients want to talk about more than any other is themselves. Give them the opportunity.
Hire Based on Skills, Not Tasks
Most businesses hire based on a person’s knowledge and experience in performing specific tasks. The problem is that we each have a very specific skill set. Some people are more analytical and others more creative, some relate better to people and others to paper, some like details and are process-oriented while others are more spontaneous and prefer change. These characteristics determine our skill sets. While knowledge and tasks can be learned, skill sets seem to be hardwired. Therefore, the best businesses hire people with the right skill sets, realizing that the individuals then are able to learn the tasks and knowledge necessary. They avoid the problems of employing those with the wrong skill set trying to perform the necessary task.
Remove What Does Not Work
Peter Drucker encouraged businesses to examine all their systems, products, services, tools, and technology on a regular basis to make sure they continued to deliver. The business then improves or eliminates the ineffective item and replaces it with something that does meet or exceed expectation. A practice that is not growing and changing with its customers will die. If a business runs today the same way it did 10 years ago, the customers probably will have grown beyond it. A great business continually must analyze itself to be certain it innovates and finds new solutions for new problems.
The *New York Times* recently featured an [article](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/business/25multi.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin) compiling the results of several new studies looking at distractions and multitasking.
The following confirms the necessity of stopping the distractions:
>In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.
>“I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft research scientist and co-author, with Shamsi Iqbal of the University of Illinois, of a paper on the study that will be presented next month.
Merlin Mann of 43folders has [linked to several resources](http://www.43folders.com/2007/03/26/nyt-multitasking/) on the myth of multitasking.
By trying to multitask we slow down our minds processing time and the results take longer to achieve.
