In This Episode…
In yesterday’s episode I effectively rebooted this podcast after a few months of sporadic posting. I lamented how I didn’t feel my development was at the required depth.
Well in this episode I reflect on that in a bit more depth (irony not intended) and explore the following:
- What my current standards are and how they have evolved.
- Why I need to raise my standards.
- The challenges I have making the choice about what to focus on next.
- How I am going to make those decisions going forward.
- A reflection on today’s business activities to see what I can work on next.
- A decision is made and commitment is given.
Episode Transcript (Edited)
Hi, and welcome to today’s episode of the Profit Productivity Podcast. It’s your host, Michael Tipper. Who else would it be?
Yesterday in the episode where I basically rebooted the podcast, it might’ve seen that I was a little bit down and hard on myself and that’s probably true.
But I think it really pays to be honest, it pays to be realistic and really recognise the reality of where I’m at, because otherwise if I don’t, I’ll be deluding myself.
And the reality is, I’m on a drive to develop my own productivity so that I can share it with others and help them develop their productivity. But also because I am developing my skills for where I want to go in the future with the projects that I am looking to do.
And I can’t be someone who does things in a haphazard manner in order to achieve those goals.
I really need to be able to be focused, to be productive and to really target my energy, to produce the best results possible. And that’s what I really need to do. And I really need to reset the standards of my behaviour.
Here’s A Great Quote That Defines What Drives Us – It’s Not What You Might Think
Now on my wall, I have a quote from Sam ovens, who is the CEO of consulting.com. And he says:
Our standards are what define us. We are not the highest version of ourselves, which we can imagine. We are the lowest version of ourselves, which we can accept. Understand that you will do nothing to achieve your dreams, but fight like hell to not breach your standards. As humans, we will do more to not lose something than we will to gain it. If you want to achieve your dreams and goals, you must turn them into irrefutable standards.
Now, this also echoes something that I’ve heard Tony Robbins say time and time again, is that it’s about raising your standards.
So what are my current standards?
Well, I have a morning routine.
So for example, I have an alarm set at 5:20 AM. I get up I meditate for 20 minutes. I do a 20 minute yoga routine. I do Wim Hof breathing exercises for 20 minutes and I do a hundred, at least a hundred pushups across four different sets.
Then I have a shower which includes a cold shower and I then focus on doing my LinkedIn routine.
So one of the things I’ve been doing for the last six weeks or so are daily posts on LinkedIn to promote the information that I’m aware of and sharing my knowledge about how to be productive.
And that’s working really well.
That starts at 07:30 and then I comment other people’s posts for an hour until 08:30.
I generally have a Google hangout chat with my virtual assistant, Jenefer. And then normally I’m ready to start work on other stuff at 9:00.
Now I’ve been doing that for six weeks and it is the standard I have set for myself Monday to Friday.
And that’s working really well. So that’s a new benchmark for me and I am seeing the benefits of it.
I’m seeing the benefits of the getting up early and doing the meditation and the yoga. I’m seeing the benefits of posting regularly on LinkedIn. I’m seeing the benefits of regularly communicating with my VA.
So there are benefits for doing that, but now I need to raise my standards to the next level.
I Need To Raise My Game
So yesterday I was a little bit hard on myself, but I think when I reflect, I have come a long way, but I need to go further.
So raising my game, what does that actually mean?
Well in the great book, The One Thing by Gary Keller, he says that you develop your skills one habit at a time.
Now this reflects the Productivity Improvement Operating System that I’ve developed over the last 18 months, which I’ve been sharing with others in my Power of Focus seminars.
And this is about starting off with marginal games. That essentially is what one habit is. It’s a small change. And so I need to choose what that habit is.
I think I’ve also got to work on my values, my beliefs, my routines and all the other habits. But I need to take it slowly and carefully.
If I look at getting up at 05:20, I didn’t start getting up at that time.
I started getting up at 06:00 and then as I started to expand my morning routine, it got earlier and earlier.
It was the same with the press ups. I didn’t start by doing a hundred press-ups straight away. I started off by doing four lots of 10 and then slowly building that up.
And so developing a habit slowly and carefully is the key to me moving forward.
So where is my challenge now?
The challenges is one of choice.
Where do I start with all the reading I’ve done?
There are so many things I could be doing. There are so many things I should be doing, but I think I need to focus on what I must be doing.
I Need To Raise My Standards
I have to move my “coulds” to my “shoulds” to my musts.
And how do I decide on that?
Well, I think what I need to do is let needs must. I’ve got to have a j”ust in time” approach to my development.
And when I say just in time, actually, it’s just after time, because I’ll realise there is a deficiency in my behaviour or a deficiency in the habits or routines.
And when I see the problem, I then know I need to fix it. But rather than try and fix everything, I need to fix one thing at a time.
So let me just reflect on today and share with you what’s happened and see if we can tease something out of that, about what to work on.
I Think I Might Need To Work On Something Around Meetings
So this morning I had a meeting with a client. This is a client I’ve done two productivity masterclasses for over the last few weeks and we are planning to do more.
This meeting was a catch up meeting.
Now I know meetings work really, really well when there is a clear outcome – we know what we’re trying to achieve ; a clear purpose – why we’re trying to achieve it and a clear agenda – here’s the route to achieving it.
But there was none of that. Now the meeting was called by my client. So I maybe I didn’t have the position to dictate how it was going to be run.
Although that in itself is a belief.
Maybe I could have sent an email saying, what’s the outcome? What’s the purpose ? What’s on the agenda? But I didn’t.
I sort of had an idea of the topic and when we got into the meeting, it was a good quality meeting.
It was a very general relationship building meeting because we talked about the work that we had already done and how that had gone and how are we going to position that moving into the future.
So having done that, we came up with a number of actions and a formulation of a plan for how we do move forward.
Now at the moment, I still yet to process that meeting which finished a good seven hours ago.
And since it finished, I’ve captured the action points on posted notes. This is in line with using a Kanban system which is about capturing a single outcome on a single post note.
I did that, but the post it notes are still gathered on my notes for the meeting. I haven’t actioned the notes.
The meeting at the moment remains to a certain extent unprocessed. Which means in my mind, there’s an open mental loop around the actions, around the outcome and around closing it down to make sure I’ve got everything covered.
Today’s Experience With Meetings Is A Marker Towards What I Need To Do
So that probably is a good starting point because I know over the next few weeks, I am going to have quite a few meetings and I need to fine tune that meeting process.
First of all, I need to get very clear on only having meetings that are going to further my goals, my agenda, and what I’m trying to achieve.
I realised over the lockdown period, I was having a lot of calls that were just general chat, catch up type calls.
This was good from a relationship perspective, but they didn’t really move my business forward. I need to get more disciplined with that.
So I’m going to have a lot more meetings and now I need to make sure I control those meetings so they are short, they are sharp and they are businesslike because that’s what I’m about.
I need to walk the talk. I need to live what I know is the right thing for me.
Now, it might not be the right thing for everyone. Because I know there is a lot of value in just shooting the breeze and sharing ideas and catching up. That’s part of relationships and I can do some of that, but I really need to focus on getting more things done.
So that’s what I’m going to work on.
And having identified that, now I’m going to do something about it.
In the past with these episodes, I would have highlighted it. I would have made some token gesture towards it and then in tomorrow’s episode I would talk about something else I needed to do.
But this time I’m committing now to seeing this particular process through -how I manage meetings, how I run them, how I take the output from them, how I track that output from them.
Those are going to be key activities for me to really nail down so I can move forward.
So that’s today’s episode.
Until tomorrow.
