La crise, quelle crise ?

Catégorie : Personal development

  • Plan only three goals and act!

    J 687Day 687. Are you busy? Are you in busyness? Most of us want to achieve great things in life, however, when we reflect back, we sometimes do not see much! Do you know why? Just because we are busy and not focused. A busy person never has time to sit and focus. A busy person is running around creating the impression that he or she is important. But the important thing to do is to create results, whatever the result. It could be playing a wonderful piano piece, or reaching a sales quota, or just spending time with a person you love and care about.

    I challenge therefore the busyness inside each of us. For the next 30 days, I challenge you to do the following everyday: sit in the morning at the time you want, grab a cuppa and plan three goals that you want to achieve in the day. Just three. They may require 10 minutes or 12 hours, I do not care. The important piece to respect is the rule of three! Three is the number. Remember Monty Python and the Holy Grail? The scene of the holy hand grenade from Antioch? This is the quote: « Shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. »

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk

    So make three your number, plan those three goals to reach during your day and act. The next morning, reflect on what you achieved and start again. After 30 days, you will have reached 90 goals, more than any average person does in one year. And if you continue after the 30 days, you will have reached over a thousand goals for the year. Simple, powerful. My goals for today:

    1. Write this post
    2. Put my calendar in order for next week
    3. Update the status of my goals for 2015

    I will do more than this, but if I do those three important things at this time of my year, I will have had a good day. What will you be doing today ?

  • L’inspiration vient … en se reposant !

    https://unsplash.com/peacepat
    https://unsplash.com/peacepat

    Jour 686. 6 heures du mat, le jetlag frappe à la porte de ma chambre à Seattle. Réveillé depuis deux bonnes heures maintenant, il est temps de se remettre au travail. Temps ? Pourquoi ? Parce que je le veux bien. Bientôt un mois que je me suis mis au repos de tout travail d’écriture, à part un post suite au billet sur les All-Blacks de Bruno Millot. Un mois pendant lequel j’ai pu d’un côté laissé mon cerveau tourner en roue libre, d’un autre me focaliser sur quelques points critiques de mon activité professionnelle. Le résultat ? Des idées, des idées et encore des idées, et surtout une envie d’action !

    Pas d’une action inconsidérée ou frénétique, mais réfléchie et concentrée. Agir moins et mieux. Travailler moins pour gagner plus, pour aller à l’inverse de la frénésie qui semble gagner de plus en plus de gens. Pourquoi ? Parce que je le vaux bien, dirait la pub ! Simpliste ? Oui ! L’efficacité est dans la simplicité. Alors, je m’y remets, accrochez-vous ça risque de secouer.

    PS. Je viens de m’apercevoir que mon précédent billet commençait par les mêmes mots : « l’inspiration vient… » et ne se terminait pas du tout pareil. On pourrait croire à un hasard, mais comme je ne crois pas au hasard, j’y vois le doigt de mon cerveau malicieux (si tant est que mon cerveau ait un doigt) qui va me faire écrire des trucs étonnants dans les jours à venir. A voir.

    PPS. Evidemment, je ne peux ignorer l’actualité et son horreur. C’est ce que veulent ces personnes obscurantistes qui sont à l’origine de ces monstrueux attentats, que nous ne les ignorons pas. Et pourtant, c’est ce que je vais faire, les ignorer. Car ce sont des pauvres âmes perdues dans les limbes de l’ignorance. On ne peut pas répondre à cette violence par une autre violence, mais par encore plus de liberté et de démocratie. La crise ? Quelle crise ?

  • Can 100% focus be an option?

    J 659 - 2Day 659. It cannot! Either you’re in, or you’re out. Either you’re committed, or you’re lying to you and to others. Either you’re ready to deliver beyond expectations, or you are just average, and therefore disposable. If you read this post, there is a large chance you are living in a country that offers you all possible opportunities. If you read this post, there is a chance you’ve travelled and have gone to countries where a majority of the population is not offered those opportunities. So if you read this post, you have no choice but to 100% all-in, 100% committed, 100% focused. Not being as such is the biggest fraud you can be to you and to others.

    Even, if you feel a cog in a monstrous machine, you’re doing a disservice to you, your company and others by not being the best you can be. It’s only by being the best you can change the world for good. Doing average work, lying, or only looking for your own comfort is just sad. Some may laugh, may think I’m a dreamer or a stupid blind, but I truly believe that whatever you do, you have to do it to the best of your ability. You have to give 100% of yourself. The world is the best it can be at present. We can always wish it were better, but wishes are for the average, realizations are for active dreamer who know they can change the system, they can enhance lives, and they can live fully.

    The price to pay to make the world better is just to be your best. So 100% focus is not an option, because you cannot deliver 100% value if you’re not 100% focused. Simple, not easy!

