I didn’t sweat it because of a longstanding relationships I’ve got. In August, I turned on the afterburners and started selling.  I made a rule: all work is prepaid, period.  I stuck to my guns and had an unfathomably good August.  I recovered the slow income, and I didn’t have to get too anxious with my clients.   Life happens, I’m happy to serve.   I was able to do the works, and keep from having too severe cash crunch.  I had to put off paying some bills, but the majors were covered and I carried through.

But, taking in more work than usual to replace lost cash, it caused some unfortunate things.  My bandwidth got depleted, I spent less time with GenuineBoy and GenuineWife and GenuineGirl.  I’m way behind on all the “Chris” projects.  I’m behind on blog deliveries, and I’m behind on actually doing the blogging I’m supposed to do.  There’s a sense of overwhelm that leads to procrastination until you get to–that’s what GTD was created for.

The problem was caused by abandoning my weekly review, abandoning my lists, and letting my desk and office get sloppy.  Not messy, messy can be OK.  Sloppy sucks.  I did make it to the gym, because I’ve got a double barreled loaded gun to my head. But there was nothing external keeping my stuff in order.   Stuff.  That’s the essence of GTD.

So a few days ago, I was looking at it, and I’m not happy with the levels of service I’m rendering.  I’m not getting enough time to think, I’m reacting to a barrage of  nonsense. Not wresting control of my stuff.  Every project is backed up 2 weeks, etc.  I have to uphold higher standards than that.

So, what’s next?  How am I back on the wagon, how is my mind much clear, and how come I had time to play with GenuineKids yesterday, and will  be free to play with them tomorrow?  Here’s my 13 Step Plan for GTD recovery.  For the first time in DAYS, my mind is calm.

1. Have an Emergency GTD Weekly Review. Gotta do that.  The second you get to the overwhelm phase, do it.
2. Start a new list. Write down what’s what and next actions you need to take, get it going, this took me 30 minutes, and 3 yellow pad pages.

1. Find your last known list(s), and drop as much as possible. Go into it with a drop bias.
2. Put your lists together, new Word/Google Doc. Do this, and have another round of drop bias.  Pitch everything possible, and pare your lists down to the bone.
3. Clear the hell out of your desk. Be ruthless.  Everything in the inbox that isn’t nailed down and make it neat and clean.   Windex your work areas and make sure everything looks fabulous.    This helps for me.  Put everything in the INBOX, unless it follows the 2 minute rule.  Wires, cords accumulation, ditch it all.
4. Process your junk: Throw everything into an inbox, and go through the inbox,  every piece of paper that is in there is either on a list or pitched.   Bias towards not doing it and not obligating yourself.  If it’s important, you’ll make it to a list again.
5. Pitch projects that you’re not moving, and “someday/maybe” them on the list.  Don’t look back.   You have ‘em on a list, they need to take no space up at all.  If you’ve got a 43 folders system, put ‘em 4 months out, cause you’re a month behind.
6. Do Closest things to 100% done: Given anything approaching equal weight, do the closest thing that you can to done.
7. Report in to people: After you’ve closed one loop, look at the next one, and check in with the next 3-4 people that it’s time to move forward and when to expect deliverable goods.
8. Deadlines first: Anything with a still makeable deadline gets your best efforts.
9. Move to LIFO: Seems logical to move I went lifo when I got behind, and it changed my life.  I got current with today’s stuff, and then nailed the past due stuff as I could.  But I no longer made the problem worse by getting behind on new projects.  This is worth a blog post- soon.  Everything from “new work” to “money” was done lifo, and the time and money debt was attacked in the same way: do it in the order it came in.
10. Delegate It All: Anything you can’t drop, delegate.  To get out of triage, I sent random projects at people, here and there, where possible.  I did more delegation than normal, and I will do more still in the next incarnation.  This is when partnerships and such are big deals.
11. Make a process: Anything that you’ve done twice you can expect to do again.  Sonia Simone told me recently she was fanatical about processes.  Anything that you do twice gets a written down, bullet point process.  Because if you’ve done it twice, you’ll be looking at probably doing it a 3rd time.   Don’t get bloated with this, but anything that takes multiple steps needs a ‘working document.’ that tells you what to do.

