Below is a fantastic 22 minute presentation by Tony at the TED conference which explains some of his core principles…check it out, and look out for the interaction with Al Gore in the audience.

Roger has developed a fascinating and instructive “Wealth Profiling System” that combines Jungian psychological models (think MBTI tests etc) and the I Ching as it relates to individuals’ wealth attraction styles. I have done my wealth profile here and discovered that I am predominantly a “Mechanic”.

Roger also shared a couple of seminal distinctions that resonated with me. Here they are:

On taking action: To know, and not to do, is not yet to know.

On traps for smart people: One of Roger’s mentors once told him, You think you’re smart. You try to do everything yourself. That’s why you’ll never be really wealthy. I know I’m stupid. That’s why I employ smart people like you to do everything for me.

Food for thought…

Two Types Of Leverage

I have recently been focussing on employing two types of leverage to increase my personal effectiveness and productivity.

Systematic Leverage: Using systems to do the heavy lifting for me. These include CRM automation, automatic billing systems, automated data backup systems and so on.

Personal Leverage: Engaging people who are much better qualified to do specific tasks than myself - designers, bookkeepers, technical people and so on.

So far the results are pleasing — I’ll report back with some more detailed results at a later date.

Where your time is your main productive asset, getting more done in less time - and having more than enough time for fun and relaxation - is hugely important (then there’s the issue of shifting from a time-for-money model to a more scaleable model, but that’s a whole other discussion).

In the past 2 weeks I have literally doubled my productivity by following a few simple rules.

I now work fewer than 40 hours per week and am earning 300% more than the same time last year, when I was working 60 hours per week.

Here are my…

7 Simple Productivity Tips

1) Only check email at 12 noon and 4pm (thanks to Tim Ferriss for this tip). This one simple step has been massively powerful and liberating all at the same time. This one saves me an hour a day, minimum.

2) Every evening I write a “For Action” list for the next day, outlining my 20% items that produce 80% of the results for the next day. Every day I attack my most important item first.

3) I keep my “For Action” list on my desk and when small “to do’s” or distractions pop into my head I make a side note so I can deal with small items in batches later on and not break my focus from the task at hand.

4) When checking email or attending to other smaller tasks, if a task will take 2 minutes or less I do it then and there (thanks to David Allen of GTD fame for this one)

5) I’ve replaced my mobile phone message with the following, at the suggestion of Marc Dussault:

“Hi, you’ve reached Will Swayne’s phone. I’m unable to take your call right now. Please leave your name and number, plus the reason for your call so I can get to work on it before I call you back. Thanks for calling.”

This simple distinction avoids the common scenario of playing phone tag just to find out the reason for a call before you even get around to doing something about it.

6) Being mindful of non-value adding steps in processes and working to reduce or eliminate them. In the past, when I was working on, say, a 5-step process, I might have been responsible for sequential steps A, C and E and a designer responsible for B and D.

I would often find myself supplying step A only, creating an extra communication loop in the process when C was required later on. Now I try to supply ALL information to eliminate the non-value adding steps in the middle.

Obviously this can’t always be achieved (for example, proofreading has to take place at the end), but just being mindful of this and taking action where possible has yielded some positive results and cut down on wasteful back-and-forth emails.

7) I’m in the process of implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. While this is very much a work-in-progress (and something that I’ll write about in greater detail in future), some of the concepts have already come in useful for freeing up mental RAM. For example, I’ve closed off a few outstanding projects (what David Allen calls “open loops”) that had been occupying my headspace for some time, leaving more mental bandwidth for the important stuff. I even surprised myself the other day when I located 4 separate documents for my accountant in less than 5 minutes!

Try the 7 steps

I’ll wager that these 7 steps will yield big results for you too when you try them. Do you have any additional low-effort, high-reward productivity tips you’d like to share? Leave a comment!

Over the last couple of days I’ve been experimenting with a new email management strategy:

Don’t open your email program until 11am 

The theory behind this is that if you check email first thing (as I used to do), you tend to get caught up in a range of non-essential, non-urgent busywork that can take up most of the morning and get your day off to a bad start.

By getting started on your most important item first thing, you make real progress and build up unstoppable momentum for the rest of the day.

Although this tip sounds simple, I estimate this one idea alone has boosted my productivity by at least 10% (although I was a heavy user to start with Your mileage may vary.)

Give it a go and let me know how you get on.  If you have other simple 1-minute productivity ideas, leave a comment.

At the start of each year I like to take stock of the previous year and set some new goals for the year ahead. Last year around this time I set out in this post how I planned to double my income while working 30% less.

Here’s a followup on that post about how it went…

The good news: in 2006 I did in fact manage to double my income (from a faily modest base, I’ll admit).

The bad news: The while working 30% less part didn’t really work out that way. I probably worked about the same number of hours in 2006 as 2005 (around 50-60 per week).

Drilling a little deeper…

Here are some of the specific strategies I laid out to achieve my goal, plus how things actually turned out…

Redesign my workspace

Nope, it’s still just as cluttered as ever, although my online data management systems (e.g. CRM systems, email management, Google desktop, online storage etc.) are much improved.

Move to a home office

Yep, I did this, and cut 1.5 to 2 hours off my daily commute.

