In late 2010, Seth Godin posted a blog (Measuring Busy-ness) which stimulated an idea for me that might well prove to be the single smartest thing I do for my business this year.

VIID – Vision, Innovation, and Implementation Day. One day per month where there is no email, no phone, no Facebook, no distractions.  Just me, my Big Ideas, and a whole day to unearth the heart of why my ideas matter, who they matter to, and how I’m going bring them to life and connect them with the people who are eagerly  waiting to hear about them (even if they don’t yet know it).

Multitasking Yourself to Mediocrity

It’s not news: the best and brightest among us are hemorrhaging focused attention and multitasking ourselves to mediocrity in the process.  In the words of B. Alan Wallace in his book, The Attention Revolution:

“Might ‘genius’ be a potential we all share – each of us with our own unique capacity for creativity, requiring only the power of sustained attention to unlock it?”

Genius… you?!?  YES!  …Me too!

But, first you have to ditch the excuses that you can’t create the time for focused attention, and then you have to create a system of support so you will create the time for focused attention… again, and again, and again.

Five Steps to Move Your Ideas from Mediocre to Magnetic

A mediocre idea is…

• One that everyone else in the industry is also doing, and think it looks different because they’ve slapped their own logo on it.
• One that has the potential for genius, but experiences lack-luster implementation and impact because it never benefited from the focused time to get it fully developed.
• One that highlights your products and not your unique intellectual capital, giving your clients and prospective clients one more reason to view your services as a commodity,  rather than seeing your support and advising are indispensable.

Enter: VIID.

Step 1: Pick a consistent day and block it on your calendar for the rest of the year. I picked the last Friday of every month and I’ve already blocked my entire 2011 with the sacred VIID.

Step 2: Write an auto responder for your email. You’ll eliminate one more excuse not to follow-through if you have this pre-written and use the same one every time.  To keep you accountable to yourself, and make it super easy, ask your support staff to set a recurring reminder for him/herself to post the auto-responder the day before your VIID, and to not take it down until at least the end of business on your blocked day.  Here’s mine (feel free to swipe it and use it for yours):

Step 3: Record an Out of Office greeting on your phone. Set a recurring reminder in your task list that pops up at the end of the day prior to your VIID.  Before you close down shop for the day, record your out of office greeting and don’t even look at your phone again until VIID is complete.

Bonus Idea:  Be Willing to Be a Courageous! You may be tempted to be less-than-transparent on your email and phone messages (you know, to say something like “I’ll be in meetings all day” or “I’ll be at an off-site training all day”)… challenge yourself to question whether that’s really necessary.  In some organizational cultures, it may feel like the safe thing to do… but you are an industry thought leader.  What would happen if you owned the innovative way you do business?  What if it was actually your brand and you were more magnetically attractive because of the authentic way in which you exhibit it?

Step 4:  Track your ideas throughout the month. We all get flashes of insight and glimpses of genius at the most random times.  When you have one, capture the idea and put it in an “idea file” or list to be explored with focused attention during your VIID.  I’ve created a VIID “idea folder” in Omnifocus (the uber-slick task manager made specifically for Mac) where I capture my ideas.  You can create similar system in Outlook or other task management software.

Step 5: Prepare yourself. The night before your VIID pick the one or two ideas from your VIID file/list on which you will dedicate your focused attention.  Determine what you want to accomplish with the idea(s) you’ve picked.  Are you:

• Conducting a competitive analysis?
• Creating a high-end offer for your best clients?
• Designing a launch plan for a new, innovative program to engage with clients?
• Conducting a feasibility study on an idea?

Be clear with yourself: what do you want to have tangibly accomplished and when are you going to “ship” your idea? Don’t give your gremlin mind any reason to heckle that your VIID was anything less than the greatest investment you’re making in your business this year.

I’m willing to be that it will be.



Share your comments and ideas at Move Your Ideas from Mediocre to Magnetic

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• How Magnetic are YOUR 2011 Business Development Ideas?
• Multitasking Yourself to Mediocrity?
• “Big Ideas Aren’t For Commoners…”

Ask and ye shall receive!  I wanted to work with the brightest, most engaged, forward-thinking and forward-acting professional advisors and next generation wealth holders out there…. and that’s exactly the clients I have in my practice.  Hallelujah!