That’s it, that’s how I’m mentally “OK” after weeks of being behind, confused, anxious, and even running scared.  I’m in charge of my output, I can even take new work, and I’ll be honoring my clients.    It doesn’t mean I’m less busy, just more in control.  And, I know what I’m supposed to be doing at any given time.

I don’t know how to code.

I don’t know how to write sterling copy that always guarantees me success.

I don’t know how to manage leads well.

I fall off the GTD wagon all the time.

–

None of that matters.  Because what I do know is this: a little brute force SEO works, and can deliver results.  I know that decent copy sells.  I know that effort is most of it, before leverage..effort, volume.  Then we learn where to go, a little at a time, we learn where to place our shoulder and where to push, and what tools to use.

But, houses got built 4,000 years ago, and they will be built in another 4,000 years, God willing.   Effort will be needed to make this happen.

Effort will be the only currency that always works.  As you get better tools, increase your effort, learn what’s efficient.

This will help you sell stuff on the web, in life, etc.

Work harder and smarter.

Time overhead is different.  Freelancers should be taking retainer clients regularly.  We stabilize our income some by having retainer gigs that last a while.  We work with people & put the payment on autopay through paypal recurring pamyents/subscribe buttons.  This is a good thing.  But this creates an obligation for us to honor, some time that we have to allocate each month/week to honor the financial commitment our clients made to us.  To much time overhead and we don’t have the bandwidth to take on new projects.

How do you manage each?

Me? I’m an old school GTD’er.  I have a whiteboard.  I put all the projects I’m working on on the white board and how much time I estimate they will take me.  I am pretty close on this stuff, I estimate high and that covers me for the outliers; if I have 4 deliverables in a week what I’ll do is estimate X hours per + 25 or one hour, whichever is more.  One of the 4 generally consumes all of the overage.  On Monday, I pick the projects that will be 100% done (generally ones I’m in control of).

• Project 1: 4 hours = 6 hours
• Project 2: 3 hours = 4 hours
• Project 3: 6 hours = 8 hours
• Project 4: 2 hours = 3 hours:

Then I add my time debt:  21 hours.  That’ what I owe people in Chris Johnson brain time for money I’ve collected.  I take the smallest project and get it 100% done before I start on the next smallest one.  You feel less opressed with 3 projects than you do with 4 projects.  I take then the next smallest and leave the biggest for last–though I suppose there’s no harm in doing them in whatever order you like, and I suppose you might get a rush of productivity by having gotten the ‘hard one’ off your plate.

As far as time overhead goes, I handle that a little differently.  I write down all of my retainer clients on a spreadsheet.  I write down the weekly time commitment that I’m aloting.  Some clients (Monday tech coaching folks) have a regular commitment.  Some clients (general pop) have stuff I do for them each month (writing metadescriptions is a real easy gig for freelancers to get for small business bloggers).  I figure out where I’m gonna meet it and try to do everything by Wednesdays, preferably on Monday.   Having a busy monday sets the tone for a good week.

Being cognizant of this stuff is most of the work you need to be productive and not panicked.  Knowing what you’ve committed to each week, and currently can help liberate you from the massive issues that you have.

All of the accounting that I started doing a while ago is helping me see what my business is, where my revenue comes from and what’s efficient and what’s not.    It’s helping me to move everything in the right direction and manage what’s now/what’s next better.

Showing up, fully engaged is a big part of work.  Being a machine, like Seth Godin, like NameTag Scott is the way to have wild success, wild wealth, and more of what you want.  The quality of your ideas is less important–by far–and less novel–by far than the execution.

Ideas are everywhere.  Execution is 90% of it or more.  “Idea guys” are worthless.  Utterly entitled useless pieces of crap.  The idea isn’t the novel thing, and the older and presumably wiser I get the more  I know it.  It’s easy to have a dazzling idea, a new and novel thing that you could make some day.

It’s hard to get up every day, look people in the eye and serve them with all of your heart, mind, mind, soul & strength.  It’s hard to show the patience and confidence you need.  It’s easy to be the smart kid, it’s easy to be the one with the answers.  It’s hard, really hard, to show up every day and have the enduring faith that it takes to work towards your goal, especially when instant results are out the window.

How many exciting, great ideas have you had that would be AWESOME if they were put into practice?

