I feel particularly privileged to make a living having great conversations with smart people. Today, a client shared a pet peeve about her boss who finishes every team meeting and every email to the team with “Let’s get s**t done!” or “Let’s GSD!” Now, this client is one of the most ambitious and focused people I know, and yet, she says that despite always being busy, when she looks back at each day and her weeks, she does “a lot of s**t” that doesn’t matter. She feels like she can’t seem to stop wasting time on things that don’t really add value to her work, or her life for that matter. Her boss’ battle cry does nothing to actually prioritize what s**t really matters. It’s like telling a new manager “just be a good leader” without defining what being a leader means. We live in an extremely noisy world. Often, we feel overwhelmingly busy while the results we are seeking end up being underwhelming, or even disappointing, in terms of the investment of our time and efforts. Being very busy at work is like running through an obstacle course covered in mud from head to toe. It can still be great fun, but our pace will be much slower than normal, and we become progressively less steady on our feet as we continue to run along.
In my experience, people can’t be divided into just two categories of “productive” or “unproductive,” “rockstars” or “slackers,” “A players” or “C players.” We all have the potential to be top performers, and when we don’t perform up to our potential, or are ineffective, it can most likely be attributed to either the work environment or personal routines. To really do what matters, we need to focus on a narrow sphere of attention and activity. And here’s the million-dollar-question: “what matters?” Although it sounds simple, defining objectives and setting priorities is where people repeatedly mess up. Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula to success. It is our habits and routines that enable us to improve over time through consistent repetition and gaining experience. When we get in the habit of checking-in inwards to honestly identify the things that cause us to be unproductive, we can then develop new habits and build new guardrails to become more effective. There’s no one-size-fits-all style of GSD. One of my favorite methods for keeping attention on and doing what matters is Warren Buffett’s 25-5 Rule. This is a 3-step process to determine priorities and actions. Here’s how it works:
List 25 things you need to accomplish (every day/week/month/year/next 3 years.)
Carefully consider your list and circle the top five that you most urgently want to get done.
Spend all your time and energy on these 5 items and ignore the other 20.
As you can imagine, and I can confirm from my own experience, step number three is where we have our work cut out for us if we want to stay focused throughout our day. No action is energy-neutral. Everything we do, or think about, requires a certain amount of emotional investment and focus. Our challenge is to ruthlessly eliminate the things that do not contribute to our top 5 list. I love this practice because it forces me to make the tough choices to only focus on what would be a great use of my time. Trust me, I could easily rationalize spending time on those things that would be a good use of my time but would still derail my efforts. Picking the top 5 priorities is making a commitment to direct all my efforts and energy toward specific goals. Secondary goals are the biggest challenge, the biggest distraction. To keep focus, along with each priority on our top-5 list, we need to write down our goal in specific and measurable action words. This helps maintain focus on what is important and track progress by figuring out what really works in light of real improvement. Personally, it is only through tracking numbers that I know I am getting better and closer to reaching a goal. For example, it is only when I started tracking my habit of reading 20 minutes of nonfiction every day, that I was able to read one business book a week. I love reading, but I tend to read novels, and so I needed to find a way to expand my reading list to increase my business acumen.
I will not go as far as Zig Ziglar to say that distractions are the enemy of greatness; however, I think we can all agree that they do erode the greatest of plans and the best of intentions. And there’s no way to cut them out of our life. We all have to-do lists running a mile long of trivial things that need to get done like driving kids to school, or trimming the dog’s nails. But we can still be very selective about what we set to accomplish each and every day by setting aside 5 important tasks to complete correlated to our top 5 priorities. While we may have no control over the unexpected, we must own our planned tasks and activities. Here’s a life hack to master the 25-5 rule:
Like the Jewish holidays, productivity starts the night before: at the end of the day, visualize the next day being a great day and set the five most important tasks to be completed come hail or high water.
Begin every day as if it were your birthday: bounce out of bed ready to conquer the world. Make sure you plan something to be excited about and look forward to waking up in the morning, for me it’s my 20 minutes of yoga to John Denver’s songs. What gets you excited to get out of bed? As you get moving, keep your focus on what matters with the intention of doing it.
Astonish yourself: as you go through your day, seek out something new and extraordinary to connect with the world at a deeper level. This will stop you from sleepwalking through your day and shake you to observe the world with curiosity rather than preconceived certainties. And thus, you’ll be more likely to make creative breakthroughs as you work towards your goals.
In sum, to GSD: first focus on your own s**t, then choose the top 5 things that you want, make a plan to keep your priorities straight, and keep working it every single day.
