Box of Crayons Blog

This is the month for changing how you get things done.

This is the week for getting charged up on how to do it.

This is the blog to show you how.

Whatever the question, here are some answers

This advice is guaranteed to work absolutely every time, except when it doesn’t.

If one piece of advice doesn’t quite work for you, pick another.

1. Less not more. Cut the bottom 10%

Stuff you’re working on, meetings you’re attending, people you’re spending time with, future possibilities, things you’re worrying about.

If they’re the bottom 10%, it’s likely that they’re costing you not nourishing you.

2. Enjoy things. Stop taking it all quite so seriously

Yes it matters, of course it does. But it’s unlikely to matter at all in one year, ten years, hundred years.

So tackle it now with a lighter heart.

3. Make the decision. Stop prevaricating

Don’t get trapped in the timid middle of “maybe…”, or “I’ll have a bit of this and a bit of that”.

Make the choice and stride down that road.

4. Stop knowing it all. Get curious

We all love the certainly, clarity and comfort of expertise.

A good question can make everything a little wobbly, challenging and a whole lot more interesting. You can do worse than starting with these two.

5. Get off your backside. Move more.

Shift perspectives. Get away from the box. Meet up with people.

Your body isn’t just a way of moving your brain about.

Get going on the stuff that matters.

What are the timeless hacks that get you unstuck and focused? (If you want another eight options, or maybe 5.75 ways, take a look here.)

By the way – if you’ve enjoyed this post, you’ll love the Great Work Provocations, a nifty Monday – Friday email series.

This is the month for changing how you get things done.

This is the week for getting charged up on how to do it.

This is the blog to show you how.

Do you see any white space in your calendar?

Of course not. It’s booked from 8am to 6pm with meetings, back to back.

That’s why you have to do all your email under the table during the meetings.

So get your How I Manage Meetings philosophy in shape. Get clear about which meetings you’ll attend. And make your meetings a beacon of worth-showing-up-to-on-time-ness, rather than the dark abyss of wasted life that so many of them are. Here are 7 ways to get started.

Go/No Go

1. Only hold a meeting if you’ve got a decision to make or a celebration to have. These days, a gathering to trade information is a failure to understand the basic technology at your disposal.

2. Only attend the meetings if you know (and care) what the decision is that’s needed or the celebration is that’s being had. See point #1.

3. Don’t show up to the meeting but ask for a list of the actions. See if anyone really (I mean, really really) misses you. See if there is actually a list of actions. (It’s quite a shift when your default answer to a meeting request is “prove why I have to be there” rather than “yes”.)

Running

4. Halve the time. Meetings expand to fill the time alloted, so cut things down and watch everything crisp up nicely.

5. Then take off another 10 minutes. Finish ten minutes before the hour or half hour, so people have time to take a breath, figure out what the heck the next meeting is about (and whether they really need to attend), and get there in time.

6. Embrace shrinkage. Dis-invite people who aren’t involved in making the decision or celebrating the celebration. Let your people go free. Send the people who are nervous about missing the meeting the list of actions. Oh yes – that means…

7. Write down the actions. Scott Belsky makes a pretty compelling case to be totally action oriented. Become the VP Of Action Point Nagging. Ask questions like, “so what’s the action from this discussion? And who’ll do it? And by when?”

I know you know other ways of making meetings better. (Maybe you’ve also done what it says on the title and Read This Before Our Next Meeting What would you add to the list of seven?

By the way – if you’ve enjoyed this post, you’ll love the Great Work Provocations, a nifty Monday – Friday email series.

This is the month for changing how you get things done.

This is the week for getting charged up on how to do it.

This is the blog to show you how.

Three ways to be more strategic

“Be strategic” is one of those phrases that people blather on about all the time and is about as vapid and useless as saying “work smarter not harder” and “there’s no ‘i’ in team”.

But being strategic is at the heart of doing more Great Work. It’s about making choices, first about the best ideal mix between your current responsibilities (your Good Work) and your future possibilities (your Great Work), and secondly about what is the Great Work you’ll focus upon, knowing that there are always options.

So how to do you get to focus on the stuff that matters?

1. Ask these two questions:

Robert Fritz talks about the importance of dynamic tension in a slightly long-winded way. So let me boil it down to nine words and two questions.

What’s the real challenge here?

Spend a little time asking this question to get grounded in reality and to get focused on what really matters. We all know that most of us are working really hard to solve the wrong problems in our organizations.

What do I want?

This is what helps you to figure out what’s the future you’re working towards. It’s an exceedingly tricky question to answer, of course. Which is why you should.

2. Talk to your boss’s boss

We’ve mostly got some old tapes running in our heads about what really matters and why we’re doing it.

Write down what the three most important things you’re working on right now

Go talk to your boss’s boss and ask her if she agrees that these are the right things to work on. You can use fancy phrases like “I just want to ensure our strategic foci are in alignment”.

You don’t have to do what she thinks is most important. But you’ll want it to be a mindful choice, not an accidental one.

(Map #6 from Do More Great Work is really good for this too, should you have a copy.)

3. Draw it out

I love the idea of strategy being a visual art. You’ve got to see the landscape and decide which route to take (and which ones not to take).

Go grab pen and paper. (Thanks Austin Kleon for the reminder to get away from the computer to “use your hands”.)

Use some boxes, circles, triangles and lines to draw how things are at the moment.

Use those same shapes to draw how you’d like things to be different.

Go back and read point #1 on this post.

How about you? What else do you do to stay more strategic in a world that keeps pushing you to just do the tactical bits and pieces?

By the way – if you’ve enjoyed this post, you’ll love the Great Work Provocations, a nifty Monday – Friday email series.