Tag: Gary Keller

The one book you should read this year.

I am constantly trying to enhance the performance of my brain. I don’t do it with aftermarket parts. Or with surgery. Or with drugs. Although I have heard some really good things about drugs from my crack dealer friends.

Reading Rainbow

I enhance the performance of my brain by reading books. I read as much as I can. As a result, my thinking keeps improving. With each book I read I become more capable, insightful, empathetic and resourceful. I am collecting dots and connecting dots. And today I arrive at better ideas faster than ever before. Granted, I had a lot of room for improvement.

The One Recommendation

If you want to improve your thinking and your doing, I highly recommend reading The One Thing, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. This #1 Wall Street Journal Best Seller is one of the most influential books I have read in the past 20 years.

Focus

The One Thing’s main focus is to teach you how to focus your thinking and your efforts. We are often faced with a brazillion things we could do with our time. As a result, we often do nothing. Or the easiest thing, the closest thing, or the most urgent thing. But not the one most important thing to help us get to our goals.

There is no trickery to this book. It is simple and logical. Yet it is eye-opening and insightful. (Although opening your eyes is typically outsightful, right?)

Dominoes Delivers

The books starts by encouraging you to look at your actions like knocking down dominoes (the game piece, not the pizza joint). We need to focus on the first domino, and then the next, with purpose. By doing so we can make great things happen, one domino at a time.

Dominos from the one thing
This is how your actions work.

Determining Your Priorities.

The book shines a spotlight on the erroneous short term thinking that typically fills our daily to-do list. It points out the critical difference between a To-do list and a Success List. A key lesson here is, ‘That which matters most should never take a backseat to that which matters least.’  In other words, your priorities need to call ‘Shotgun!’

80/20

Keller and Papasan explore the 80/20 rule of Pareto Efficiency, which states that 80 percent of your results come from 20% of your effort. (Not that 80-years olds should not make out with 20-year olds. But that should also be a rule.) They then propose applying the 80/20 rule to your 20% activities. This enables you to find the most important of the most important activities to focus on.

Multitasking Vs Monotasking

The book blasts the notion of multitasking. It instead promotes the idea of complete focus. Or what I called ToFo, in the post Why you should invest more of your time in Total Focus.

66 Day Magic

The book breaks down the critical difference between self discipline, which is hard, and habits, which become easy and automatic. I loved learning that on average it takes us 66 days to create a new habit. Which means that if you made a resolution to start a new activity on January 1st, and could make it to the end of the first week of March, you would likely keep that habit rolling forever. But most people quit in January or February, and never create a new habit. Then again, those resolutioners stop coming to the gym by the beginning of February, leaving more room for me, so I am not complaining.

66 Day Habits
By 66 days habit kicks in, and self discipline is no longer necessary. You will know when you are there because a big red star fish will appear on your line.

Forget The Balanced Life

The authors share the idea that a balanced life doesn’t enable us to do amazing things. Instead we need to be constantly balancing our lives, so that we can go all in on our goals for long stretches, to create extraordinary results. Then we can balance those periods with longer stretches of time with family and friends, relaxing and recreating. But if we never get ourselves out of balance by going all-in on one thing, we will never achieve great things.

The Focusing Question

Finally, the book introduces the key focusing question for your life:

‘What is the one thing that I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?’  -The One Thing By Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

This question can be asked as a big picture question, and as a small, focusing question. Meaning, it can help you discover the one thing you should be doing with your life, and what is the one thing you can do, right now, to make it happen.

The one Thing for all areas
The One Thing applies to all areas of your life.

Key Takeaway

If you want to supercharge your thinking and your actions, pick up this book. It will teach you how to focus, prioritize and act to get the most out of your precious time. It will help you think about your long term goals, and what you need to do now to achieve them. And it will help you say no to things that just don’t matter.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this book, please share this with them.

How to protect the time you need to achieve your greatest goals.

When I was a student-athlete at the University of Wisconsin my schedule was booked solid. I was at class every day by 8:55am. Classes lasted until 2pm. At 2:30pm I was at track practice. I left practice at 6pm and went to dinner. I ate at the Sports Buffet until they kicked me out at 7pm. By 7:20pm I was at Helen C. White Library studying in the quiet section (seriously). By 10:30pm I was taking the Drunk Bus home.

Focus Pocus

During this time I had something magical working for me: large chunks of time with completely focused effort. First I was totally focused on my classes. Then track practice. Then on eating (which felt like a job because I was the smallest discus thrower in the Big Ten Conference). And finally, on studying.