Turns out that my client niche has an unexpected hitch…. The best and brightest also tend to be the people who create more work than there are hours in the day, which means they have less time and energy to embrace the potential-increasing business practices and lifestyle changes they’ve hired me to support them in making.

Like squeezing water from a rock, the best and brightest often search for the organizational system, practice management method or refinement in daily scheduling that will help them efficiently condense their current work flow in hopes of fitting in one more item on their long list of things “to do.”

But what if “more” only means more overwhelm, more fatigue, and more angst, not more energy, productivity, and/or enjoyment?

Lessons from a Japanese Farmer

There is a farmer in Japan named Masanobu Fukuoka whose farm has some of the highest yields in the country, yet requires only minimal labor on his part.  He has termed his method “do nothing” farming, a method that he has developed and refined by observing and mimicking nature’s own self-fertilizing and self-cultivating cycles (read more in his book, One Straw Revolution).

“It took me thirty years to develop such simplicity,” says Fukuoka.  Instead of working harder, he whittled away unnecessary agriculture practice one-by-one, asking what he could stop doing rather than what he could do. Forsaking reliance on human cleverness, he joined in alliance with nature’s wisdom.

Mimic nature’s time-tested system for productivity and sustainability? Pure genius.

Your “Do Nothing” Game Plan

Start by observing your own work habits and beliefs.  Maybe it’s time to stop trying to out-think yourself and instead to mimic nature’s own wisdom.

Every place you observe wasted action, or systems consistently out of equilibrium, become aware — can you shift to a more value-producing action, habit or system? OR Eliminate that action, habit or system all together?

In your quest to create a financially-thriving and soul-satisfying business, what unnecessary habits can you start to whittle away?

One Less Thing

Think through your day today.  Has every single meeting/report/email/interaction produced value towards the success of your business, increased your engagement in the outcome, and your enjoyment of the process?

What would happen if you decided to eliminate one value-draining (and time robbing) action or engagement each day?

Value-producing action can’t exist simultaneously with waste-producing action.  Imagine the time and energy you will free up as you whittle away habitual, but wasteful,  projects/interactions/engagements/meetings and shift your focus to consciously cultivating only intentional and value-producing action.

Five minutes a day here, 10 minutes there… whoa!  Looks like you just freed up an extra hour to repay that piggy-bank of potential you posses within you.

Share your comments and ideas at The “Do Nothing” Method of Productivity

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The 80/20 Principle, where 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts, can be a powerful tool in simplifying as well as improving our overall personal, professional and economic situations.

Imagine now you could identify the 20% of the pods that give you 80% of your peas. Not just clients, but in all aspects of your practice. Let’s look at some specific areas where this could apply:

Social Media

All right … here is where Twitter shows up. If you follow people or ideas which ones give you the most useful information? Which 10% or 20% of those you follow have actually contributed to your personal, professional or economic success? Apply this same litmus test to the blogs, listservs, Linkedin groups and other points of virtual connection to which you subscribe.  Which ones are the vital few?

In the last year which ones actually gave you something useful personally, professionally or economically?  Did you join those six linkedin groups just because someone you know asked?  How much time and focus could you re-claim by limiting your “cyber-exposure” to just the vital few?

Books and Professional Journals

I can name the authors in various areas who contribute 90% or more to my learning and skill in certain areas. Why have books by other, not-the-vital-few, authors bury their effect?  I still keep these books and author in my library, but they do not clutter my direct work space. They are the useful many but the examples of my vital few are:

• Creativity: Michael Gerber, John Daido Loori, Leonardo DaVinci, and Frank Cioffi
• Advisory Practice: Jay Hughes, Scott Fithian and John A. Warnick
• Grounding: Trevanian, Daniel Silva, George Leonard and Eliot Dascher
• Spirituality: Karen Armstrong, Huston Smith and Stephen Batchelor

Centers of Influence and Business Relationships

It is easy to be busy meeting with, and courting, centers of influence. How might your impact and results expand if you instead identified the 6 or 12 “vital few,” and put focus on specific things of interest and support to these vital few to share with the useful many?

