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Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book of Selling has some fantastic advice for salespeople, but I believe that anyone can benefit from reading this book.

Here are some of his tips for being successful, with a twist toward improving your productivity:

• Believe that you can - If you do not believe that you can get your act together and be productive you will surely fail. Ask Yoda.
• Create the right environment - Build a place where you can get your work done by minimizing distractions and interruptions. Turn off your e-mail program if you need to. Turn off your Twitter alerts, whatever you may need to get in the zone and get some work done.
• Have the right associations - If you hang around with other people that don’t get their work done, how do you expect to get any of your own done? Leave the moaners at the watercooler and kick the complainers out of your cubicle. You do not need them, they are not helping you. They are sucking you down.
• Expose yourself to what is new - If your current system isn’t working ask for help. Look at the people around you that accomplish everything they need to do and go hame at 5:00. What are they doing tht you can learn from?
• Plan for the day - It is a cliche that “failure to plan means planning to fail”. Start your day by making a list of 3 things that you must accomplish today. Then do them.
• Have the answers that your customers and prospects need - Develop the habit of carrying a notebook with you for capturing information. Then process it into your reference system. When someone asks you a question, you should have the answer at your fingertips.
• Take advantage of opportunity - Being aware of the things that you need to work on in each appropriate context means that you can take advantage of down-time to work on other tasks. Carry the reading material that you need to catch up on with you all the time. This way when you find yourself waiting for something, you can do a little reading.
• Take action - Your tasks and projects will not get done by themselves. Do something, anything, to move yourself closer to completion every single day.
• Take a risk - Sometimes you have to take a chance. Look at your tasks and projects, are they still worth doing? Ask yourself what would be the worst outcome if you just deleted some of those things from your list…Can you live with that? Would you lose anything important? Maybe you can just let it go.
• Keep your eyes on the prize - All of the tasks and projects that you are working on have defined conditions of completion. Know what being done looks like so that your actions move you toward that goal.
• Balance yourself - All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. The goal of improving your productivity is not to get 18 hours of work done in 12. The goal is to get your work done so that you can enjoy life. Be done and be happy!
• Invest, don’t spend - Time, energy, motivation. These are some of the various currencies that you have to exchange for being productive. Make sure that you are investing them in your work, so that you get a return. If you are just spending them, they go away forever.
• Develop and maintain a positive attitude - We all face adversity, obstacles, and painful situations. They will not last. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it is not an on-coming train (though it may feel like that sometimes). When you feel good about your work you will get it done faster, better, and more efficiently. It is the work that you do not enjoy that slows you down. Delegate it.

Which of these do you think is most important for you? Have you any other pithy pieces of advice youd like to share? Leave a Comment!

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/67wpek. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

I spent a couple of days last week looking all over Maine for a bookstore that carried the Moleskine Citybook for Chicago. I wanted it so that I could have a separate place to capture all of my notes and contact info for the trip coming up in two weeks.

Try as I might, I could not find one. And I didn’t feel like ordering one from Amazon and having to wait for it, I wanted to work on it NOW!
So, I happened to have an extra 5″ x 8″ Moleskine-type notebook lying around, so I hacked it myself. Keep in mind that this is strictly utilitarian, and not meant to be pretty or elegant. Here are the pics:

This is going to be good.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5q3j6f. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Today’s post is from  The Daily Saint. 

There is never enough time to do all that I want to do and have it done right. This is a sentiment that I hear repeated quite often by busy executives and administrators. This type of comment led me to consider how I am able to juggle all of the different responsibilities I have. I thought about all of the literature, workshops, conferences, and professionals out there who have myriad ways of helping me get and stay organized. Upon reflection, however, it is something of my own design that works best for me. I utilize a 3-pronged preparation plan that doesn’t take long to employ, yet, is invaluable to me. 

Planning 1-3weeks out

Begin by spending a few minutes each week looking ahead 1-3 weeks out. Although I keep a calendar of events, activities, and meetings that covers several months, in my experience, to plan tasks and projects in any great detail beyond this point is time wasted. Consider the following steps as you begin planning:

• Look at your calendar and/or agenda books. Establish what is fixed (i.e. meeting with the boss) and what may be negotiable. Use this information to help plan benchmarks and deadlines
• Determine what projects and tasks must be worked on and/or completed in the next 1-3 weeks
• Break larger projects and tasks into parts; determine benchmarks and/or deadlines for each part
• Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize…What can wait until week 3? Week 2? What needs to be worked on next week?
• Create separate lists of tasks for each of the next 3 weeks.

The more you utilize this type of planning the more comfortable you will feel with it. Soon it will become second nature and the time spent preparing will decrease. Also, once you have the first three weeks planned out, each subsequent week will be mostly refining the work you have already done. The benefits of planning ahead 1-3 weeks can be enormous and include:

Gaining perspective (“10,000 foot view”) instead of just dealing with what is right in front of you

• Allowing you to deal with relevant and meaningful work based on intentional prioritization
• Helping you to avoid last minute rush jobs that are more likely to have mistakes and create much more stress for you and your colleagues
• Giving time to catch mistakes and make revisions before being finalized
• Allowing you to deal better with unexpected issues that inevitably arise

People will often ask me how I find time to do such preparation. I ask them, how can anyone work effectively without making the time to do it? You must make the time; planning your activities, tasks, and projects must become a priority. The time you spend planning will come back to you tenfold. I am convinced preparing this way will help you focus, deal with unexpected problems, and, ultimately, save you time. In the coming weeks as we discuss and you implement weekly and daily planning you will save even more time and your productivity and effectiveness will increase as well.

*Posted with permission from author, Phil Piercy 

Resources for the Road

Be Cool.  Be Organized.

One Simple Question About Productivity

Keep it Simple: Goal Setting

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5ntp3l. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

I have a guest-post up at Slacker Manager today, check it out. [link]

Being a successful manager depends on taking responsibility as a leader, and one of the duties of a leader is to make decisions. Making good decisions can influence morale, for good or ill. Your decisions can solve or create problems. Some days all you manage to accomplish is to make decisions for people.

Many of the decisions that you make take little effort, based on your skills and training. Others may lie at the edge of your authority or your experience, and will take some thinking. Read more…

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6c4y7c. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen