مهارت چهارم: اثربخشی

SKILL 4:

EFFECTIVENESS

When I’m on deadline for a book, like right now, I spend huge chunks of my typical workday away from my team so I can work without being disturbed. On this particular day I’m sitting at one of those long communal wooden tables that seem to be required furniture in any respectable hipster eatery. I like sitting at the communal table because I can always find someone to watch my stuff while I go to the bathroom for the eighty-seventh time this hour. The only drawback is the constant stream of people who come and go from the chairs around me, making the energy shift and change with each new addition.

The first girl who sat down today was here to work on homework. I know this because her textbook was open and she had a worksheet in front of her. She tackled it like this. She read a little bit from the book, then she looked at her Instagram for a while, then she took a picture of her coffee and her homework and posted it on Instagram—it took her another half hour to find just the right filter on VSCO. After that she focused in on the work again. She was doodling in the margin a second later. Then it was more scrolling, and some Googling, and a while later she packed up to go. Not one single thing filled out on the worksheet she came to do.

The next person who sat beside me was a bro. He was here with another bro. I actually like these kinds of dudes a lot. They’re in their late twenties, full of energy and enthusiasm, and they quote Gary Vee like it’s gospel. I get it. I’m in. Gary Vaynerchuk is my preacher too. In a nerdy sort of way, I was happy they were beside me. They had fancy laptops and yellow notepads, and they were brainstorming and ready to begin their work. After their initial chat they proceeded to spend two hours—I swear on my unsweetened chai tea—scrolling Instagram as well. The irony that was fully lost on them was that they were scrolling their favorite entrepreneurial feeds, showing each other quotes about perseverance and hustle, all the while oblivious to the time they were wasting.

I always feel so bad when I observe this happening to the dreamers around me. It’s too easy to fall into time-wasters and busywork that get you nowhere closer to your goal. I used to do this all the time when I was a young author.

Back then, I had a really bad habit of rereading what I had written over and over and over. I would sit down to “write” for an hour and spend forty-five minutes reading what I’d already written and inevitably editing as I went along. For months I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t making any real, tangible progress toward getting to my final word count. I wasn’t getting anywhere because I wasn’t actually doing any new work. I was just like the bros sitting next to me at the coffee shop. My guess is they’ll have all sorts of collab sessions like the one they had today and finally give up on the idea they’re pursuing because it’s not getting anywhere. If they’re anything like I was, they won’t even realize that it’s not the idea’s fault that nothing happened. It’s their own.

Have you ever worked on a goal, putting in all kinds of hours, and not made any tangible progress? My guess is it was because you didn’t understand what to focus on. You thought what you needed was the time to pursue your dream, when really what you needed was to use the time you do have in an impactful way. To help you not fall into the trap of distraction disguised as productivity, here’s every single thing I can think of that I’ve taught myself over the last decade to be not just productive but highly productive!

1. REPLACE YOUR TO-DO LIST WITH A RESULTS LIST

Remember in the last chapter when I talked about creating your road map? I mean, of course you do, that was like five minutes ago. But on the off chance you’re like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates and your memory is faulty, I’ll remind you that your road map to your goal includes mile markers along the way. These are the stepping stones that you use to keep you focused in the direction you’re headed. In order to work effectively, you need to always be working toward your next mile marker. The problem is, like those guys at the coffee shop or me in my early days of writing, it can often feel like you’re working toward your next mile marker when really you’re just making wider and wider circles around your current location. So, to counteract this tendency, when you sit down to work from now until forever, I want you to stop making to-do lists.

The average woman’s to-do list is approximately 319 items long, which means you’re never going to get through it anyway. Also, if you’re anything like me back in the day, you’ll spend your entire work time doing the easiest items on your to-do list, simply so you can have some items crossed out. But since none of those items get you anywhere closer to your next mile marker, it’s all a big waste of time. So, let’s let go of the idea of a to-do list and focus instead on creating a results list. And by “result,” I mean, what is the end result I’m looking for from this work session?

A to-do list might have a line item that says “work on manuscript,” but that’s so nebulous. That could mean anything, and if you’re already struggling to be productive, your brain will seize on any excuse to mark something as complete. So, if I daydream about a title for this book, is that working on the manuscript? If I rewrite a paragraph four times, is that working on the manuscript? If I go to drinks with a fellow author and we discuss plot points, is that working on the manuscript? No. None of it counts as working on the manuscript when what I really need is to get closer to turning in this book on time.

