When you want to get it done, the Get-It-Done Guy provides short, friendly tips to help you work less and do more. Forget about the things you weren't getting done before -- your productivity will increase along with your happiness.
Stever Robbins here. Welcome to the Get-It-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More. Today's topic is using passion to motivate you at work. Hello Stever, this is Reid. I've been listening to your podcasts and they're great. And I have a question for you, for your podcast. Every time, whenever I go to work, I really just lose enthusiasm before I get there, so this may be more of a psychology question than an organizational question. But, I'm wondering if you have any tips about how to maintain a spark, or maintain that special spark (how 'bout that)? Maintain enthusiasm for work before you get there. When I lose that enthusiasm, I lose energy and it seems to sap my organizational ability or my effectiveness. Alright, thanks, bye. Reid, the quick and dirty tip comes from Monty Python's movie, Life of Brian: Always look on the bright side of life, or at least, find where you're passionate and concentrate on that. Today's podcast is sponsored by web-based meeting software you can try for free at GotoMeeting.com/podcast. Find What You Love About Your Job Connecting to your true motivators can be powerful. Nineteen-year-old Ryan Allis was passionate about entrepreneurship. He started a little company and by age 23 was running at $10 million per year. I met him through a mutual friend and asked his secret. He brings passion to everything he does, in part by keeping the passion front-and-center. Think, "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Trite, I know, but it works. When you're driving to work, chances are that you're going over all the ways your job sucks. You're reviewing that nasty e-mail a customer sent, or the boredom you felt waiting for your computer to reboot, or worse, Bernice's new polyester pants suit. Yes, Lycra stretches. Way too far. But don't dwell on the Lycra. Dwell on your dear friend Bernice and how much you love her. See? Even abject terror can change to love with the right mindset. You need to, Reid, find where there's passion in your job. Focus on that and let it pull you forward. People find passion in different places. Let's explore where you can find yours. Do You Love Your Tasks? What you love may be the tasks you do. You're a total numbers geek, and nothing thrills you more than spending a quiet evening by candlelight, creating a 200 by 200 spreadsheet model of Wal-Mart's expansion into Asia. You'll be single for life, but that's OK. A friend of mine worked as a negotiator and loved the challenge of finding a middle ground where both parties felt, um, equally dissatisfied. Put your attention on the tasks you love and let them charge you up. Do You Love Your Industry? You may love your industry or your company most. Think: entertainers. They're so dazzled by the industry, they'll wait tables, all the while keeping their motivation high by deriving great personal satisfaction from knowing they're "in the business." Hmm... When the Get-it-Done Guy goes video, I'll be accepting applications for unpaid slav... er, interns. Do You Love the People You Work With? Relationships may be your key. You love your colleagues at work, or serving customers, or spending quality time with your strategic partners' purchasing agent. You might enjoy the actual relationships for their own sake, or you might enjoy the roles and what you represent to each other. Personally, I love helping people become more skillful and more successful. When one of my first clients climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro after our work together, it changed my life knowing I'd played a part in making that happen. If relationships are your key, your energy comes from touching other people... appropriately, of course. Does Your Job Give You Freedom? And if all else fails, ask yourself why you're working at that job, anyway? You may remember you took it because it would give you enough free time to pursue your blindfolded trumpet tap dance routine. Imagine taking an exciting job like being an actuarial accountant, because you know you can save up enough to retire for life in six years. Even if you hate the job, counting down the days until retirement can be very motivating. And