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Keeping Your New Year’s Momentum Going

Believe It Or Not, You’ll Reach Your Goals When You Learn To Do Less, Not More.

Believe It Or Not, The Key To Reaching Your Goals
Is Learning To Do Less.

That’s Right—Less, Not More.

By Rich Harshaw

Note: About once a month, Monopolize Your Marketplace takes a break from marketing advice and focuses on personal development topics. We call this ongoing series “Personal Edge.”
Enjoy!

Ever notice how nobody ever talks about New Year’s resolutions after about January 10th or 15th?

That’s because it normally only takes a couple weeks for our collective resolve, willpower, and determination to melt away like butter on a hot stove.

Or more accurately stated: our will to improve ourselves gets overpowered and drowned out by the routine rat race of life. Going to the gym sounds great until you have to decide between an hour of exercise or catching up on the twenty-seven unreturned phone calls sitting on your phone. Earning extra money is exciting until you realize that you barely have enough time to earn the money you’re already supposed to be earning anyway.

The problem always comes down to time. There’s never enough of it.

Or even if there is enough of it, you’re so thoroughly exhausted by life that you don’t have the energy or the will to spend it on something productive. That’s why we tend to live the same old stupid lives—essentially unchanged—year after year.

The failed solution we keep trying to make work can loosely be described as “time management.” Or in other words, trying to figure out how to get more stuff done in the same limited amount of time. In my experience, this is a one-way ticket to disaster. Trying to simply “get more done” is a recipe for burn out, mental and physical exhaustion, and pretty much this.

That’s why I’ve prepared some thoughts for you on how to increase your mental stamina, elongate your attention span, and put a laser sight on your focus. The idea is to get more done by doing less. Confused? Keep reading:

Eliminate & Delegate

You know that 80/20 rule, right? It says that 20% of the input is responsible for 80% of the results. For instance: 20% of the tax payers foot 80% of the bill. 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your profits. 20% of your employees are responsible for 80% of your employee headaches. Like that.

Honestly evaluate how you spend your time each day—I mean the time that you actually spend working… not the time you fritter away on Facebook, internet surfing, etc.—and you will see that 20% of your efforts are netting you 80% of your real results. I know this is true because it’s a universal principle.

The key is to get rid of the 80% of the stuff you spend your time on so it quits gumming up your brain. You need the hit the “delete” key on the minutiae that’s sucking your energy and attention. Every moment you spend even THINKING about some non-essential task, you’re sabotaging your effectiveness.

The first step is to simply eliminate everything you do that isn’t essential to accomplishing your goals. You’ll be astonished—if you honestly evaluate your day—how LITTLE certain tasks and functions you perform actually lead to any kind of significant positive result. When I say eliminate, I mean STOP DOING IT. I don’t mean give the task to somebody else (see below for more on that), I mean give it up, completely.

Five years ago I was spending about thirty hours a month (just my time, not including other people in my company) publishing a print-version of my newsletter that we were mailing out to a general business list. It was tedious, time-consuming work. But the newsletters looked awesome; I was really proud of them. After completing and mailing eight editions over the course of four months, I looked up and wondered why I was doing it. Most of our business was with remodeling companies; at the time we were still deciding what the best way for us to scale that business so we could work with LOTS of remodelers. The leads that came in from the newsletter for “general” businesses required a lot of time to qualify and close into sales that, while profitable, weren’t consistent with the future of the company. The solution: I quit working on the newsletter right then and there; I simply quit. I then put that thirty hours a month into molding the future of our business, not milking remnants of the past. Best decision I made in 2010.

Some things, though, HAVE to be done even though they aren’t your core tasks. If the tasks can’t be eliminated altogether, then you should delegate them to somebody else to do them. Again, careful inspection of how you REALLY spend your time will make all the difference in the world.

I heard a story several years ago about Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers, that went something like this: After the company had been in business for a few years and had become profitable, they moved to a new office. In that office, they had a finicky Coke machine that would jam up and take people’s money about every other day. Every time it would jam up, somebody would knock on Michael’s door and ask him for the key to the Coke machine. One day the door knock came while Michael was in the middle of some particularly important task and he blew up when somebody asked him for the key to the Coke machine. In that moment he caught himself; why was he mad at this person who wanted the key? He should have been mad at himself for being the person who was the keeper of the key!

