The Weekly Reframe #1

1/ Notice

Achieving a stretch goal creates momentum. 

I've noticed this pattern in my own life: 

Set a challenging goal. First attempt, make some progress. That success makes me more likely to try again. Second attempt, I might actually succeed. If I do then the third time I set an even harder stretch - looking for better, faster, cheaper, or easier.

This self-efficacy spirals both ways. 

Win once and you believe in yourself more, try more, win more. Your capabilities accelerate as you follow what's working, opening up more learning in that direction—while other areas drift increasingly out of reach.

Fail early and believe you can't? You won't try. When you don't try, you confirm you can't.

It’s worth watching out for this.

“After people attain the goal they have been pursuing, they generally set a higher goal for themselves." ​- Locke and Latham, goal-setting researchers

More: Ultralearning by Scott Young

2/ Try

Most people think productivity is about what you do.

It's not. Productivity is about attention, not activity. You can spend an hour "working" while distracted and get nothing done, or spend 20 focused minutes and move something forward.

This week I'm starting a test of Peter Drucker's time-logging principle from The Effective Executive. Drucker is widely considered the father of modern management, so worth paying attention.

He says effective executives "do not start with their tasks. They start with their time. And they do not start with planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes."

His method is to track everything you do for three to four weeks. Record each activity and how long it takes. Then analyse what's wasteful and what matters.

I'll be logging calls, writing, eating, Netflix—everything that uses my time and energy. I'll also track how long I think things will take versus the actual time because I'm curious what I'm overestimating and where I'm fooling myself.

Drucker's insight: we're terrible at sensing time. We consistently over-estimate or under-estimate where it goes. You can't change what you haven't measured.

This three-step process:
​1. Recording time,2. Managing time, ando3. Cnsolidating time
.​is the foundation of executive effectiveness.​– The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker

More Peter Kang's lessons from The Effective Executive

3/ Question

Often performance advice has an underlying assumption that life is about scaling for growth. That achieving 10x in the same amount of time is a win. 

Really? 

How about instead of grasping for more you set a 'more than enough' level? 
What if you scaled down effort to satisfy that? 

For example, you work 5-days a week and want twice the income you have today. 

A different type of 10x improvement could be working 2 days a month, while hitting your 'more than enough' income target. 

By all means grow 10x and still work 5-days ... if that's what you really want to do. 

But before you 10x anything ask, "is this my goal, do I want that much more than I have now, or am I copying someone else's scorecard?"

“Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is too neat.” ​- Luke Burgis

More Luke Burgis on Mimetic Desire

What are your takeaways from today's brief?