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You are here: Home / Archives for 2010

Archives for 2010

Advice for Entering the New Year: The Yearly Review

December 31, 2010 by Matt Perman

Here’s a good idea for today or tomorrow, if you haven’t already: Do a yearly review.

The yearly review can be very simple and consist of just two parts. I’d create a heading on the page for each part.

Reflect on the Prior Year

First, look back at the last year. I think David Allen captures this process best when he says to simply write down, in the order that they come to mind and without feeling the need to organize or categorize things, the most notable accomplishments, events, and other points of interest from the year. To be “notable,” the item doesn’t necessarily have to be large; rather, it just means anything worth noting, to you.

Some of my items include: “South Africa,” “Submitted book proposal,” “delegate at Lausanne,” “almost spilled water on the former deputy prime minister of Australia,” “finished a large organizational design project (not without its challenges),” “productivity presentations in DC and at the DG conference,” “Kate started kindergarten,” and “Joseph started to walk.”

Define A Few Priorities for the Coming Year

Second, look ahead to the next year. Reflect a bit on your overall priorities and the general environment for the next year — major upcoming events in the year, current stuff on your plate, and stuff you really want to accomplish in the next year. Then, just list the top 3-5 primary things you want to accomplish this year (making sure you are identifying things that are truly important).

These 3-5 things should be “big rocks” for the year, rather than smaller stuff. In a sense, these are your goals for the year. Maybe you will change them as you get into the year a bit and more clarity comes about what is most important, and obviously you will be doing many other things as well, but it is a good thing to start the year with major priorities in place specific to the year.

Optional: Review Your Mistakes (but do it right)

When reviewing the prior year, you could review your mistakes. In one sense this may seem contrary to my prior post on forgetting what lies behind. So the first thing to say here is, if you do this, don’t dwell on them. Ponder them briefly to learn from them, then move on.

Which leads to the second point and the reason I mention this: It is a good practice to learn from your mistakes, but most people do it wrong. As Marcus Buckingham points out, most of us have a default assumption that excellence is the opposite of failure. So, in order to improve, we think we should look at what went wrong (either in your life or the experiences of others) and do the opposite.

But that’s wrong. Excellence is not the opposite of failure; they are just different. In fact, as Buckingham points out, excellence and failure are often remarkably similar. For example, in one of his books he talks about how unsuccessful salespeople often suffer from call reluctance. So one might conclude that excellent salespeople do not and say, “if you want to be an excellent salesperson, you better not feel high reluctance to making calls.”

But that would be wrong. Many excellent salespeople do suffer from call reluctance. But the difference is that they have an additional factor, namely the talent of “confrontation,” that presses them to push beyond that reluctance and make the calls anyway.

So the way to learn from things that went wrong is not necessarily to look at what you did and invert it. There may be some of that, of course, but don’t primarily look in that direction or dwell there. You may have actually done most things right, or in accord with what would make for excellent performance, and lacked something — perhaps even something small.

So when there is an area that you want to improve, the main thing to do, as Chip and Dan Heath discuss in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, is not identify what weaknesses you need to overcome but rather what bright spots you need to build on. Identify what went well and focus most of your energy there.

So, reviewing your mistakes may identify some things you need to improve and do differently. But most of all, when there is an area that you want to improve, seek primarily to identify bright spots and identify ways to build on those. And do this quickly and don’t beat yourself on. Make the changes you need to make (and correct anything you might need to correct) and move on.

Making it Happen: How Do You Keep Your Priorities in Mind?

There is one last thing to address here: Once you’ve identified your priorities for the year, how do you remember them in such a way that they really guide your actions?

This is important, because the reason most people don’t keep their New Year’s resolutions — or, alternatively, accomplish their goals — is that they don’t translate them into their schedule.

So, here are two ideas for accomplishing your priorities.

First, it can be helpful to identify one or two recurring practices or tasks that will move them along. For example, if one of your priorities is to learn about leadership next year, identify a recurring time that you read each day (perhaps before bed, or early in the morning, or whenever). Then stick to it, and put it in your calendar if you have to.

Second, review your priorities for the year as part of your weekly review. That way, each week they will be fresh on your radar and you can design your upcoming week in light of them.

Filed Under: Quarterly & Yearly Planning

Better than Resolutions

December 31, 2010 by Matt Perman

I think New Year’s resolutions are a good thing (as well as resolutions in general–see 2 Thessalonians 1:11; though keep in mind why most people don’t keep their New Year’s resolutions). But there is something better than resolutions and prior to resolutions.