All 4 of these time blocks helped me focus my undivided attention on my largest life goals. Plus, there were no smart phones back then to distract me with an Instagram feed full of hilarious Pro Wrestling fails. (@Wrestlebotch)

Scheduling Focused Time

Today, I am revisiting the focused scheduling I employed as a student-athlete. As as result, I hope to achieve the same level of productivity, growth and progress I enjoyed two decades ago. That’s why I have time-blocked my calendar to help create deep focus on my most important tasks. The tasks that will help me achieve my long-term goals.

The Time Blocks On My Calendar Now Include:

  • An hour of blocked writing time every morning starting at 6am.
  • 2 hours of totally focused work on my most important tasks from 10am to Noon.
  • A regular 1-hour lunch, starting at noon every day (which also helps keep my energy high, as I wrote about in 5 Things I do to keep my work energy high.).
  • 1 hour of total focus on my most important issues in the afternoon from 2pm-3pm.
  • Dedicated open time for meetings, calls and emails to start and end the day.
  • A 30-minute planning session every Sunday night when I can plan my most important tasks for the week. Tasks that will help me achieve my long term goals.
The One Thing
Make this the next book you read.  Then let me know how much you loved it by writing me at  adam@theweaponry.com.

I loved how my calendar blocks helped me in college. But a book I am reading has influenced me to reintroduce this useful scheduling technique again. In fact, The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan may be the most powerful book I have read in the past 3 years. It teaches you a system that always leads you to the one, most important thing that you should be doing at any given time, in order to help you achieve your loftiest goals. A critical part of the program is creating calendar blocks that are reserved exclusively for your total focus on your most important activities. Spoiler Alert: The one thing you should be doing at any given time never involves WrestleBotch. #PriortitiesVsDistraction

Key Takeaway

It is not enough to have goals. You need to put in the work required to achieve them. That’s why it is so important to block large chunks of time on your calendar that allow you to completely focus on your most important tasks, every day. Add a chunk of focused time for planning on Sunday evenings, and it will ensure that you make demonstrable progress each and every week. Remember, scheduling your time costs nothing. But the dividends it pays by helping you achieve your goals could be enjoyed for generations.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

How to really make your network work.

Your network is one of your most valuable assets. But how much work should you put into building and maintaining your network? It’s an even more important question to ask than how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck would. But I bet you don’t have a good answer to either question. And neither did I. Until now.

Gary Keller

Recently I bought a couple of books by Gary Keller. In addition to being a best selling author, Keller is the co-founder of Keller Williams Realty. Which, my Spidey Sense tells me, is how the company got its first name.

The One Thing

The 2 Keller books I now own are The One Thing, which I have not yet started, but assume is about going number one, and The Millionaire Real Estate Investor, which I highly recommend.

The Millionaire RE Investor

Your Work Network

In The Millionaire Real Estate Investor Keller writes a lot about Your Work Network. He breaks this network down into 3 concentric circles:

  • Your Inner Circle,
  • Your Support Circle
  • Your Service Circle

The inner circle is comprised of your mentors, partners and consultants. The support circle is comprised of the core people you need to support and advise you on specific work transactions. The service circle consists of all the people that you may need to perform specialized tasks with a limited scope.

Your 3 Rings

Regardless of whether you are involved in real estate or a stay at home mom or dad, you have a network with a similar 3-ring structure. Which is not to be confused with the 3-ring circus, 3-ring binder or the 3-ring rule when answering a call after a first date.

The Aha

Envisioning your network as concentric circles is useful, but not not mind blowing. However, I found Keller’s recommendation on how to maintain your network relationships thought provoking.

Maintaining Your Network

Keller writes that to maintain your work relationships you should:

  1. Call Them Every Month
  2. Mail Them Something of Interest Every Month
  3. Meet With The Members of Your Inner Circle Every Month

This is a great rule of thumb. Most of us probably fall nowhere near this level of contact with our network. But we should. Calling is easy. If you broaden the term mailing to include email and texting you can certainly do a whole lot of #2 (#snickering). And meeting with the members of your inner circle once a month should be a no brainer, scarecrow.

IMG_7804
My college teammate Bryan Jones is a Realtor with Keller Williams, and someone I talk to every month and meet with several times a year.

Key Takeaway

You get out of your network what you put into it. Try Keller’s advice to stay connected to those in your network once a month. Start with your inner rings. We should all fully invest in our inner circle on a monthly basis. However, increasing your investment in your middle, or even your outer ring could pay huge dividends for you both personally and professionally. So as Rhianna said, work, work, work, work, work on putting more work into your network. And you are sure to draw more great things your way.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this idea, please share it with them.