being an actuary, you can even know if the odds are in your favor of living until that age-40 retirement! Life gives you everything. You have tasks, an industry, a company, people, roles you play, and outcomes you're striving for. You pick and choose what you'll react to. Grab a piece of paper and list out all those aspects of your job. Find the ones that appeal to you and reactivate your passion by paying attention to what lights your fire, while ignoring the parts of the job that just don't do it for you. Is It Time to Change Jobs? If there's no aspect of your job that excites you, it may be time to consider a major change. Since visiting San Diego, I've always viewed the surfer beach-bum lifestyle with envy. Or maybe you can become an entrepreneur. In this week's transcript, you'll find a link to an interview with Ryan Allis, to find out a bit about how you can build your empire, make a difference, and live your passion. Rallying everyone around you to get in touch with their passion can be tough if you're traveling. But wait! Web-based meeting software can help you hold your meetings from the comfort of your favorite web browser. For a 30-day free trial, visit GoToMeeting.com/podcast. This is Stever Robbins. If you have a question about how to Work Less and Do More, e-mail getitdone@quickanddirtytips.com or leave voicemail at 866-WRK-LESS. That's 866-W-R-K-L-E-S-S. You can find a link to the Ryan Allis interview at Getitdone.QuickAndDirtyTips.com. Want to help brainstorm my new book? follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter or visit blog.steverrobbins.com/getitdoneguy. Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
Stever Robbins here. Welcome to the Get-It-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More. A 12-year-old listener named Aaron wrote in (and called in, but it turns out we can't legally broadcast callers under age 13): Dear Get it Done Guy, I have already listened to your fantastic e-mail Zen podcast, to your quick and dirty e-mail backlog podcast, and to your other great e-mail management podcasts (Gee. Is this e-mail to Bernice) but I still have a major problem: spam from Facebook and news sites. I tried making folders, deleting everything, spam and that handy "move all that bothersome mail from that same old constipated e-mail address to that same old helpful folder" but *sigh*, nothing works. Please fish me out of that sea of Facebook, CNN, Super Wall, MSNBC, Jetman, The Boston Globe, and Speed Racer e-mails. A devoted 12 year old listener, Aaron Thanks for writing in, Aaron! The quick and dirty tip is to listen to this whole episode, because it can't be summarized in a sentence. This podcast is sponsored by GotoMeeting.com. You can use GotoMeeting to save time with meetings by meeting virtually, sharing screens, and talking on a shared conference line. If your team is distributed around the country or the world, or even just the building, try it out for free at GotoMeeting.com/podcast. I've been using e-mail since I was your age, actually. But back then, there was no such thing as spam. Well, there was, but it was a tasty meat product you could slice, fry up with butter, and eat in blissful ignorance of the health consequences. Spam-the-meat is alive and well at Spam.com, where you can browse all 13 varieties and even learn how tiny amounts of sodium nitrite keep spam looking tasty pink. Electronic spam isn't as tasty, but it also comes in several varieties. Each variety needs its own solution. First, kill lots of spam by setting your e-mail preferences on Facebook and social sites to send only the updates you want. Facebook drives me nuts! I want messages from friends, but none of this "Bernice strokes your chin and playfully plucks out a chin hair. To pluck one of her chin hairs, click here..." (And excuse me, I loaned Bernice a hundred dollars for an electrolysis appointment. She shouldn't have any more chin hairs.) Scour the settings menu for words like e-mail, privacy, and notification preferences and turn off everything but what you want. Once you've done that, it's time to get serious about spam! Serious idea #1: Have a public and a private e-mail address. Give the private one to friends and use the public one to sign up for Facebook, CNN, etc. You can ignore your public e-mail for weeks, scan it when you have time, or nuke it if you don't. I use Gmail for my public