The First Thing.
Dear Essentialists,
Today I asked a group of 50 leaders to describe how they were feeling in two words: one word to describe the best of what was going on for them and one word to describe the worst.
Here are some of their answers: "Optimistic and overwhelmed", "Resilient and tired", "Engaged and exhausted" and "Triumphant and defeated."
If you can relate, if you are making progress but find it harder than in the past, consider this magic question from my guest this week on the What's Essential podcast, the co-author of the mega-bestseller The One Thing, Jay Papasan:
What's the one thing I can do that will make everything else easier or unnecessary?
Listen here if you want to understand how to put this question into practice. Here's the simple version:
1) Write down the following six categories: spiritual, physical, personal, key relationships, job/business, and finances. (20 seconds)
2) Score each category from 1-10 (20 seconds)
3) Take the lowest-scoring category and ask the magic question from above.
It's a great question and a great conversation. One of my favorite one-liners from the episode was this:
"Until my #1 priority is done, everything else is a distraction."
Thank you, really, for reading.
Greg
p.s. A shout out to Travelgirl879 for your review on iTunes: "I look forward to my weekly dose of essentialism in the form of this podcast. In addition to the book, the podcast helps me apply essentialism principles in my everyday life. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to lead an intentional, purpose-driven life."
Here's how to leave your own review if you feel so moved:
1. Open Apple Podcasts
2. Search for "What's Essential Podcast"
3. Click on the podcast
4. Click ratings and reviews
5. Click 5 stars
6. Click "Write a review"
7. Click send
Senior Software Engineer | Solution Architect | Deep-Diving into LTM Strategies for Conversational AI
4 年Sometimes the answer to that question is simply: Take a break. A real, rejuvenating, mind-refreshing break. Might just come back with a time-saving idea that you never would have chanced upon had you stayed in head-down continue-grinding mode. This happens to us software developers all the time. ??
Wisconsin guy, writer, a ponderer, a reflector, let's not call it brooding, but deep thinking and thoughtfulness, ok?
4 年In a previous life, I was a one person complaint department for a decent sized coated paper company. Part of the gig was to compile stats on our complaints and every month each production area made it their first priority to come up with action steps to reduce the incidence or improve their performance around their top two defects. Regularly dealing with their worst areas soon transformed our mill into one that reduced our complaint levels to the point that our monthly meetings became analyzing one time random occurrences. Everything else was noise until our worst areas got under control. Thanks for the reminder about focusing on the main things. This is really some insightful information. Thank you for sharing it.
Director/HR & Admin/Strategy/People and Culture/Talent acquisition/Career Dev./Job design and evaluation/Compensation/Diversity, Equity & inclusion /Human-izer /Legal /Translator
4 年Thanks Greg
Thank you Greg. We never give thought to such a detail and always in hurry to reply. Such a useful activity to be productive