Right now the only thing that matters is word count. Right now I need to spend every waking minute building one sentence on top of another in order to turn this in on time. So, on my results list I will list: write 2,500 words. That’s the result I want. There’s no way to sort of write 2,500 words. You either do it or you don’t. And PS, for all my fellow writers who dream of having a completed nonfiction manuscript, having a mile marker of “write 2,500 words” twenty-six times would get you there.

Let’s say you’ve decided to set and achieve a new target for your direct sales organization. Your to-do list could have “hit new sales target” on it, but that’s so open-ended. I mean, how in the world is that any direction or focus for your brain? If I talk to three new prospective clients, does that count? If I spend an hour researching how to grow in a sales organization, is that good enough? Maybe, if you’re just trying to stay up-to-date in your industry, but if you want to get something you’ve never had, you’ve got to do things you’ve never done. Your results list should be specific: “reach out to one hundred new prospective clients every day” or “close four new contracts every week” or “increase the average sale per existing customer by 3 percent to raise overall revenue numbers.” Notice with that last one it’s very focused. I like results that are specific and about more than the goal, that are also about expanding on ways to achieve the same outcome. If the last time I tried to increase my business I focused only on locking in new customers and it was difficult, I can step back and ask myself if there’s a smarter way to achieve the same outcome. For instance, I could look at doing more with the clients I do have. Could I send out more emails? Can I create a process to make it easier to sell? Can I be more intentional about upselling to increase overall revenue without having to add a new client base? In this instance my goal is actually increased revenue, but I’ve gotten so bogged down in my to-do list that I haven’t stopped to consider it in a different light. If I don’t write down the result that I’m looking for first, my brain can’t help me ask the right questions to get me closer to my actual goal.

So make a results list, not a to-do list. That daily results list should never be longer than five bullet points. In fact, my daily results list is typically only two or three points long at most. Because the items I’m writing down are major moves for me, when I’m able to knock out even one of them I feel ecstatic. If you overwhelm your list you’re going to end every single working period feeling like you didn’t accomplish much when, in reality, if you’ve completed at least one ideal result that pushes you closer to the next mile marker, you are wildly accomplished. That feeling of wild accomplishment needs to be your new habit. You need to make it your goal during every single working period. Not that you set aside time to work, but that you worked to accomplish the right things.

1. REEVALUATE EFFICIENCY

Knowing the right result to aim for is honestly half the battle. If you started working toward completing one ideal result for every working period and you did it consistently for the next three weeks, I think you’d be shocked to see how much progress you made. But there’s something you can do to push this a little further, a little faster. Frankly, I don’t know anyone working their way toward a goal who wouldn’t love to get there ahead of schedule. So once you’ve got a clear mile marker in your future and you know the best results to aim for to get closer to it, the next question you want to ask yourself is, Is there something I could be doing that would make this more efficient?

If you want to dive into this question in detail, I highly recommend the book The One Thing by Gary Keller. In it, Keller asks a profound question. Not profound in its complexity but profound in the sense that most of us are often so busy working inside our goals that we never take the time to work on our goals. The question is basically, What’s the one thing you could do right now, today, that would make everything else unnecessary?1 When it comes to your results list, the question should be, What’s the one thing I could do right now, today, that would help me achieve all of this faster, easier, more efficiently?

For instance, let’s go back to my ideal result of hitting 2,500 words. I asked myself how I could get to my daily word count more efficiently, with less hassle, quicker. The answer was pretty simple and incredibly easy to implement, but if I hadn’t asked the question, I absolutely wouldn’t have considered it. For me, it’s about writing at a coffeehouse. What’s so special about a coffeehouse? Well, I have a great office with a nice desk and a good chair and access to snacks and water and bathrooms at no additional charge, and I’ve been writing this book for weeks during my regular office hours. But you know what else is in that office? Fourteen employees who are working on various projects that I always get pulled into. Now, just so we’re clear, they’re not the ones pulling me into the projects. In fact, they don’t bother me at all because they know I’m on deadline. But writing is a hard and lonely slog. No matter how many times I do it, it always sucks, and when I’m at work and feeling lonely or tired of writing a paragraph, I wander out to use the restroom and along the way I find three things to stick my nose into rather than heading back to work. So 2,500 words, which should never take me more than three hours, ends up taking the better part of the day.