How many NBA players had roughly the same physical gifts as Michael Jordan (Dominique Wilkins, Charles Barkley, Anfernee Hardaway) but didn’t hit the same heights?  MJ’s mental gifts were far more novel than his physical gifts.

Right now, I’m trying to learn to develop the consistency needed to get past the ‘next level’ and go to the one beyond that.  It’s not about intellect, acumen or acuity, it’s about just blocking out distractions and doing it.  It’s about getting up and rolling.   Not getting-ready-to-roll.  Preparation has its place, but only in moderation.

Lots of little things help.  Keeping a list helps.  Clearing a schedule helps.  Paying a little bet on a debt every day helps.  Morning pages helps.  I’ve come farther along than I thought possible.  But I need to be hitting it hard.

How do you create consistency?  Are you really doing it?  Are you being honest with yourself?

Ideas are everywhere, and without execution totally worthless.  A mediocre idea executed with passion and fervor will beat the hell out of genius ideas that sit in drawers.

Not looking for help on those atm, kthanks.  Trying to make peace with my wiring.

Point is there are so many qualities that, done right and without a limit make someone really spectacular.  Consider:

• Getting things done FAST.
• Being totally ACCURATE
• Being CHEAP
• Being Luxurious
• Being flexible.
• Being  focused.

In many cases all desirable traits.  But fast fights accurate.  Cheap fights luxurious.   Flexible and focused get into tussles.  Yet we want–or managers want to have ALL those qualities.  To be some sort of shamman of everything.

Now, I believe that people who get their biases are better.  DiSC profiles and their ilk are useful for understanding–not overcoming–the way you’re wired.  Being wired to do things a certain way isn’t bad.  Having a skill or bias isn’t bad.

Trying to be more of something your not is a surefire path to insanity though.  Trying to get someone that needs to (in their soul) do things 100% accurately to speed up some is dumb.  Putting them in a position (editor) where accuracy is the only currency that is valued is a big damm win.   Feeling bad about how your wired is dumb.  Usually.  You might be a sociopath and–of  course–it’s 100% fine to feel bad about that.  But, since you’re a sociopath it’s unlikely that you will.

I digress tonight.

The real thing is that we loathe most our weaknesses of character when they appear in others.  We admire most the things we wish we had.  But we gotta make peace with that and try to figure out what we do right & do it right & play up to that strength.

Be world class at what you’re wired for.  Make big gains in what comes naturally, and get a bit better at what doesn’t.  But don’t beat yourself up for being a pitbull or a golden retriever.  They’re both useful dogs.

The fast eat the slow.  The fast are the ones with the advantage.

I can launch a product and do it perfectly before you can have a meeting and talk about it.  Speed is everything.

How do you keep accelerating?  How do you floor it and get a better engine all at once?

Speed is everything, man.  It’s the end all-be all.

If you are slow, you are behind and you have to work three times as hard to catch up.  Speed in business is what needs to happen.   Elephants danced, but the gist is that you’ve gotta move your business, your life and everything fast.  You’ve gotta get the fast habit.

The Cult of Done Helps.

But I’m gonna talk about the cult of speed.

1. Realize that someone already has your idea, and your idea is rotting.  Get it out there and put it to use.
   
2. Realize that time is the enemy of all:  done today is better than perfect tomorrow.
   
3. Realize that perfect is a ruse:  even in art, getting the gist out there clearly is important.
4. Realize that complex loses.  Make your widgets super simple.
5. Small Projects Are Always Better Than Big Ones because they get done.
6. Realize Everything is an opportunity to demonstrate virtuosity.
7. Realize that speed is soon nothing special and the ticket to the table.
   
8. Realize that most mistakes are recoverable, most mistakes are easy to fix.  It’s impossible to fix it when you’re beat.
   
9. Realize that it’s easier to sustain a lead than it is to overtake someone.
10. Realize that people are all getting better.  Work on getting better, faster.
11. Realize that all your soliders need to be on the field.
12. Realize that your first draft goes live and you can correct it later.
13. Realize that today isn’t soon enough and your ideas are already rotten.
14. Realize that NDAs and bloated meetings are a waste of time.
15. Realize that your throughput needs to get faster and higher and more, and it only does so when you have and increase your capacity.
16. Realize you need a timer to measure and firewall projects from eating days.
17. Realize that the faster you get your stuff done the more time that you can spend on the people you love.
18. Realize you need a list to work off of to keep going fast and you need it with you somehow.
19. Realize you must learn time saving shortcuts to produce more.
    