How many “Coke machine keys” are you keeping in your desk? When we moved from a traditional office to a virtual office five years ago, we had to get a post office box to receive our mail. I got one that was about a five minute drive from my house… then every couple days I’d drive over there, check the mail, then take any checks we received to the bank, which was also nearby. Then when I got home, I’d report the checks that had been deposited to my accounting department via email. What a colossal waste of time! I’m trying to run a company, figure out how to scale our services so we can effectively service hundreds of customers…. And I’m checking the stinking mail?!?! Easy solution: I hired somebody I knew from church to drive to the mail place three times a week, check the mail, deposit the checks, and report the checks to accounting. Time saved: About three hours a week—twelve hours a month.

Again, I ask you, what “Coke machine keys” are you holding onto that you could hand off to somebody else?

Staying Focused – Small Picture

Okay, so let’s assume you’ve taken the 80/20 rule to heart, and now you’re only concentrating on important stuff. Congratulations! The challenge now is to stay on task throughout the day. This is tough when you’ve got all kinds of distractions attacking you from every direction. The key is to keep your brain alert and focused and on task. Here are a few ideas:

Pomodoros: This is a theory that says you can enhance creativity and keep fresh longer by working for twenty-five minutes, then resting (or doing something else) for five minutes. Each thirty-minute set is called a “pomodoro.” After four pomodoros (two hours), the theory says, you should take a longer break of fifteen to twenty minutes before starting again.

I actually figured this one out on my own without the fancy name. Except in my case, I found that I could work for seventy-five minutes, then take a fifteen minute break, for a ninety minute cycle. In my opinion, the principle of giving yourself a set task and a set amount of time to accomplish it is solid—you can work out the amount of time for work/rest on your own. Set a timer on your phone for twenty-five minutes… or forty-five minutes… or seventy-five minutes…. Then work on a specific task without interruption (i.e., don’t check your email!). Try it and see what happens.

Parkinson’s Law: This is a concept that states that a task will expand in complexity and difficulty in direct proportion to how much time you have to accomplish it. Think back to high school: the teacher gave you a research paper assignment with a due date of three weeks in the future. That was enough time to check out seventeen library books (remember the card catalog lol!), think about four different approaches to the topic, and most importantly, procrastinate actually starting until 9 PM on the last night before the paper was due. Then what happened? You suddenly found superhuman willpower to focus on a specific topic, choose the most important books, and sit down and write the paper. Why? Because when time is severely limited, your mind becomes a steel trap. That’s Parkinson’s Law.

I use Parkinson’s Law all the time. I do a lot of webinars, and I used to sit down to prepare them days or even sometimes weeks in advance. I’d fart around on the internet looking for images to put into the PowerPoint presentation, I’d read articles and books, I’d research online. And inevitably, I’d get distracted by something more interesting than my webinar and fly off on a tangent. The total amount of time I’d spend working on the webinar might be four to six hours. Now, in most cases, I’ll spend ten minutes outlining the main concepts for the webinar so they can sink into my subconscious… but then I’ll wait until two hours before it starts to actually put it together. Sometimes I don’t finish until literally four seconds before the webinar starts… and sometimes I have to leave some fancy graphics out… or an entire section out… but usually I create exactly what I want with no wasted energy. That’s Parkinson’s Law.

You can use Parkinson’s Law giving yourself real deadlines by procrastinating important tasks until (relatively speaking) the last minute. That’s right: I just gave you license to procrastinate. You’ll be amazed out how short time frames energize your brain, gather your focus, and make you into the $6 million dollar man of production. Try it.

Taking Naps: Yea, a nap, like a toddler. Well, maybe not exactly like a toddler… but don’t be afraid to take a power nap in the middle of the day. I have a couch in my office and I don’t hesitate to lie down for five to thirty minutes and take a snoozer. Some people say they can’t “power nap,” and I say that’s too bad. What a great way to work out the cobwebs and regain your focus. Put a lock on the door with a big “GO AWAY” sign or something to ensure privacy. Turn off the ringer on your phone. Take a nap!

Batching: Instead of constantly performing low level tasks, consider batching them. Don’t check your email every fifty-one seconds; instead, check it at 10 AM, 2 PM, and 4 PM. Instead of getting your mail every single day, let it accumulate and get it once or twice a week. Like that. Makes a huge difference.

You could also batch your phone calls—both incoming and outgoing. For incoming, here’s a nifty trick: Instead of picking up your phone every time it rings, let ALL calls go to voicemail, and create a voicemail greeting that says:

“Hi, this is Rich. I don’t check this voicemail, so don’t leave a message. Instead, send me an email summarizing what you want me to know and what you need me to do to (email address); if it’s critical, you can call my cell number or text me if you have the number.”