address. It has great spam filtering. And, if someone marks a message as spam, Gmail filters that message from everyone. But only mark real spam as spam! If you're tired of the "Great Wines of Western Florida" newsletter filling your inbox, please unsubscribe properly. Marking it spam could block it from reaching Gmail readers who do want it. And, as a newsletter publisher myself, it's really a bummer to know people want my newsletter but it's blocked because of sloppy spam tagging. Having public and private e-mail addresses isn't perfect. There are viruses that will discover your private address in a friend's address book or inbox and send your address to a spammer through no fault of your own. Serious idea #2: The Quick Back-and-Forth Sometimes you want a quick one-time-use e-mail address. You just bought a new camera and want to download the manual. The manufacturer demands your name, your dog's name, and an e-mail address, and they'll e-mail you a link to download the manual that should have been included in the first place so you can use their darned product. For this, use mailinator.com. That's m-a-i-l-i-n-a-t-o-r-dot-com. It's free! You just make up an e-mail address you can use instantly. You can retrieve e-mail sent to that address from the web or an RSS feed with no password. Messages get purged every couple of hours, so it's good for quick transactions. For example, give the e-mail address ChrisThePhotographer@mailinator.com. The camera company sends a download link, you do the download, and then ignore that address forever. Or, keep giving out ChrisThePhotographer but only check the inbox when you know something important is about to arrive. Serious idea #3: The No-Commitment Relationship Sometimes, you want a few messages and you don't want them to vanish. For that, spamgourmet.com is your answer. With Spamgourmet, you also make up e-mail addresses, but incoming messages forward to your personal e-mail account. The made-up address magically deactivates after three incoming messages. If you like what's coming in, you can go in and set the address not to deactivate. When I enter a contest or drawing where they announce the winner by e-mail, I use Spamgourmet. Serious idea #4: For techies only! If you own your own domain, here's a neat trick. This one's more complicated, but lots of fun. Have your domain forward all incoming e-mail to your Gmail account. Then when giving company X your e-mail address, give them the address X@yourdomain. For example, when I register at Amazon.com, I give the e-mail address Amazon@MyDomain.com. Then if Amazon sells my name and I start getting spam to that address, I just make a Gmail filter to auto-delete all messages sent to Amazon@MyDomain.com. I actually use a second-level domain like mail.MyDomain.com, and spammers can't even know that domain exists since 2nd level domains aren't listed. To recap, set your preferences whenever possible so you don't get e-mail. Then use separate public and private e-mail addresses for friends and everyone else. Mailinator.com and spamgourmet.com can be used for super-temporary address that won't clog your inbox. You can find links to all of this at getitdone.quickanddirtytips.com. Do you ever travel and need to attend meetings back at the home office. With GotoMeeting.com, you can meet with the rest of your team, share screens, give each other demos, and even control each other's computers with only a web connection. You’ll never have to miss a meeting again. You can get a 30-day free trial at gotomeeting.com/podcast. This is Stever Robbins. If you have a question about how to Work Less and Do More, e-mail getitdone@quickanddirtytips.com or leave voicemail at 866-WRK-LESS. You can find this episode's transcript at getitdone.quickanddirtytips.com with links to all the spam resources mentioned in this episode. If you want to help me write the Get-It-Done Guy book, Work Less and Do More, visit blog.steverrobbins.com/getitdoneguy, or follow me on Twitter by typing: follow getitdoneguy. Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life! RESOURCES: - Spam.com, the home of Hormel Spam(r) products. - Mailinator.com, no-password, web-based e-mail - SpamGourmet.com, e-mail forwarding that only lets a few messages through WANT TO CHIME IN ON ISSUES COVERED IN THE GET-IT-DONE GUY BOOK? - Visit http://blog.steverrobbins.com/getitdoneguy and add your thoughts!