That’s it.  That’s the cult of speed.  That’s what you need to do–there are 19 things that make you faster, better more.  And that’s it.  There’s nothing to add, but you have to get faster, today.  Others are.  America needs to be obsessed with speed.  Making quick decisions, producing faster, having a culture of speed and getting things done.

What happens RIGHT after the sale is an opportunity.  Folks like Dave Navarro show some basic competence and good instincts by offering a truly good deal after that.  But, I wanna go beyond.  WHEN people buy…I want them to be amazed.  That instant.  Blown away.

Seth Godin talks about making things less annoying.  I don’t want to stop there.  I want to go far beyond, and overdeliver.  Every purchase–every job gets a package of goddies that you made to be super successful

See, people save their offers for securing the sale.  I want to put all of my ammo into securing lifelong trust.  I want people to feel smart and relieved when they buy from me, so the NEXT time they buy from me, they know that they’re getting a sweet, sweet deal.

I see all of these posts with things that offer $10,916 in FREE bonuses, and I’m insulted and squeemish.  I don’t want to be that guy.  I want to be the guy that does that for my customers.  There are opportunities to do this with everyone.

You could:

• Give away your back catalog for new customers.
• Develop a product/service MORE VALUABLE than what you sold, and give it way for free.
• Deliver it in more & higher formats–if they bought a book, make it in an MP3, if they expect an MP3, make a video.
• Package OTHER People’s good stuff on the same topic in an-i’ll-share yours-if-you-share mine.

Some of this is being done, but far too little I’d think is being done.  Once you secure a customer, THEN knock their socks off.  Overdeliver by an order of magnatude and then all the work you spent on getting that customer will be rewarded each time you sell something.

If someone has been treated amazingly well, then they’ll be back.  Again, and again.

One of the things that Starbucks used to (and I mean used to) have in its culture…was the ability to surprise and delight.  When you went, you’d get coffee and panache, a smart person would look you in the eye and try to do make your day happy.  Your Third Place, yada yada.   Ya go there now, and you trip over CD racks, and you feel used and monetized.    And, I was in recently and the place had the stench of greasy eggs in it.  I come for coffee.  Live by coffee die by coffee.  I come for coffee and public privacy, and the good pure smell of beans and hot water.

They used to give more for your $2.00 than you’d have a right to expect.  They fell when they wanted you to be monetized.  What if we did it  right–what if we committed to having an astonishingly good experience with FREE bonuses?

How would we work it out so when they bought they didn’t feel simply like you were shoveling out free stuff?

How would we work it so that it DID impress people that are cynical and bitter?

How would we work it so that, say 20-25% of people saw our commitment to being amazing?

How would we work it so that people were not let down after the purchase, but had stuff to do, had marching orders and felt great about what they just bought?

Then we’d be slaying trolls left and right.

One of the things that went wrong was the book I wrote.  I abandoned it because, well, I have acute IRS problems, and I can’t bonzai something to perfection when I need money now.  The thing is, I do and did have the time to get stuff done with regard to FT.   But I didn’t get things done because, largely, t wasn’t in front of me.

So I decided to fix that a couple of days ago.  I made some firefox tabs after my wife and I improved communication by sharing a Gdoc ToDo List (I know, I know, Remarkablogger is cringing as we speak).   But, I needed to do some easy things on an iterated basis.  And since I switched to FireFox 3.5.1b, Morning Coffee (a good plugin) ceased to work.  So, I made tabs:

Chase-  I check my bank balance every day, mostly to make sure I have not been levvied recently by the IRS.

Analytics- I’m just keeping an eye on stuff, and as my coffee brews, looking at numbers helps.

Twuffer: I have underused Twitter.  Twuffer help me keep current.  I do a mix of broacsast + connections, and it’s working.

GenuineChris – So I remember to post.

F#@% Therapy: So I remember to post.

Guerrilla.ME Again, so I remember.

LinkedIN: Answer whatever questions are in my wheelhouse, and look around for people to connect with.  I’ve been on LinkedIn for 2ish years, and have underused the site.  So it’s time to get after it.

Facebook: Kinda the same deal.  FB is more about broadcasting than any of the other sites I deal with, but yano, I need to pay more focused attention to my groups etc.