David Mathis captures this in a post at the DG blog from last year, where he recommends starting the year with reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Spiritual Depression and then something better than resolutions.

Regarding Lloyd-Jones book, Mathis notes: “the title can be a tad deceiving. It’s not merely a book for those with a pronounced sense of spiritual depression. It’s a book for all Christians — for the daily spiritual depressions we all face this side of heaven.”

So the book is worth your read whether you are facing a pronounced sense of spiritual depression or simply the more general spiritual depressions faced by all.

Now, what is better than resolutions and the ultimate basis for any resolutions you do make? Mathis quotes Lloyd-Jones:

Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and forever to your past. Realize that it has been covered and blotted out in Christ. Never look back at your sins again. Say: ‘It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ’. That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you. What you need is not to make resolutions to live a better life, to start fasting and sweating and praying. No! You just begin to say:

I rest my faith on Him alone
Who died for my transgressions to atone. (35)

This sounds like Paul: “Forgetting what lies behind [that’s Lloyd-Jones’ point] and straining forward to what lies ahead [there’s the place for resolutions], I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus ” (Philippians 3:13-14).

So, forget what lies behind, and then press on toward the goal. And any resolutions you make, make in the recognition that you are accepted and forgiven by God in Christ apart from any resolutions, and then seek to fulfill them in the power that God supplies (Colossians 1:29).

Filed Under: Quarterly & Yearly Planning

Usable Web Forms are a Form of Marketing

December 29, 2010 by Matt Perman

Seth Godin recounts a painful experience filling out a form on the Jet Blue website. Here’s the key point:

The problem with letting your web forms become annoying is that in terms of time spent interacting with your brand, they’re way up on the list. If someone is spending a minute or two or three or four cursing you out from their desk, it’s not going to be easily fixed with some clever advertising.

In other words: Take some of that money you might have spent on advertising (print or online) and make your website more usable. That treats your customers or constituents better and will have more impact because giving your customers a good experience builds your brand far more effectively than any ad could.

Filed Under: Marketing

Need Help Getting Up Early?

December 28, 2010 by Matt Perman

Get a Clocky, the alarm clock that runs away from you:

Can’t wake up? You’re not alone. Stats show that 40% of people ‘abuse’ the snooze. Typical alarm clocks just don’t work well. Ours never lets you oversleep again. Clocky runs away and hides if you don’t get out of bed. When the alarm sounds, Clocky will wait for you to get up. But if you snooze, Clocky will jump off of your nightstand (from 3 feet), and run around your room, determined to get you up on time. Clocky’s hip, innovative and charming. What could be better to wake up next to?

Filed Under: f Execute

How Did You Do in 2010?

December 27, 2010 by Matt Perman

At the DG blog, Tyler Kenney gives some good reflections for the end of the year from a Piper sermon. He writes:

The last week of the year is a good time—with God’s help—to reflect on the past 12 months, do a little self-assessment, and decide what things to repent of and reach for in the next lap around the sun.

At the end of his first year as pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, John Piper led his people in doing this through his sermon “I Have Kept the Faith.”

Below is the conclusion of that sermon. Just plug in “2010” and “2011” where you read “1980” and “1981,” and the content is still relevant 30 years later.

Read the whole thing.

Filed Under: Quarterly & Yearly Planning

GTD Tips on Managing Reading Material

December 27, 2010 by Matt Perman

This is a helpful post at GTD Times on organizing your reading material. It doesn’t discuss books, but gives some good tips on keeping up with the reports, articles, and all the other things that come your way (both digitally and paper-based).

(HT: Productivity Hacks)

Filed Under: Project Lists, Reading

How Not to Lead

December 23, 2010 by Matt Perman

From Seth Godin’s article for Catlyst Monthly, The Spectacle, the Shouter, and the Door to Door Salesman:

For far too long, leadership has been about management and management has been about control.

We push those that follow us to fit in, to do as they are told. We decide who is good enough, who is obedient enough, who is acceptable.

Many institutions have been built by strong-willed men who think they have the right answer, and aren’t afraid to be bullies if it helps them achieve their goals.

Filed Under: 3 - Leadership

The First Rule of Doing Work that Matters

December 22, 2010 by Matt Perman

Good advice from Seth Godin:

Go to work on a regular basis.

Art is hard. Selling is hard. Writing is hard. Making a difference is hard.