  • Discipline and Time Management, the no-shortcut theory of ultimate productivity

    https://unsplash.com/sonjalangford
    https://unsplash.com/sonjalangford

    Day 655. A friend of mine asked me over the week-end how I was doing all that I am doing: blogging, working out, travelling, doing my CTO job, etc. I told him there was no extravaganza here, just simple and powerful discipline. I revealed him that I was actually defining how much time an activity was to take me and therefore was finding ways to go fast, as fast as I can, without taking any shortcuts or compromising on quality. Having thought about it over the week-end, here are the early thinking of my « no-shortcut theory of ultimate productivity », or « how to do all you have to do, without compromising on quality »

    First and foremost, let me qualify what do I mean by not compromising on quality. It’s actually meaning two clear things:

    • Content quality. If I ever have to product something, it has to be of top quality. Cheap is low quality, cheap is crap, and cheap has to be avoided!
    • Time quality. We all have 24 hours every day and we all have/want to do a sum of things every day. Ask yourself how you want those to be done and to consume the allocated time. Then do them in the allocated time.

    Time quality also means that I need to take time to take care about myself (health, physical quality) and my relationships with others (people who matter, friends and family). None of my professional or personal activities should put my health or my relationship at risk. And this means, that I had to learn to say « no » to some activities. Superman does not exist and No is the most powerful word when it comes to keeping your commitments.

    With this baseline, the no-shortcut theory of ultimate productivity comes to my six simple and proven axioms:

    1. What’s not planned does not get done. Every morning, take 5 to 15 minutes to plan your day and ensure all your activities are aligned on your short, mid and long term goals.
    2. Every activity has to have a time limit. If you do not put a stop sign, you will eat into the next activity and your schedule will get sidetracked.
    3. What’s not finished needs to be planned again. If you reach the stop sign and your activity is not finished, reschedule it for the next day or for the next available slot. Some activities are shorter than expected, others are longer.
    4. Never, ever plan back-to-back activities. You will need bio breaks, unexpected events will happen or you will just need to breathe and go for a walk.
    5. Plan no more than 80% of the day. A little bit like axiom number 4, you should always keep buffers between activities or sometimes free slots. This will allow some mundane tasks to happen or unexpected phone calls/emails to answer. Eventually, if everything works flawlessly, you’ll have free time to do more things or to go for a walk.
    6. Do not tolerate interruptions. Multi-tasking has been proven counterproductive time and time again. When you do something, do it with 100% focus. Unplug the internet, silence the phone and close the door.

    Now, this is working for me and has been working for many years now. It goes down to being disciplined to follow them every day, starting the day with your planning activities. Now, do you have to read your email first thing in the morning, wake up at 5 or practice meditation? The choice is yours. I know the same activity may mean different things for different people, and each needs to define his or her own routine. But, with these axioms at play, I can deliver 100%, sometimes more, of what I planned to deliver, day in, day out. As you can see, it’s not rocket science, it’s pretty basic, actually, very basic, but efficient, actually, very efficient!

  • La résistance est l’indication de l’importance

    https://unsplash.com/alexjones
    https://unsplash.com/alexjones

    Jour 652. Dans « The War of Art », Steven Pressfield parle de la résistance comme étant un indice de ce qui est important. C’est une sensation que tout le monde ressent un jour ou l’autre. On peut appeler ça la peur, le fait est que c’est une sensation très intime qui vous force à ne pas agir. C’est la manifestation de la « petite voix salope » qui vous conseille de ne surtout pas faire ce que vous devez, qui vous trouve toutes les circonstances atténuantes pour ne pas agir. Depuis que je l’ai découverte, cette idée de résistance dirige nombre de mes actions.

    En effet, dès que je ressens cette résistance, c’est pour moi une indication d’importance. C’est la chose que je dois faire. Non que je fasse la chose en question immédiatement. Il m’arrive parfois de repousser au lendemain, ce qui, du coup, va me hanter. Et c’est à partir de là que démarre un de mes autres principes d’action, qui est que même une petite action est préférable à une longue réflexion. Là encore, je ne dis pas qu’il ne faut pas réfléchir, mais quand la résistance pointe son nez, c’est que le temps de l’action est arrivé.

    La résistance devient donc la manifestation du besoin d’action. Et celle de l’importance de l’action. Importance pour moi directement. Cela peut impliquer d’autres personnes, d’autres actions, mais cela implique surtout une décision ! Mon expérience m’a généralement démontré une chose importante : plus l’action est faite vite, mieux cela est. En effet, dans le cas où la résistance se manifeste fréquemment sur un problème particulier, plus elle a un impact négatif sur votre moral, à l’image de ces gouttes d’eau qui creusent même la roche la plus dure à force de régularité. En agissant, à l’opposé de ce que voudrait la résistance, vous en supprimez l’effet. Cela parait simple, et pourtant, ce n’est pas toujours facile, mais toujours efficace.

    La résistance peut donc devenir votre allié. Et quoi de plus gratifiant que de transformer un ennemi en allié. Cela met fin à cette guerre que chacun mène avec soi-même au quotidien. Et cela nous recentre sur ce qui est important pour nous. Mais au final, cela a un effet encore plus important : cela vous permet de réaliser vos rêves et vos objectifs. En acceptant de danser avec la résistance quelques pas de valses, on avance vers le futur que nous souhaitons, tout en vivant au quotidien.