YouTube: I’ve not used this NEARLY as well as I can, and I need to make sure I’m actually making a video once or twice a day.

Then it’s my MDAs- Minimum Daily Actions,

My @todos and @projects

My family budget/expenses.

And finally, my Greader. I don’t keep up with feeds like I used to, which isn’t a bad thing.  I’m using reader now for alerts that I need to pounce on.

This gives me enough to do without being bored or distracted, and it is reasonably portable.   If you’re on the web, almost all browsers have home tabs these days that you can set, and this is a handy way of getting done.  Remember: GTD is mostly a collection of kludges and tricks that’s design is to make you better, faster, smarter.

[Time spent on blog post: 9 minutes]

The big things:

• Getting Amazingly Fit (#1 Goal).  (50 minutes of working out/day/minimum)
• My morning routine.
• Posting here, on TDT and on Blown Mortgage  (2 hours per/6 hours total)
• Working on a great book. (4 hours)
• Do some endurance training (Schedule 2008 Cols. Marathon).
• Weekly GTD review.
• Toastmasters (a speech roughly 3x monthly)
• The accountability project.
• Marketing for TenDayTeam
• Finishing projects
  • Ten Day Team Ops manual
  • 2004′s taxes
  • Family Constitution
• Starting up rightrightnow.com (both the site and me)
• Prospecting/running the business. (25/fewer hours/week)
• A date with Heather
• Hanging out with my family.
• Coffee with someone else.
• 3 books a week (Just so I don’t lose any more ground to Scott)
• Xenos stuff.

This stuff is important to me.  It’s all stuff I want to do, and it’s all stuff that will enhance my life more than other stuff (stuff like mastering DTD, following the Buckeyes, and everything else.  Some of it needs to happen every day, some of it every week, but having a schedule is important.

I’ve over scheduled  myself in the past–having this fragile, unrealistic schedule that I can’t do; having an insane checklist based schedule that gets you killed.  Basically, if I did: 12 hours of prospecting, 10 hours of marketing,  Mike would be able to do all the loans (since he’s superb at it).

I’ll have a schedule written out later on this afternoon–and find some accountability project for it.

The main reason for this Journal is accountability. I wanted to increase the number of eyes that were holding me to the goals I set for myself. I wanted to put myself out there and say: this is who I am and how I roll. By advocating a position, it assumes I’m doing it, and I’m a follower of myself. And that’s exactly what I wanted here.

So we’ve talked about the things that we’ll need to have with us 100% of the time. Now, for the stuff we want to have 90% of the time. This will get us into a state of preparedness…

1.) My checklist. I keep–printed on canary yellow card stock–my daily checklist. This keeps me organized. That’s worth a whole post or more, so more on that. Basically it’s 2 columns, half of an 8.5 X 11″ sheet. Has everything that an Ideal day is supposed to have in it. I check it off as I do it all.

2.) My notebook (old school) I normally have my laptop 60% of the time. The notebook is the critical thing that I gotta have with me. This has the guts of that…

This can be a franklin covey planner, a standard planner, or whatever, but I have mine divided into 7 sections, plus two pockets. (Seven mostly because I bought some cool clear tabs in 2004 that had the seven part bias). There is no rhyme or reason to this, really, and if your cell phone is a smart phone–mine isn’t–some of this–like contacts.

