Failure can be divided into those who thought and never did and into those who did and never thought.
- W.A. Nance

Now ask yourself:

• What am I procrastinating that I should be doing?
• What is a priority that I am not prioritizing?
• What should I stop doing so I have time to do what is most important?
• Do I have a wise plan for each goal?
• Do I think about the big picture?
• Do I think about the little details?
• Am I failing? If so, why?

However, the biggest question is – What is failure? The answer is subjective. And it depends on your priorities.

One man’s failure may be playing video games while another man’s failure might be not conquering a video game. If you’ve been dreaming about writing a book, failure may look like playing golf, going to the lake, or watching football instead. If you are dreaming about being a better parent, going to the lake with your kids is probably a wise choice.

To minimize failure:

Identify your goals. Prioritize them. Think and strategize. And then do them according to what’s most important.

This happens to rockstar solo acts and to monolithic corporations. Size doesn’t matter, and neither does longevity. This zealous drive can be a good thing, but it becomes dangerous when the basics are forgotten.

Forgetting the basics is the opposite of getting stuck in a rut (i.e., on course but no progress). You are making progress  but not in the right direction. The basics keep you on course, but enthusiasm gives you speed.

A History of Lego

Once upon a time, Lego forgot the basics and almost never recovered. For almost 7 decades (1932-1998), Lego was all profits. Then they lost money and more money to the point that private-equity firms were lining up to buy the remains in 2004.

What happened?

Years of success made Lego complacent, financially inefficient, systematically inefficient, and very overstretched. As The Mail puts it:

The problem lay not with the product, but with the company’s attempts in the Nineties to make itself more modern and relevant in the age of video games. It had attempted to broaden its appeal to the young female market; it had tried to become a lifestyle brand with its own lines of clothes and watches; it had built more theme parks. But in doing so it had neglected its core business.

The Solution

Lego went back to the basics. Essentials were simplified, guarded, and emphasized.

Nonessentials were sold, scraped, or overhauled. Theme parks and video games were sold then licensed. Buildings were sold then leased. Staffing was downsized. Processes were outsourced. And manufacturing was streamlined, including a 60%+ reduction of Lego brick types.

Lego went back to the basics and is growing again because of it. In fact, today Lego is thriving despite the global financial crisis.

The Lesson

As your organization grows and succeeds, be mindful of the basics. Guard your brand, your goals, your core values, and what made you successful in the first place. There may be fast-paced seasons that naturally cause you to focus on something else, but always return to the basics as quickly as possible.

• Using a 24″ monitor rather than an 18″ monitor can save you 2.5 hours per workday or equivalent to 76 workdays per year.
• Widescreen is best for text editing tasks.
  >> Two 20″ monitors were 44% faster at text editing than one 18″ monitor.
  >> One 24″ monitor was 52% faster at text editing than one 18″ monitor.
• Dual monitors are best for spreadsheet editing tasks.
  >> Two 20″ monitors were 29% faster at spreadsheet editing than one 18″ monitor.
  >> One 24″ monitor was 26% faster at spreadsheet editing than one 18″ monitor.
• Overall, increasing screen size increases productivity. However, these productivity gains max out and begin to decline once the screen becomes too large. The research shows a 30″ monitor as less efficient than a 26″ monitor but more efficient than a 24″ monitor.
• Screen space also affects the amount of satisfaction obtained from the work.

For a PDF from NEC with research highlights, visit their website. NEC also offers a free online tool to calculate how much you or your company can save by changing your monitors. Their research shows that a company of 250 employees can potentially save $2.3 million per year by upgrading their 17″ monitors to 24″ monitors.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

• Most Important Tasks (MITs)
  At the start of each day (or the night before) highlight the three or four most important things you have to do in the coming day. Do them first. If you get nothing else accomplished aside from your MITs, you’ve still had a pretty productive day.
• Inbox Zero
  Decide what to do with every email you get, the moment you read it. If there’s something you need to do, either do it or add it to your to-do list and delete or file the email. If it’s something you need for reference, file it. Empty your email inbox every day.
• Wake Up Earlier
  Add a productive hour to your day by getting up an hour earlier — before everyone else starts imposing on your time.
• Eat the Frog
  Do your most unpleasant task first. Based on the saying that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a frog, the day can only get better from then on.
• 80/20 Rule (Pareto Principle)
  Generally speaking, the 80/20 Principle says that most of our results come from a small portion of our actual work, and conversely, that we spend most of our energy doing things that aren’t ultimately all that important. Figure out which part of your work has the greatest results and focus as much of your energy as you can on that part.
• Time Boxing
  Assign a set amount of time per day to work on a task or project. Focus entirely on that one thing during that time. Don’t worry about finishing it, just worry about giving that amount of undivided attention to the project. (Variation: fixed goals. For example, you don’t get up until you’ve written 1,000 words, or processed 10 orders, or whatever.)
• Batch Process
  Do all your similar tasks together. For example, don’t deal with emails sporadically throughout the day; instead, set aside an hour to go through your email inbox and respond to emails. Do the same with voice mail, phone calls, responding to letters, filing, and so on — any routine, repetitive tasks.
• Time Log
  Lawyers have to track everything they do in the day and how long they do it so they can bill their clients and remain accountable. You need to be accountable to yourself, so keep track of how much time you really spend on the things that are important to you by tracking your time.
• Write It Down
  Don’t rely on your memory as your system. Write down the things you need to do, your schedule, anything you might need to refer to, and every passing thought so you can relax, knowing you won’t forget. Use your brain for thinking, use paper or your computer for keeping track of stuff.
• Monotasking
  We like to think of ourselves as great multitaskers, but we aren’t. What we do when we multitask is devote tiny slices of time to several tasks in rapid succession. Since it takes more than a few minutes (research suggests as long as 20) to really get into a task, we end up working worse and more slowly than if we devoted longer blocks of time to each task, worked until it was done, and moved on to the next one.
• Unclutter
  Clutter is anything that’s out of place and in the way. It’s not necessarily neatness — someone can have a rigorously neat workspace and not be able to get anything done. It’s being able to access what you need, when you need it, without breaking the flow of your work to find it. Figure out what is “clutter” in your working and living spaces, and fix that.
• To-Don’t List
  A list of things not to do — useful for keeping track of habits that lead you to be unproductive, like playing online flash games.
• No
  Learning to say “no” — to new commitments, to interruptions, to anything — is one of the most valuable skills you can develop to keep you focused on your own commitments and give you time to work on them.
• Purge
  Regularly go through your existing commitments and get rid of anything that is either not helping you advance your own goals or is a regular “sink” of time or energy.
• Timer
  Tell yourself you will work on a project or task, and only that project or task, for a set amount of time. Set a timer (use a kitchen timer, or use a countdown timer on your computer), and plug away at your work. When the timer goes off, you’re done — move on to the next project or task.

Currently, I use a combination of “Timer” and “Time Log.” I use SlimTimer to track how much time I spend in seven different areas of my work day. And each area has a minimum goal of time for me to invest.

So how do you get things done? What methods have you found that actually work?

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What’s this blog about?

I enjoy helping organizations become more effective and successful. There is no niche that holds all the answers, but I will be focusing most of my posts on the areas of design, leadership, management, marketing, technology, and culture.