10 of 10 Is a Top Ten Target and Not About Business Research

My Future Career as a Productivity Guru.

I did it. Ten posts in ten days. So, giddy with having my blog called out by fellow researcher, Brian Willingham, I put it down, forever sealed on the Internet, I would do ten posts in ten days, a blogger’s challenge. And to wrap this thing up, I’m gonna focus on the challenge not the blog.

Really, I’d be happy to do a summary post of a week’s worth of posting, links galore, but I did that just the other day, so I feel I need one more day of actual content. While there is a lot more to say about the process of research, I got a lifetime of blogging to get to them. I want to use this last post to launch my career as a productivity guru.

I got one thing holding me back from being the next David Allen. Hint: it’s not lack of knowledge on GTD or a million other systems. I skated through high school by being a good test taker. In college, I could whip out term papers over a heavy weekend. Granted, a lot of bad habits thwarted law school, but I did get to take advantage of all of New Orleans’s day drinking opportunities. Now, with two kids so grown they are off on their own and 20 years under my belt running my business research shop, it’s time to put all I know about not getting things done behind me. If I can do ten blog posts in ten days, I can do anything..

SMART goals. HARD goals. BHAG goals. If you’re a productivity junkie like me you know what those things mean. Yet about everyone knows what goal goals mean. Or Managing by Objective or New Year’s Resolutions. There’s surely an idea floating on out there that to do more, to accomplish something, one must figure out what one wants in order to get there. Does it need to be specific and measurable or heartfelt and animated or just big and hairy. Should it be a product or a process. That may be a lot of mumbo jumbo to you, but believe me, I have thought about them all as I chase the magic formula that will keep me off of Instagram. I firmly believe that what will move my needle is the right system. Which system?

I wrestle amongst several competing concepts and plans. First, there is the question of how many goals one should have. A lot of systems stress focus. One or two or at best three goals should be all you need. On the flip side is the well-known GTD, Getting Things Done, insert trademark symbol, system. David Allen does not dismiss having goals. He says have goals, but your focus in on projects, essentially anything that takes more than one thing to do, to call it done, is a project, and he posits that most professionals have anywhere from 50 to 150 projects at any particular time. Then, there is the notion of outcome vs. activity. On side, you have people saying “don’t confuse activity with accomplishment” or “hook or crook, focus on the result not how you get there.” The other side says, you can play your cards exactly right and still lose to some flukey river. We cannot always control the score but we can control the way we play. Those are not even the biggest things that vex me.

A lot of times when I think about goals, I ended coming down to one thing, money. Money is not the be all, end all, and I understand that “money does not lead to happiness.” I mean I read Bonfire of Vanities. I know how hard it can be to live on a Master of the Universe budget. Yet, when I start thinking of goals or bucket lists or things I want, I think Vegas or doing work to the bungalow or taking my Dad hiking in Vegas. Do I make my goal Vegas or do I make goal having enough money to send myself to Vegas? Or put it this way, when I do my occasionally GTD mindsweeps, and I collect all the things that are on my mind, I end up with a whole lot of someday/maybe’s because there’s not the budget for them. Next action=put money in savings account. I by no means live a miserly life, nor am I struggling. Yet there are many things I would do tomorrow if there was more money. It makes me think often that the only goal I need is to make more money.

Let’s just fast forward to what I’ve arrived at. Ten targets. I like to say top ten targets because it rolls off the tongue nicely but there is no target eleven. Well, there is in the sense that there will always be ten targets, so as soon as I reach a target, I add a new one. Don’t I get bogged down, confused, muddled with ten targets. No, because some targets take a lot of effort each day and some take little. Take this target, which a lot of you probably have too, getting a few pairs of pants to snap (i.e., lose a little weight). What does it take to make that happen. I having my eating plan and my workout plan. There’s not much more of my life needed. If I had three goals, and one was lose weight, what would I do with all the extra time. Some targets are reached by putting in serious time over a period and some just require the repetition of a habit. I think ten is a good number for having enough to do but not too much to do.

I used to think that my top ten targets would be things like a new client or a certain amount of new assignments or even being asked to speak at a conference. All of those things are worthwhile, and if you noticed, are all things that will make me money. Yet as hard as I try, clients work on their schedule not mine. Some weeks they are more active than others. It is in my control to get clients and projects but when and how often is a little less. I need exact. Like ten blog posts in ten days.

Goals should not be easy. Ten blog posts in ten days is not easy. Not easy because it is not easy (as I have shown) to come up with an idea a day, and it is especially not easy to donate the 90 or so minutes it takes to write a blog post out of the rest of my day. It is doable, both in the sense that it is not that hard to find 90 minutes extra a day and when in need of an idea, there’s always that summary post, and it’s all within my control. I am not reliant on anyone else to finish this challenge. That’s what the top ten targets are. Doable.

They are not all things that can be done in two weeks. I have at least one item that’s probably at least a year away. They are not all about money, like having my pants snap. I’ll add that there are lots of things that are important, that are “values” that do not need to be targets. It is very important to prioritize my family and make time for my family and make my kids laugh and be of assistance when my dad needs it. None of those things are top ten targets. I’d rather not share my full top ten, but I think it’s a good list.

In doing these ten blog posts in ten days I also did some journaling about my targets. I’ve changed a few things, sharpened a few, whittled a few more down to ten day sprints. I figure if I can just knock off these things, bing, bing, bing, the big picture will take care of itself. That’s gonna be my best selling book. Set up you top ten targets. That’s all you need. As Hillel would say if he was a 21st century podcaster, the rest is commentary.