Check email and blog comments no more than 3 times a day

Compulsive email checking is a massive productivity sink. I’ve been pretty good with blog comments, but my email checking got pretty out of control over the last couple of months of 2006 - but now I’m much better!

Reorganise project management systems

We did achieve some good results in this area, but eventually decided to ditch the project model in favour of an ongoing consulting model… more about that in future posts!

Training, systems and procedures

A lot of time was put into this one too, and I’m sure some productivity gains were achieved as a result… but I have to admit that I found it a challenge to get tight systems in place because (a) how do you systematise copywriting? and (b) our systems are constantly changing and evolving, making procedures out of date faster than we can patch them up.

Delegate project management

Phil started early last year as my project manager and has done a stirling job - thanks Phil! Nick Schoonens has also been a great help over the past 8 months or so. Gavin was also with us for about 6 months and made some valuable contributions to the team.

Keep a desktop “to do” list

This has worked pretty well - I either use the simple and functional Google Desktop list tool or plain ol’ pen and paper.

Less multi-tasking - structuring work in longer blocks

This is still something I need to work on. Just as important as strucuring work in blocks is being able to get into the zone “on demand”. This is a skill I’d like to have more control over.

The Scorecard

On balance, I’d struggle to give myself much more than 5 out of 10 in the areas I committed to focus on, but the results were OK, which is the most important thing.

I could have been much more structured in my approach as well. One way to assist this would have been simply to print out a copy of my previous post and place it somewhere visible to remind me of what I committed to do.

Conceptually, goal setting is pretty straightforward. i.e.

1. Have written goals

2. Look at them every day

3. Keep track of your progress

…yet it’s amazing how few people are able to do in practice. Funny thing, the human mind.

Goals for 2007

My goal in 2007 is to double my income again while working 40-45 hrs per week and taking 4 weeks vacation. Wishing you success in everything you set out to achieve in 2007,

Will

While I don’t have much experience working with this metric, I felt that the description of my type was for the most part accurate.

If you’re up for an intesting exercise in self-analysis, why not take a free MBTI test here? Do you agree with the results? Did you pass? =D

Life really began flowing for me when I finally let go of that ego junk, pride, and feelings of doubt and said to myself, “I’m just going to focus on making the best contribution I can. If I go broke doing that, I go broke. My fears and worries are just not that important compared to the difference I could make if I really gave this life my very best. If I’m here to make a contribution, then the universe had better back me up.”

Inspiring stuff!

Anyway, the opening event was on 22nd June at Brisbane’s Platform Bar and I was one of the punters! Even though I was involved in the marketing side of the project, it was great to also experience the format as a “customer”.

Unlike any other singles event formats, Close Connexion evenings are based around a table game developed by Danielle called The Meet Market™.

The game is very clever - after 3 minutes of explanation, people who have never met each other before can start interacting via the game. This avoids the “uncomfortable silences” that we all fear when meeting new people - especially in a dating setting.

Danielle has also developed a cool viral marketing tool - packs of 20 “Frequent Flirter Calling Cards” - you use them to exchange contact details with that intriguing person across the room.

From a purely marketing angle, every time someone uses one of the cards, the Close Connexion name also gets a bit of exposure.

I had a fantastic time at the inaugural event and met a number of great people. If you’re on the lookout for a singles event in Brisbane, give Close Connexion a try. The next event is on Thursday 27 July so get in quick.

As luck (or was it something else - synchronicity?!?!) would have it, a couple of days afterward I walked through the Cherry Blossom bookstore, which happens to be next to my local coffee shop. Not 20 cm from my face was The Power of Now, so I went ahead and bought it.

All in all, I think it was a very worthwhile purchase. The central message is contained right there in the title - that living in the now is the truest path to happiness and enlightenment. Do you often find yourself dwelling on the past or thinking about the future (I know I do)?

If that’s you, then you may find this book worthwhile. It not only provides a philosophical basis for focusing on the present moment as you go through your day, but also contains a number of practical steps toward making it happen.

I notice that on Amazon.com, the reviews of this book are extremely polarised. Some people give it 5 stars, others give it 1. I can see how that would happen - some people comment that the content of the book is so simple (live in the present) and that 200-odd pages of explanation were a waste of time.

Personally, I needed that extra explanation to cover all the angles and questions that I had about the concept. For example, how can you reconcile living in the now with future-based activities such as goal setting, or learning from past experiences?

And as a result of reading The Power of Now I do feel a greater sense of wellbeing as I go about my daily life. That, to me, is the only question I need to answer - does it work?

I recommend this book highly, but keep in mind that it wont be for everyone, so no hate mail please

I’ve been snowed under by a spike in new customer enquiries after implementing a few changes in my business.

To recap, the key change I’ve made is eliminating copywriting as a stand-alone service to concentrate on online marketing and website lead generation projects.

The net effect of this is that we’re now working on much higher value projects that attract 10 times the fees of smaller projects but involve only 5 times the work.

I’ve also been working on my productivity and I find I’m getting more done with less stress. I’m in the process of writing a post about the specific changes I’ve made, the results and also a few challenges still to be overcome. Shouldn’t be too long now……

L8r

Will