There’s nothing like the positive pressure of a holiday deadline is there? This week was my last full week IN the business for 2017 because we depart for a family trip to Australia tomorrow. This looming deadline has lit a fire under my proverbial behind to crunch through a massively productive and rewarding week across both business and personal areas of life. Here’s a few of the highlights:
- Chris and I have put our all into getting our serviced accommodation business into a strong position to close the year and tee up more growth next year.
- We’ve been busy training our new team member across key operational parts of our business
- We’ve welcomed both new and repeat guests to our properties
- We viewed a possible property to purchase for SA
- We’ve researched and brainstormed strategic growth areas to pick up on in early 2018
- We hosted an awesome Christmas dinner and night out for our team and key strategic partners
- As a family we celebrated my youngest son’s 3rd birthday with a meal out and the new Paddington movie – just brilliant.
Helping me have such a productive week were 4 key concepts (or ingredients) that I’ve been employing for several years now. I wanted to take a moment to share them with you because they will prove crucial to your productivity and goal achieving going into 2018. I am eternally grateful to one of my business coach/mentors and entrepreneur psychologist Peter Shallard, for teaching me these “4 Pillars of Productivity” as follows:
1. Specificity:
This relates to the ideal implementation granularity required to break a goal down into perfect bite sized chunks. For example a giant goal like climbing Everest can be broken down into taking 58,070 steps. Without specificity you would be hoping to achieve a goal without any actionable steps within your control. On the other hand, ask yourself, is it clear what I and I alone (i.e. what’s within my control) need to do in order to move closer to the goal?
2. Measurement:
Measurement assigns positive meaning and accomplishment to completing an activity. Without delving too deeply into the science behind this, suffice to say that building a streak in completed activity delivers a positive chemical reaction in your brain, this helps you feel good about incremental progress on the way to achieving a bigger goal.
A simple analogy is going to the gym to lose weight or build muscle. In the first 2-3 weeks we will likely see little or no change but by measuring and checking off our attendance 4 times a week we make a game of following through. This progress measurement helps us get to weeks 4-6 and beyond where we start to see the results of our work.
3. Deadlines:
We’ve all experienced the power of deadlines early on in our academic careers. The looming deadline of a test has the power to make us study hard at the 11th hour (or in my case this week to compress more in before a holiday). Without deadlines, things can sit on your to do list for months. When all else fails, a real cut off point with consequences gets everyone moving. If you are up for achieving more next year then don’t shy away from deadlines, but instead look for opportunities to commit to things.
4. Accountability:
Have you heard the saying that goes, “The easiest person to let down is yourself”? On the flipside, you can’t kid yourself on the goals you’ve made if someone holds you accountable to them. Accountability taps into powerful social behaviours because we want to look good in front of others. Accountability is like a secret weapon and serves to remind us of the commitments we have made. Successful business people build boards of directors and advisors to hold them accountable to goals and milestones. Where is accountability missing in your life right now?
“Accountability is critical to anyone leading a group of people, because, after all, every business is a people business. Accountability is how people get things done—or don’t get things done. “
-Greg Bustin, author of ‘Accountability: The Key To Driving A High-Performance Culture’
I use these 4 Pillars to help set and achieve goals for each week, and if this resonates, you can too.
Have a great week ahead.