Overview
- Success depends on a large part on mindset.
- Focus the results you plan to achieve rather than the number of hours you work.
- Results are what matter most to your employers, clients and colleagues
- Personal productivity = quantity and quality of your results in achieving your own objectives
- Actively carve out time to think as opposed to constantly reacting
Personal Objectives
- How to rank Your personal Objectives
What you want to do (Supply)
- What you are good at (Supply)
- What the world needs you for (Demand)
focus on economic fundamentals
- be open to new developments
- Time categories
Career Aims (5+ years)
- Yearly objectives (3-24 months)
- Weekly targets (1 week or less)
Planning steps
- Know what you are good at and go after targets from your position of strength
- Set/write down goals and expected outcomes with explicit priorities. Be relentless about applying the 80/20 rule
- Clearly define the hypothesis behind each goal
- Tie long goals to actionable short term targets
rank your targets
rank = who requested X implied importance
- Differentiate between
Enabling Targets: helps you accomplished your objectives
- Assigned Targets: give to you
Control
- Goal management
revise hypothesis as new data becomes available
- Time management
monitor where you are spending your time
- Project into the ideal future 365 days from now to visualize how your ideal time allocation will look like
- start calibrating your time allocation towards that ideal configuration
- address mis-alignment between goals and time allocation
- Keep your ego in check
unchecked ego results in misallocation of time and resources
- catch procrastination
is it to do with your fear of failure
- Task execution
figure out how to do the same items more efficiently
- figure out which tasks can be done in a quick-and-dirty way
- constantly seek to free up time for more important stuff
- Good management system
proactively achieving priorities
- avert crisis before it ever gets the chance to happen
- Habits
observe habits
- cultivate new habits to displace old ones
- avoid the narrative fallacy
Execution
- Low priority task - only handle it once
accepting imperfection
- avoid micro-management
- more so as you start moving up the ladder and need to delegate more
- Incoming Requests
decide promptly either to offer response or ignore it
- ignore 80% of all incoming requests
- Avoid context switching
- All appointments in one place
purpose
- importance
Dealing with meetings
- if it is purely about information sharing - try to do so via email
- don't have it drag for too long
- avoid distractions
- avoid complex powerpoint slide
- be very clear about your objectives - don't use fluffy terms
Personal skills
- Reading
Know your purpose
- read fewer words
- Do in order: conclusion, beginning, middle
- Grasp the structure of the reading. scan materials quickly to get the gist. Only do deep dives if required
- Writing
know your audience
- speaking
know your audience
- make sure line of argument is crystal clear
- less information is more
- introduction, body and conclusion
Delegation
- Never delegate the recruitment of your own lieutenants
make your own reference calls
- Ability to lead multiple small teams in multiple large projects
- Each employee needs their own space - autonomy
- foster trust
they need to trust you are working towards shared goals
- maintain open line of communications
be willing to listen
- spend more time listening than talking
- establish accurate metrics
establish priority of metrics
- there is academic literature on good versus a bad metric
- Make sure your team knows you are offering suggestions not order
- give effective feedback
address behavior
- feeling humiliated causes decreased productivity
Communicating upwards
- Content and style
- agree what you should be doing
- understand their preferences
- elicit for feedback
- Managing cautious managers
talk them through your intended plan before executing
Leadership skills
- inherently transferable and always in demand
- Exercising creativity and judgment in resolving tough problems
- Practise integrity
Family time
- Always make sure to reserve time aside for family
- set clear boundaries
- embrace and work around constrains