How To Quadruple Your Productivity
By Eric Ruth
Time flies.
In fact, it flies by so fast that it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day operation of our businesses. When that happens, we lose strategic, long-term perspective.
So today I want to talk to you about planning. I urge you to spend a couple weeks making a long-term strategic and tactical plan. Ideally, you would break the plan down into quarterly goals. But it’s not enough to just write down your goals, you also have to write down your plan for achieving those goals.
The strategic plan is the big picture: “In 2008 I am generating $2500 per week in gross sales.”
The tactical plan includes the events that will enable you to achieve your strategic goals: “Each month I am sending out news releases to the local media regarding my health and fitness seminars, and holding one seminar.”
How are you going to achieve your goals? What are you going to “give” in order to “get” your goals? What sacrifices will you make? How will you structure your time? How much of your cash-flow will you re-invest into your business?
I suggest to you that the more detailed and thought-out your plan is, the more successful you will be implementing it. The more you invest, in terms of your time, effort and emotion into this process, the more “invested” you will be in actually applying it and sticking to it.
If your goal is something like, “I will make more money this year,” it lacks clarity, definiteness and specificity. And it’s likely that it will not come to pass.
The more specific and detailed you make your goals and the means by which you will achieve them, the more invested and intentional you become.
We all “want” to be successful, but just “wanting” is not enough. We have to take action. We have to make it happen. We have to create the life we want by rigorously and doggedly sticking to our plan… by fiercely refusing to give up. PT Barnum, possibly the greatest marketer ever and a man who overcame adversity multiple times, creating multiple fortunes in his lifetime, said that the single greatest quality that contributed to his success was dogged determination – sticktoitiveness – fierce determination to succeed!
Most people simply don’t have what it takes to survive and thrive in business for themselves. It is the rare few who have the willpower to create the life of their dreams. It’s too easy to bail out, get a job, or simply accept mediocrity and push our dreams into the dark recesses of our mind. It’s too easy to quit when the going gets tough.
And make no mistake, it is tough to build a highly successful, highly profitable business that provides you the lifestyle of your dreams.
But it’s not as hard, in the long-run, as hiding from your dreams and goals and accepting mediocrity. That’s the hardest thing – and the most damaging thing.
I get emails from members on occasion that say things like, “I need to get clients now, what should I do?”
They are looking to me to give them a tactical solution that will immediately generate new clients.
And that aggravates me. The purpose of my marketing systems is to provide you with the tactical tools and the long-term strategy for achieving a six-figure income.
But you can rarely isolate one specific event, like running an advertisement, that will suddenly generate the business you need.
A great marketer once said, “I don’t know one way for acquiring 100 new clients, but I know 100 ways for acquiring one client.”
That sort of sums up the synergy between tactical and strategic marketing applications.
The object is to have multiple tactical marketing systems in place which are all pushing you towards your strategic goals.
You need a strategic, big-picture mentality, what Stephen Covey calls “keeping the end in mind.” But you also must take the little, tactical steps which move you forward toward that end – what Dr. Covey calls doing “first things first.”
And you can’t successfully implement such a plan unless you have documented the plan. The documentation, the development of the plan, enables you to visualize the big picture and the small steps for achieving the big picture.
Here’s a very powerful method.
It’s called “Storyboarding.” It was first conceived by the movie industry and it’s now used by many successful companies.
A movie is developed by writing a screenplay. That includes the story and stage direction. The screenplay is then broken down into individual scenes. Then the scenes are broken down further into storyboards.
The storyboard is a visual representation of each camera angle and the action that will occur in each shot.
It’s a way of breaking the movie down into its smallest chunks. It’s very time consuming and labor intensive. But you can imagine that when $50 million is on the line, precision is very important.
The better prepared the director is to shoot the film, generally the better the end product is and it comes in at or under budget.
The way I apply the storyboard technique to my business is this:
I have a really big corkboard – it’s about 40 inches high by 52 inches wide. I have it mounted on the wall of my office.
I take 3x5 cards and write one “tactical goal” on each one. For instance, one card would say “build mini web site to sell “X” product (X being the name of the product)” another card would say “locate ten fitness related web sites on which I can advertise my email newsletter for Fitness Professionals” – as I locate each site and secure the advertising, I’ll list the site name on the card. The strategic goal may be to grow my e-newsletter opt-in subscriber list to 25,000 names, but the tactical methods I will use to do that get listed on the cards.
The corkboard is divided into three sections by taking a piece of string and tacking it to the top of the board so it dangles down. The three sections are labeled from left to right as follows:
DO
DOING
DONE
I write out my tactical goals in green for on-line promotion and in red for off-line promotion.
I use push-pins to hold the cards in place. Each tactical goal starts in the “DO” section. As I begin a project, it gets moved to the “DOING” section. And when it’s completed, it goes to the “DONE” section.
This enables me to “get a visual” on each and every project, each tactical goal, and see where I am with each one. I can write small notes on the cards, and I can see the progression.
It helps crystallize my “vision” for my business, and know where I stand at any given time. It’s fluid and dynamic. It’s not static, like a written marketing plan is. However, I do have a written marketing plan. But working with it can be a little cumbersome, so I will update it every quarter. The storyboard can be updated daily. The storyboard is kind of like the big map that military generals use during battle campaigns. You know how they push the little symbols around the map indicating troop movements and such?
This is exciting because of the visual element and the means of tracking progress on a daily basis.
Another tool I use for goal achievement is a simple piece of paper divided into two columns:
DO ONE THING TO MARKET MY BUSINESS TODAY
DO ONE THING TO IMPROVE MY FITNESS TODAY
Under each column heading are thirty one horizontal lines, numbered 1-31.
I start a new sheet each month. And every day I fill in the one thing I did to market my business and the one thing I did that was fitness related.
My goal is to do one thing for each, each and every day.
I stick the paper to my refrigerator (cause I’m in that thing MANY times each day and I can’t help but look at the paper). It’s a simple reminder that I must do ONE THING each and every day.
Finally, I’ve spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on various “time-management” books, day-timers, and software programs. They’re all a pain in my ass and I quit using them within weeks. I’d spend an hour a day just trying to save an hour a day.
So I simplified everything.
Now, I use the two tools I’ve already mentioned (storyboarding and do one thing sheet) plus one other really powerful AND SIMPLE tool.
A “To-Do” list.
Each evening, before I wrap things up for the day, I spend FIVE MINUTES writing a SHORT list of no more than 3-6 ACTIONS to take (things that need to get done) the next day.
The biggest mistake most people make when using to-do lists, is putting WAY TOO MUCH STUFF on them. That’s what your storyboard is for. Your to-do list should just list what you MUST do the next day. That’s it.
And keep it to 3-6 items.
Check them off as you complete, and I guarantee you’ll have such a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day, it will be incredibly rewarding, motivating and therefore – SUSTAINING. When you get a sense of accomplishment, of reward, from an activity, you’re much more likely to continue that activity, right?
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Look, the bottom line is this:
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s the truth. Planning is critical. But then you must take massive action on your plan.
Massive action without a plan is chaos. Planning without action is wasted time. The two go hand-in-hand.
Work on your plan for one hour every day. Make it tactical and strategic. Then do it! Follow-through. Be committed to your own success, because no one else can do this for you.
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