• Mission, Goals, Affirmations & Gratitudes. The first part of my book has my mission statement, and my current goals. I’ve put inspirational quotes (A day without adrenaline is a day wasted) in the past, and I’ve had stuff to do.
• Daily Pages: This is where I write my goals down. (Writing your goals down is powerful, and doing it daily helps. It has increased my discipline 1000X) I “load” it every Sunday, so I have a week’s worth at any given time. I can write my goals 5 times a day (on a front and back). I also have my daily recap page in there, so you can see where I’m going. My goals page is self explanatory.
• Schedule & Daily and Weekly Scorecards: There’s a portion of my schedule that never ever changes. There’s a portion that does. Keeping my schedule visible keeps me accountable. This gives me a sense of where I am for the week, what I’ve done, and where I need to be. I set any gap management stuff in here. I’m not as good as I’ve been.
• Master task list, Prayer List, Commitment list. This is simpler now that I’m giving all of my data, and lo, my very soul, to Google. But, my master task list is things that I’m working on, my prayer list is people I’m praying for, and my commitment list is things I’ve promised my self and my family. I write everything I can think of down because it helps me.
• Scripts and Dialogues: I do a lot of phone work, and having my scripts printed in a legible format for all of the stuff that I get helps me immeasurably. This is about 8 pages, double sided. I have: cold calling scripts, my 30 and 15 second commercials, etc. Works wonders.
• Visual Goals- When I was WAY more materialistic, I had pictures of stuff that I wanted on my wall. I’m not as stuff oriented (but more than I think is ideal). Having pictures of “stuff”, situations and tangible representations of your goal is absolutely helpful. A picture of an orderly office, or a happy family, or an outside scene…stimulates creativity, and helps bring to focus what yo want.
• My business Plan: I used to want to read this each day. When I was part of MFO, it was several pages. This has grown some, but I want to have a clear idea of what I want to do and when I want to do it.
• (In pocket of notebook) my contact phone list. I have 780 in act. An 8.5 X 11″ page, front and back holds 90 contacts, hpone numbers, etc. That’s 180 per, so less than 5 pages, and I’m almost never without this. This means that I can refer people on the spot, make a call if needed.
• In other pocket: My current leads for both of the businesses I’m doing. (Having them electronically helps, but having them physically helps more. I use again 1/2 of an 8.5 X 11 on card stock, blue is Chris Does loans, the Pink is the new thing I’m doing.
• Plenty of blank paper: Sometimes you need to write or draw out an idea. When the flux capacitor moment hits, you gotta be there.

3.) The Holy Bible- The more I read, the more I dig it. I carry an NIV around in my bag, and I’ll try and find a thin form factor NASB since I’m used to it. It can be kept in my notebook, and I’d prefer one that fit in the rings, but I’ll take what I can get. I may have move to one of those beefy Stephen Covey “monarch,” planners, and I may look to carry a man purse.

4.) The book I’m reading currently (currently the Little Black Book of Connections). If some of the thinkers that are ALREADY ahead of me average 2-3 books a week, who am i to do anything different? Man, the bar is high. This year, i’m at 22 books.

5.) Applications/Lead cards: I gotta be ready to take an application at any time, and having the guts of my process with me is important. This is now in a notebook pocket. I want to create one that fits in my jotter/little notebook.

6.) My voice recorder. Handy as heck, and I’m getting into using it more. When it makes sense, I’m going to check out more and better ones; and again, if there was a good smart phone that actually

7.) Blank Business Cards- For people that have forgotten.

8.) My usb key: which has my forms and processes so I can explain what I’m doing to people, how I can help. It’s got my firefox bookmarks & passwords. Rockin’.

9.) USB Cables Surprisingly handy for many people. I don’t carry all the ends, but I have the right cable 70% of the time that it’s neede, and that’s at least twice a month.

10.) Regular and precision screwdriver. (I have a 5/1 tool that’s light that fits into my bag.)

NOTICE:

I don’t need to carry my laptop everywhere. I have my contacts, a to do mechanism, and I’m with my laptop enough that it doesn’t matter that much. There is nothing I need to respond to o

THINGS I SHOULD CARRY, AND WILL.

1. My monthly budget.
2. Bills that are due.
3. Bank statement.
4. Checks.
5. My food plan for eating.
6. My workout plan for…working out.
7. Tylenol and Advil (for others, usually, but it’s thoughtful.).
8. $500 cash
9. “Thank You” note cards for writing a quick note.
10. Stamps. Same deal.
11. Envelope and my own letterhead.
12. Stuff I’ve accomplished list (an I did it file)
13. My updated and perfect resume.
14. My personal brochures.
15. Testimonials on DVD of how I’ve helped people.
16. Testimonial MP3s of how I helped people
17. Plastic page testimonials (with copies) saying what a good job I do.
18. My operations manual?
19. Notes for prepared talks in case a speaker is needed in one of the groups I’m in. (be prepared, be ridiculously prepared).
20. Processing Checklist.

For me, I’m OK as long as all of this “stuff” fits in a Monarch size or smaller Covey Planner, i’m doing OK–I’m traveling lightly enough, but prepared enough to be effective.

Soon: Things I should have in my car (get table to wherever I am).