I was still achieving my end result, so I wasn’t keen on challenging anything, but I had to ask myself, Is there a better way to do this? For me, that means working away from my staff. I like coffeehouses better than working from home because there’s always great energy from fellow hustlers and creators and sometimes I even get ideas for chapters (like the start of this one). Working on this book at a coffeehouse means that I’m plowing through this manuscript, doing way more than 2,500 words at a time, and getting there faster than I was. If you don’t ask yourself, if you don’t challenge what is and isn’t working, then you’ll never know.

1. CREATE YOUR OWN PRODUCTIVE ENVIRONMENT

Years ago, someone I admired asked me if I could advise him on the writing process. This person was an extremely talented and sought-after speaker, but he had never written a book. I thought we’d get into word counts or plot points or how to craft an outline, but he really only wanted to know one thing: How do you create a writing retreat in your home to create the perfect atmosphere for writing?

“You don’t,” I told him. “You write wherever, whenever, however you can. Creating the perfect office won’t actually help you in any way.”

He didn’t like my answer. He was adamant that if he could only set up the ideal space, then the process that had proven so hard in the past would become easier. I knew right then he’d never finish a manuscript. That sounds super harsh and catty, but it’s the truth. This is based on my years of getting hundreds of questions just like this one. A writing room is dreamy and a luxury I hope to achieve one day. But it doesn’t help you write. That’s like thinking an expensive treadmill will motivate you to run. No outside factor is going to make you more productive, and if you need a certain atmosphere to be at your best, you’re not truly in control of yourself.

I’m writing this sentence right now in the center seat on a packed flight. A last-minute speaking gig across the country means all the fancy seats on the plane were booked, but even though it’s uncomfortable, I can’t miss out on valuable writing time. Early in the morning, late at night, while my kids play in front of me at the park or at soccer practice, I write whenever, however I can. Is one space—like that hipster coffee shop or a mansion overlooking the water—more preferable? Certainly. But life doesn’t work like that. If I waited for the perfect space or opportunity to be productive, I wouldn’t ever have completed even one of my books. The key is to create an environment that can get you into the zone wherever you happen to be. For me, it’s different kinds of playlists, or a certain song played on repeat over and over and over like white noise, that helps me focus and get into production mode, even in the most hectic of places. For you it could be a certain smell, a certain type of gum you chew (no, this is not crazy), the same exact coffee order at Starbucks—any kind of repetitious cue you can give to your brain that it’s time to focus. My personal favorite zone maker is an espresso con panna and the song “Humble” as loud as my air pods will allow. In fact, it may scandalize my conservative readers to know that most of Girl, Wash Your Face was written to Kendrick Lamar on repeat, but, hey, when you find out what helps you get into the zone, you capitalize on it as much as you can.

1. KNOW WHAT DISTRACTS YOU AND AVOID THAT THING

Man, this sounds obvious when you write it out, but people who struggle to be or stay productive are usually too distracted to know they’re distracted. Every time your focus and your energy wander, it takes a long time to get them back—if you even get them back at all. Pay attention to what steals your attention. For me, it’s usually access to WiFi on my computer and the ability to see or hear the home screen of my phone. In my mind every text is urgent and possibly an employee telling me the office is burning down, every incoming email might be from Oprah, and a quick Google search to research something I’m writing about turns into a vortex rabbit hole and suddenly I find myself taking a BuzzFeed quiz to see who my ideal Disney prince might be. So guess what has to happen when I’m trying to hit a certain word count? I have to shut off my WiFi, flip my phone over, and turn the sound off so I don’t see or hear any incoming messages.

1. COURSE CORRECT

It’s easy to get sidetracked, and it’s even easier to be moving so quickly in a direction that you don’t realize it’s the wrong direction. I recommend a check-in with yourself every Sunday. Sunday is the easiest time for me because it’s when I plan out my week. I take the time to focus in on the outcome I want for the week and then ask myself if I’m really, truly headed in the direction of the next mile marker. If so, great! If not, what can I do this week to ensure that I get the results I’m looking for?

When it comes to efficiency, the bottom line is this: You’re already doing the work. You’re already putting in the time, and it would be such a waste if you were depleting your energy for no reason, or worse, potentially giving up on a great idea simply because you haven’t figured out how to make greater strides toward your goal. Do an efficiency audit and figure out where you need to tighten up and shift your focus.