If it seems rude, think about how rude it is to arbitrarily interrupt you while you’re in the middle of a Pomodoro. Or you’re on a last-minute deadline thanks to Parkinson’s Law. Or you’re taking a nap.

Staying Focused – Big Picture

Okay, so you know how to keep on task throughout the day. But how do you keep your boat headed in the right direction day after day, week after week? Here are a few macro-style focus-enhancers for you to contemplate:

The Sabbath: You probably know the word sabbatical—like when somebody takes a year off work to relax and refresh and reboot. I’m not asking you to take a year off work, but I am asking you to consider following the rule of the Sabbath, which in Christianity, means taking a day of rest. But you don’t even have to be religious to reap the benefits; there’s power in powering down. There’s power in breaking your routine. There’s power in a day of rest.

As a Mormon, this comes natural to me. We’re pretty fanatical about keeping the Sabbath day holy—you know, one of the original Ten Commandments. So besides attending church for three hours, we also don’t shop, don’t participate in organized sports, don’t spend money, don’t work, and basically don’t do all the stuff we normally do the rest of the week. I haven’t worked a Sunday in years. My personal opinion is that even Christians who go to church on Sunday but then go soccer games, movies, restaurants, shopping, etc. are truly missing out on the restorative powers of the Sabbath. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

Structured Prayer: You’re going to have to trust me on this: there are secular benefits to things that are normally pigeonholed as strictly religious—like the Sabbath discussed above. Same thing with prayer. Yes, I know that prayer, by definition, is when you’re talking to God. And if you do talk to God through prayer, the ideas below can probably help you out quite a bit. But even if you don’t believe in God… or you’re not quite sure he’s listening, these principles will still do wonders for you.

As a praying person, I’ve discovered that there are two kinds of prayers—the meandering kind, and the structured kind. For most of my life, I employed the meandering ones, which consist of some combination of saying things you’re grateful for and asking for stuff you need. It’s not bad. But structured prayer blows it away.

Structured prayer follows a set pattern that forces you to think through what’s really important to you, which in turns, allows you to employ the principle of “mindfulness.” Mine looks something like this:

  • Reflecting on important commitments I’ve made
  • Recognizing the good things in my life
  • Reviewing my day: where I messed up; where I did well
  • Focusing on negative things I want to eliminate in my life
  • Focusing on fears, stresses, or problems I have
  • Thinking about my finances and business
  • Thinking about my health and nutrition
  • Thinking about ways I can reach out and be helpful to people
  • Thinking about what kind of person I want to be
  • Concentrating on help and blessings I might need
  • Focusing on each member of my immediate family, and what I can do for them
  • Thinking about people I have stewardship over and what I can do for them
  • Focusing on the three things that are most important for me to accomplish that day

Granted, this takes a little bit of time—or sometimes, a lot of time. But the benefits are tremendous. Like I said, you don’t have to be religious to see that taking time to reflect on these things—every single day—would make a big difference in the sail one sets in their life. Give it a try. If you have other ideas, leave them in the comments.

The Monthly Reflection: Sure a weekly Sabbath is great but try taking it to another level once a month. Spend an entire day reflecting on the previous month, and deciding what to do different/better in the upcoming month. Personally, I generally do this on the first Sunday of each month in conjunction with the Sabbath Observance mentioned above. For me, this acts like a giant magnifying glass that focuses white hot light on all the areas of my life that need improvement. In reality, it’s taking all the stuff in the bullet list above, and concentrating on them for a day, not just for a few minutes.

Go ahead and try some of these ideas and see how they work in your life. Doing so can give you sharper focus, greater concentration, and higher productivity. Don’t settle for another year of the same results you’ve been getting. Make this the year that you actually break through and become the person you want to be.

You can do it!


Personal Edge Offer – If you like this article, you might like our “Personal Edge” audio series. It’s nineteen one-hour personal development training calls by Rich Harshaw, and covers topics like: Finding Your Definite Chief Aim, Independent Personal Value, Backwards Goal Setting, It’s About Time, The Enemy Within, Building Self Confidence, and Mastermind Alliance Formation. For just $189 (just $9.95 each!) you’ll get electronic downloads of all nineteen programs—all with a sixty-day money back guarantee. Here’s another guarantee—you’ve never heard anything like this before. It’s not the same old boring motivational junk—this is riveting information that is both inspiring and actionable. Order below!

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© 2015 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

  1. I found this article to be incredibly well-presented and a very helpful resource. I am going to forward it to everyone I know!

  2. Rich Harshaw is an expert at practicing what he preaches!

    Rich practices his rule (Do More By Doing Less) in one BIG way – – – He Never Sleeps!

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