Slightly over a week ago, I committed to having the most productive 90 days of my life -- and sharing it all with you publicly. I wanted to make huge advances in my core projects, some large personal gains, and -- crucially -- I wanted to come out of this cycle feeling the strongest and healthiest of my life. So, more production than ever before, and being alive, engaged, and energized at the end of it instead of burnt out.
What's happening after one week?
Well, there's good and back. First, there's a strange "I'm being watched!" feeling which slightly increases neurosis/anxiety... and accountability. That's been the most unexpected thing -- a feeling of, "Is this an activity I'd want to own doing publicly with my time, after making a big massive commitment?"
I don't like or dislike it, per se. It's a bit odd. Actually, ok, I like it. (Most of the time!)
What else?
I had a few days in the first week that were totally off the rails. That feels to me like more than normal, but you know what? Maybe it's not. I haven't been tracking a while, so maybe my baseline was lower than I thought.
The mind can play all sorts of tricks on you. Your memory is fundamentally not trustworthy when it comes to things that you rest your ego and identity on.
So... was this a week below the baseline, or close to the real baseline? Hmm.
Two more observations --
I had a couple opportunities to miss my metrics and choose to do something more valuable. I took them -- means goals are the means to the end. Yet, having those hard metrics shows you that you've got to stay on track and push.
And then, something that's quite cool is that by tracking these metrics, even when things fall off -- you stabilize to a higher, stronger low. More on this in a moment.
Okay, here are the high level goals --
Areas of Interest
Physical Fitness: Get the healthiest I've been in my life.
Sales:
*Rapidly finish designing a new compete sales process by end of week.
*Run a campaign to source leads once per week every week (12 total).
*Make 100 sales calls per week. (1200 total)Clients:
*Grow from 8 clients to 30
*$10,000 in revenues by the end of July (40 days from now)Philanthropy:
*Launch GiveGetWin by early July
*Average $50/day from GGW until stable early, then reach $200/day
*Do a complete roadmap for CPNC
*Contact 10 top nonprofit officials to get guidance on everything a solid nonprofit needs
*Use this to create a "Nonprofit Roadmap" covering all the basesPersonal:
*Get back on to time tracking every single day
*Plan the next day the night before
*Come out of this cycle not burned out, but rather healthy and vibrant
*Document this daily with observations, share with the world
*Write one excellent piece (by my standards) each weekPeople:
*Massively increase humility
*Get constant feedback from talented people
*Set up two weekly discussions -- sales, and efficiency
Here's the results, Week One--
Physical Fitness: A great week in fitness, killing it in the gym and good nutrition. Not enough sleep, but besides that very solid.
Sales:
*Built out a sales process solidly and improved it, though this is going to be a long ongoing effort. Still, big win here.
*We ran a lead source campaign this week, a simple one that brought in a few high qualified leads (20 or 30, something like that?)
*Target: 100 sales calls. Reality: Only 36. Way lower than I wanted -- there's many reasons for this, some good and some bad. On the good side, I'm having a higher hit/success rate than I previously had, so the real results are coming in. On the bad side, still a sense of procrastination and delay... a, "I don't have this figured out enough yet" vibe, but that's nonsense -- you never have it figured out all the way, you have to just start.
Clients:
*Target: Grow from 8 clients to 30 by end of July. This week: Added 3 clients (and a fourth on Day 8/9). That means 19 in a little over 4 weeks, or around 5 per week. Very doable.
*$10,000 in revenues by the end of July. $3500 this week, and more in play. On-track.
Philanthropy:
*Launch GiveGetWin by early July: Made some good pushes early, though making this a bigger focus for Week 2.
*Average $50/day from GGW until stable early, then reach $200/day (not targeted this week)
*Do a complete roadmap for CPNC (not targeted this week)
*Contact 10 top nonprofit officials to get guidance on everything a solid nonprofit needs (not targeted this week)
*Use this to create a "Nonprofit Roadmap" covering all the bases (not targeted this week)
Personal:
*Get back on to time tracking every single day: Good. Close to daily success at 7 days out of 7.
*Plan the next day the night before: Good. Close to daily success at 7 days out of 7.
*Come out of this cycle not burned out, but rather healthy and vibrant: Seems to be going well.
*Document this daily with observations, share with the world: 7/7.
*Write one excellent piece (by my standards) each week: 80% done... wrote a great 3,000 words, but needs more editing and polishing to get it ready for primetime. Giving it a yes though.
People:
*Massively increase humility: Working on putting more questions marks and periods on things, getting more training, consulting with more people, etc.
*Get constant feedback from talented people: A bit.
*Set up two weekly discussions -- sales, and efficiency (not targeted this week)
Things That Need Improvement --
1. I've usually kept weird sleep hours, but this week was totally out of control. Need less of that.
2. A couple days were totally off the rails... if I straighten those out, things going to go really up.
Other Observations on Productivity --
Productivity seems to come in two flavors. By slowly regularly chipping away at things, you make huge gains. You could call that "evolutionary" production/productivity. Then occasionally, you'll have a massively creative day where you pioneer, invent, put something all together. That's "revolutionary" production/productivity.
The key is to keep the evolution, regular inputs, and performance in. By doing that, you leave open those opportunities for revolutionary improvement.
With a tracking/goal-setting/focus campaign like this, the goal is to take the down days and get something out of them so things keep moving forwards, and then really focusing on the great days to make huge gains. And -- it seems to be working.