Stever Robbins here. Welcome to the Get-It-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More. Today's topic is how to use spare time when it happens. David from Boston called in with a great question. Hi, Stever. Once in a long while, I'll have a brief interlude in my workload. And I'll often aspire to use the time to get ahead and make things easier on myself in the future. I'll somewhat randomly organize e-mails or I'll comb through my work material and I'll make work for myself. But ultimately, I suspect I'm working more and doing less. My question--how do you plan to make the most of your downtime? Do you have any quick and dirty tips for how to prioritize and really make an impact that your future self will enjoy? Thanks for all the great tips in your podcast! Free time? FREE TIME? You have free time? Quick! Sell it to the highest bidder! Bottle it! Save it! That's a rare, precious commodity. Last time I had free time, I watched all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer straight through. It was heaven! My quick and dirty tip--use your free time to improve *how* you do things in your life. And choose those things to include a healthy mix of play, self-care, and work-related tasks. First, advertisers make this podcast possible. Check out web-based remote control software at GotoMyPC.com/podcast. When we have downtime, there are lots of things we can do with it. I'll plan to watch socially relevant, intelligent coverage of world crises, scientific trends, and political debate. That's the plan. What I'll actually do is lie on the couch and read trashy science fiction, watch reality TV shows, and wish they made clothes for men that look as good as the clothes for Heidi Klum. But you asked how to make an impact with your spare time. *Sigh* The best way to make an impact with free time is to spend it improving what you do*. Consultants call this "process improvement," because they can charge more, but it's really just doing things better; it's learning. You've heard the phrase "work smart, not hard?" This is where you work smart. Sit down and make a list of all the things you do in a typical day. For example, you go to meetings, answer e-mail, run errands, take classes, spend time with people you love, study, read People Magazine, and eat Animal Crackers. I bite the heads off and eat those first. Your list can include stuff from all areas of your life, not just work. Scan the list. If you could improve one thing from the list and make it quicker, stronger, faster, or easier, which would most improve your life? Would it be making meetings more effective? Spending more quality time with your family? Making better financial decisions? Reading more? Choose anything, even something you already do really well. Then brainstorm ways to do it better. I eat animal crackers really well; I bite the heads off, then savor the body bite by bite. But then I get a sugar rush that puts me to sleep and makes me fat, but I just won't give up those tasty taste treats. So I'll brainstorm better ways to eat animal crackers. Maybe I'll bite the heads off last, instead of first. Or buy smaller boxes. Or spread out one box over several hours, to even out my blood sugar. Or, I could invent crackers shaped like politicians. Once you have a bunch of ideas, toss out the obvious losers. (Keep my metabolism even? Give me a break! Why do you think I'm eating Animal Crackers in the first place?) Then cherry-pick the ideas that make life more fun and more productive. For example, biting the heads off last doesn't get me much, but buying smaller boxes means I might look less like an avocado. When you come up with time-saving ideas, don't tell anyone! Use the time you save to get better at other things. Then use the time savings from those things to invent carbon-neutral alternative energy that is perfect for the environment, patent it, and make a billion dollars selling it to the higher bidder. And remember to share your billions with friends, like me, who give you such great ideas to begin with. Next time you have free time, here are some possible areas for improvement: how you manage your inbox, how you study, how you give back to your community, how you get the cable TV box fixed, how you keep your relationship romantic (if you're in one), how you meet people for a relationship (if you're not in one) , how you pay your bills, or how you feed your pets. Heck, maybe you can invite the cable TV guy over for dinner with your new boa constrictor; you can solve two problems at once. Whew! As you can see, the list, my friend David, is endless. So next time you have free time, rather than doing something silly like relaxing and enjoying life, fire up your creativity and find some ways to work smarter, rather than harder. One way to work smart is to take your office with you while traveling by using GoToMyPC. You can use all your programs and files, check e-mail, and access anything on your desktop or network from any web browser. Try it free for 30 days at GotoMyPC.com/podcast. This is Stever Robbins. If you have a question about how to Work Less and Do More, e-mail getitdone@quickanddirtytips.com or leave voicemail at 866-WRK-LESS. You can also find a transcript of this episode at getitdone.quickanddirtytips.com. If you'd like to give input for the book that I'm writing on how to Work Less and Do More, visit http://blog.steverrobbins.com/getitdoneguy or follow me on Twitter: just follow getitdoneguy. Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life! *Preorder Grammar Girl's book to learn why we shouldn't be using the word "impact." RESOURCES: - http://blog.steverrobbins.com/getitdoneguy - Work Less, Do More blog
If you want to succeed in business, don't just manage down. Manage up, left, and right, while you're at it. Questions go to getitdone@quickanddirtytips.com or 888-WRK-LESS. Like what you hear? Help us out by writing a review at iTunes!
If you want to succeed in business, don't just manage down. Manage up, left, and right, while you're at it. Questions go to getitdone@quickanddirtytips.com or 888-WRK-LESS. Like what you hear? Help us out by writing a review at iTunes!
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