The application and implication of using 80/20 analysis and thinking are large, both personally and professionally.

What do you think?

Tim Belber, JD, writes and speaks on a variety of topics impacting families and their financial assets.  Contact Tim at: Tim Belber

Share your comments and ideas at Simplicity, Pareto and Twitter…Part Two

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• Simplicity, Pareto and Twitter…Part One

Everyday we hear that less is more, simple is better and of the benefits of a minimalist life style. In fact, this observation has been around in an articulated form since 1906 when Italian economist and philosopher Vilfredo Pareto (1848 – 1923) observed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people.

This idea became conceptualized in 1937 as the Pareto Principle by Joseph Juran  (1923 – 2008). A management consultant, he observed that 80% of the peas in his garden came from 20% of the pods and thus was born the idea of the vital few and the useful many. Said another way, 80% of the results are the product of 20% of the causes.

The principle is very much alive in the world around us. Interestingly, it does not need to add up to 100%. For example, 15% of your clients may account for 95% of your revenue.  5% of your library may be source of 75% of your wisdom. Richard Koch, in his excellent series of books on the “80/20″ idea, goes into great detail of how you can bring this focus to your own individual life. For those interested I recommend all three but in particular Living the 80/20 Way.

Applying “Pareto Analysis” can have a tremendous impact on our daily lives and on our business practices. Stay tuned for Part Two of this post when Tim will explore:

What does this have to do with being a high functioning advisor? More importantly, how does Twitter factor in?

Tim Belber, JD, writes and speaks on a variety of topics impacting families and their financial assets.  Contact Tim at: Tim Belber

Share your comments and ideas at Simplicity, Pareto and Twitter…Part One

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• Simplicity, Pareto and Twitter…Part Two

Traits of the Successful

Those who excel is business, athletics, and, well heck, life have a couple of traits in common:

1)      They spend 80% of their time on high-return activities.

2)      They have impeccable and consistent habits and daily practices—both personally and professionally.

3)      They are constantly willing to stretch themselves—challenging who they are today as they embrace who they are becoming.

Enter: the Get ‘er Done! list.

Doing What’s Comfortable vs. Doing What’s Successful

When left to our own devices, we often choose the easiest (read: habitual) thing because it doesn’t require that we challenge ourselves.  However, that habit is the difference between doing what’s comfortable and doing what’s successful.

By embracing the daily habit of creating a Get ‘er Done! list, you give yourself the space to determine what your highest return activity is, schedule time each day to accomplish it, and, in doing so, you continually stretch yourself beyond you comfort zone.

So, how do you determine what those high-return activities are so you can create your Get ‘er Done! list? The great thing is, you already know it instinctively—it’s the task that makes you squirm and find ways to distract yourself with time-sucking details like email and shuffling papers around your desk; it’s the thing that challenges you to get focused, stretch, take a risk, be creative, or develop a new skill.

For Example:

• Writing down you annual revenue goals and a clear sales/marketing/delivery plan to achieve them.
• Expanding your visibility and credibility by presenting at an industry conference.

• Directly asking a client to hire you.

Here’s a challenge for you for this next week:

1)      At the end of each day, take a minute to think through what are the 1-3 highest payoff actions you could take. That’s your “Get ‘er Done!” list.

2)      At the start of the next day, either tackle your Get ‘er Done! list before you answer email or take care of any other “brain stem” tasks, or block (and hold sacred!) the time that you’ll dedicate to those tasks. Commit to yourself that before the day is done, you will have accomplished the top 1-3 actions that will give you the highest return.

3)      At the end of the day, internalize your accomplishment by taking a minute to acknowledge what you have accomplished and how what that accomplishment supports your longer-term goals.

4)      Wrap up the day with creating the next day’s Get ‘er Done! list.

You have the vision to see what’s possible, an understanding of what needs to happen to make things work, and the tenacity to keep on keepin’ on.  The challenge today is to combine these ongoing gifts with the habit of honoring yourself and your goals by always taking action in the highest impact places first.

And that’s a habit that has success written all over it!

Share your comments and ideas at Get ‘er Done