When you’re doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out–this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it’s time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break.

Zig taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “hey, maybe I should check my email for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” If you do that, the lizard brain is quickly trained to use that escape hatch again and again.

Isaac Asimov wrote and published 400 (!) books using this technique.

The first five years of my solo business, when the struggle seemed neverending, I never missed a day, never took a nap. (I also committed to ending the day at a certain time and not working on the weekends. It cuts both ways.)

Filed Under: a Productivity Philosophy

Those Who Set Goals Accomplish More. And: Be Careful to Have the Right Goals

December 16, 2010 by Matt Perman

Stephen Covey notes that:

In the field of personal development, one of the few things that can be empirically validated is that individuals and organizations that set goals accomplish more. The reality is that people who know how to set and achieve goals generally accomplish what they set out to do.

That’s interesting.

But, don’t take it as a whole-sale endorsement on setting goals. Covey goes on to note the weaknesses of this approach:

There are countless people who use the Goal Approach to climb the ladder of success — only to discover it’s been leaning against the wrong wall.

They set goals and focus powerful effort to achieve them. But when they get what they wanted, they find it doesn’t bring the results they expected. Life seems empty, anticlimatctic. “Is that all there is?”

When goals are not based on principles and primary needs, the focused drive and single-mindedness that makes achievement possible can blind people to imbalance in their lives. They may have their six- or seven-figure income, but they’re living with the deep pain of multiple divorces and children who won’t even talk to them. They may have a glamorous public image, but an empty private life. They have the plaudits of the world, but no rich, satisfying relationships, no deep inner sense of integrity.

It is important to have goals. But there is also a danger in having goals. What’s the solution?

One part of the solution is to have the right goals. Another part of the solution is to not let your life be _entirely_ directed by goals.

You see a good example of this in the life of the apostle Paul. He had an overarching goal — a mission — that was right. Here’s one statement of it (there are others as well):

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith — that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:8-11).

Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14).

Paul’s overarching mission here is an example of a goal, an ultimate goal, that should cover our entire lives and for which we should sacrifice greatly for. And he commends the same goal to each of us: “Let those of us who are mature think this way” (v. 15).

Paul also had some lower-altitude goals that aligned with this. For example, he really desired to visit the church in Rome:

“. . . without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you.” (Romans 1:9-10)

But this was not an all-defining goal, because other things took precedence and prevented him from coming (see Romans 15:18-24–very interesting: what kept him from coming was another goal). Paul had other goals like this as well — things he really wanted to do, but which he sought to do in an integrated way with all the other callings that God had placed before him.

What we see in Paul is a good example of goals working in the right way. He had the right overall goal, or aim, in life. He pursued that goal at all costs — and, because it was the right goal that God would have for him (and us), that did not result in unloving, unbibiblically unbalanced (note: the term “unbiblical” is a critical nuance there) life.

Then, underneath that, he had many lower-altitude goals that aligned with it, and which he pursued with great diligence, but which he didn’t pursue at all costs and without the wider awareness of other things, apart from those goals, that God might want to do in his life.

Filed Under: Goals

Effectiveness is Not Innate–You Have to Learn it and Practice It

December 15, 2010 by Matt Perman

This is significant, from Drucker in his book The Effective Executive:

[The practices of effectiveness] are not “inborn.” In forty-five years of work as a consultant with a large number of executives in a wide variety of organizations — large and small; businesses, government agencies, labor unions, hospitals, universities, community services; American, European, Latin American and Japanese — I have never come across a single “natural”: an executive who was born effective. [emphasis added]

Did you catch that? Drucker wrote those words toward the latter part of his long career. He had been doing consulting work for forty-five years. He had consulted with executives in all types of organizations — all types. And he had consulted all over the world — all over the world. And he never came across a single natural. Never.

So we probably shouldn’t think of ourselves as naturals, either. And we shouldn’t be too hard on others we know and encounter that aren’t “naturals.”

Instead, we need to realize that if we are to become effective and increase in effectiveness, it comes through learning, effort, and practice. Which is what Drucker goes on to say:

All the effective ones had to learn to be effective. And all of them had to practice effectiveness until it became a habit.

And here is an encouraging word on that:

All the ones who worked on making themselves effective executives succeeded in doing so. Effectiveness can be learned — and it also has to be learned.

Filed Under: a Productivity Philosophy

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What’s Best Next exists to help you achieve greater impact with your time and energy — and in a gospel-centered way.

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About Matt Perman

Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

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