Work Less and Do More

I’m writing a Get-it-Done Guy episode on remembering names and faces. I know how I remember names. But my way isn’t perfect. In fact, if you’ve ever met me and expected me to remember your name, you’ll know my way sucks. (Sorry, Mom. At least, I think your name was “Mom.”)

I may use your answer in the Get-it-Done Guy episode. Please leave your name as you want me to read it if you would like me to give you credit in the episode. Thanks!

So…

How do you remember names and faces?

I’m writing a Get-it-Done Guy episode on criticism. I’d love to include some listener examples of criticism you’ve received in your own voice. It needs to be pretty short, and suitable for family listening. Real examples are preferred. For instance, “You just don’t know what you’re doing.” “Your suit looks great, if you’re  color-blind and have no taste.” etc.

Please call 866-WRK-LESS (866-975-5377) and leave your quote. I’ll use the best couple in the podcast. Please also leave your name and email address so I can contact you for permission.

Thanks!

I’m writing a tip on solutions getting to be more complicated than the problem they are meant to solve. For example, I once bought clips to clip together similar pairs of socks during the laundry. Dealing with the darned clip turned out to be a lot more hassle than just sorting and folding my socks in the first place.

In what areas do you have systems that you might not actually need? Here are some of mine:

• Tracking parts of my finances that aren’t tax or business-related, and that I never go back and look at. (E.g. tracking daily expenses but never actually printing a report to find out how I spend my money.)
• Sorting socks.
• Elaborate TO-DO management software.
• Labeling my bookshelves by subject but not actually filing my books that way.
• Scheduled “let’s discuss house finances” days that don’t happen.

What about for you?

On Twitter, I’ve recently alluded to my new job. I’ve started working at Babson College helping to facilitate a community-wide re-examination of Babson’s capabilities, strategy, and future direction. I will then be helping to implement the community’s recommendations.

This job is incredibly exciting. The new Babson president, Len Schlesinger, has been a colleague, friend, mentor, and originally professor of mine since 1989. He’s one of the most visionary people I have ever met, combined with a firm grasp of data and execution. In short, he dreams big dreams and has what it takes to make them happen.

He came to Babson to build on its strength in entrepreneurship (we’ve been #1 in entrepreneurship for the last 15 years), to take Babson to its next level. What that next level is will be defined by the community in our next four months of conversation.

This should be incredibly exciting! I will continue to produce the Get-it-Done Guy podcast and, of course, will be finishing the Get-it-Done Guy book as well. I hope to continue posting to this blog, though until the book is done and I have more time on my plate, my entries will likely be relatively fewer and farther between.

To hear Len discuss the tension between business pressures and the ethical dimensions of business leadership, listen to (1 hour) Leadership and Ethics Series: “Organizational Leadership in Search of the Triple Bottom Line: The ‘Victoria’s Dirty Secret’ Campaign.

I’m now late on finishing the first draft of the book, and I’m appalled at how far I have left to go. I based my estimations of how fast I could write on various client writing and things I’d done recently. The book is totally trashing those numbers.

One of the biggest problems seems to be that when I have a conceptual framework, I can write about it, apply it, and generate lots and lots of interesting content. In this book, though, I have lots and lots of random tactical tips. They aren’t linked by any framework or underlying concept, so each chapter, though short, feels like writing a whole separate book. My brain is not happy about this.

For example, if I’m writing an article on how to give feedback, there’s a mental framework I use about saying something positive, giving clear measurables, etc. I can write a chapter about it by giving examples, telling stories, and going deeper into each point. I can then write follow-on chapters by going even deeper into subtle variations on the basic situation, times when feedback is tricky because there are political or romantic implications, etc.

But when I’m writing two pages on giving feedback, followed by two pages on how to write an email subject line… I go to all the work of creating framework and examples for feedback, skim the surface, and then have to purge my brain and start all over with the email chapter.

I tried conversationally creating chapters by just talking about individual tips, but even in that context, I find myself needing to pull together a framework while I talk. My dialog comes out incoherent.

This very blog post is a great example. it’s taken me all of five minutes to write, and it has one underlying concept: writing this book is hard because it’s a mismatch for my cognitive style. I could keep going, most likely, with more examples, exceptions, and possible suggestions I’d give a coaching client who had this same problem. If I could sustain this rate, I could have the book done in three days.

With no underlying concept, though, this would be two sentences long.

Gotta run. The book chapter I’m working on … is currently just two sentences long.

I wrote an article today on my main blog about Hillary’s speech last night and whether we know the reasons for our own success. (And by the way, I’m not commenting on whether I think Hillary understands her own success. I don’t know enough about her life to say one way or the other. I’m commenting on the issue in general.)

Someone—not me—is coming out with a book called “Work Less, Do More” in just a few weeks. Rats rats rats rats rats. I so loved that title. Any suggestions? I’m at a loss. Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

The way I’m thinking about it, the book is me writing to my 5-year-old nephew, giving him lots of tips about life. (Though it’s being written for adults.) Roughly speaking, the book flow is:

• A discussion of productivity and why we should focus on happiness and success, not just productivity.
• The idea that to master happiness and success, we must develop skills about ourselves, people, organizations, and a few other areas.
• Then each major section of the book is a collection of tips for dealing with those areas. One area will be lots of tips about managing relationships and people. Another wil be about dealing with organizations. etc.

Most chapters will be very brief, 2-3 pages. This is very much a book of tips that will improve your life in ways to increase your happiness and your success. And occasionally…help you get organized. Like my podcast, however, many of the tips will cover how to deal with people, effectively lead organizations, say “No” to your kids, stuff like that…

I’m stumped. We’ve had 500 visitors to YouAreNotYourInbox.com, from a variety of sources, and under 1% purchase from people who find the product via that page.

This is what we call a “learning opportunity.”

If you have visited and decided not to buy, would you be willing to share your reasons? (If you would like to share them privately, mention that in your comment and when I moderate, I won’t make the comment public.)

Thank you!

I’m collecting the final list of tips for the book. I’m noticing there are two categories of tips and am not sure they would work together in a book. Here are samples:

Will these work in the same book? Would someone looking for “happiness and success” tips be that interested in the “file folders” category? And vice versa…

Conventional wisdom has it that you should sandwich negative feedback between two pieces of positive feedback. You can read about “the hamburger method” here.

Shelle Rose Charvet points out that most people already know the method. Now, when they hear positive feedback, they simply bypass it and wait fo the shoe to drop (then they ignore the final piece of positive feedback, which is obviously just there to soften the negative feedback). She advocates giving feedback in a way that avoids direct negative statements yet still accomplishes the goal, to stimulate behavior change. You can read Shelle Rose Charvet’s “The Feedback Sandwich is Out to Lunch.”

What do you think? If I were to include a “giving feedback” method in the Get-it-Done Guy book, which do you think would be best to include?