Setting Goals & Getting Organised

1. Introduction to Goals: so welcome to Section One, which is about goals we're gonna look at what goals are, how to set them. What makes a really good goal on. We're going to look at a little bit about careers as well in this section. 2. What Are Your Life Goals?: So Step one is to sort out your life goals. Life goals are incredibly important. You have to have a dream for your life, some sort of objective or where it's gonna go and you've got to think big. Most people don't have goals for their life. Most people just drift through life. They just turn up to work. They do what the boss tells them. Maybe they don't like their work, but what else can they do? But the important thing is to have something that you would ideally like to do in your mind . And if you do have a goal or a dream in your mind, it's much more likely to happen now. I want to tell you what happened to me because I did this and it worked, and it will work for you if you do the same as I did years ago. I read a book, it was talking about successful people, and it's said you've gotta have goals and you gotta write them down on. I decided to give it a go, and I wrote a great big long list of everything that I would like my life to be like to my shame. It did start with a particular kind of car I wanted, but I was any young and that was kind of what excited me. And I broke down a certain amount of money, and I wanted to have a house with a view of the sea and a dog and all sorts of play in a band. All sorts of things were on this list, and I wrote the list and the book said I should look at the list every morning when I got up and every night before I went to bed. Andi, I did this for about a week and I got bored with reading the list. Andi, about two or three years later, is moving house, and when I moved the bedside table, I found the list, which has fallen down the back of the bedside cabinet. Onda had a look at the list and everything I'd written down. It'll come true. I'd forgotten about the list, but it's still all came true and I just thought, That's weird. How can that possibly have worked? How can it work that I'll come on to that in a moment of how can it work? So my first thought was, How can it work? My second thought was, Do another list, you know, Let's find out whether this works. So my second list was a lot shorter and simpler than my first list. On my second least, I just put to do a job I really enjoy on toe only work two or three days a week because that would be brilliant, wouldn't it? On? I just wrote that I had no idea that was gonna happen at the time I was running a factory. And if you run a factory, you're never going to do in two or three days a week, and you're probably not going to enjoy it that much, cause it's quite a tough, thankless task. But that's what I wrote down and again. I kind of forgot I'd written it down. I stuck it on the wall, but I kind of got used to seeing it on the on the wall. On day two or three years later, I found myself working as a university lecturer, and it turned out to be a job that I really loved. Andi. It only required two or three days a week. Andi, I suddenly thought it's happened again. I've written my list down and it's happened again. So now I'm on my third list, and it's big because whatever I write down happens now, it doesn't matter what I foot on my list. The point is you would have your own list and it would be whatever you want to do on whatever you write down will happen. But how does it work? How can it possibly work? Well, I think there were two reasons why writing things on lists works. The 1st 1 is your internal sat naff. Every day you make little decisions every day, you think, Shall I listen to this person? Even now you're probably thinking shallow right? A list watch, like put on my list. Shall I put big or small things on my list? So every day you make little decisions that take you either in the direction of your personal goals for your life or not in that direction. And most people don't have goals, they just driving randomly through life. And if you drove randomly in your car, where would you end up? Probably somewhere. Not very nice. So I think that's the first thing your subconscious will just make little decisions to get you in that general direction. The other reason is that gives you self discipline and assertiveness. So if you think about if you've got a very definite things you want to achieve, you will be more focused on more self disciplined. You're more likely to do the work that you need to do in order to get there was, If you haven't got goals, why bother to be self discipline? You might as well just go any crisps and read the paper or something, and similarly, you're more likely to be assertive if you've got goals. You're not gonna let other people stand in your way if you're determined to achieve those goals. So the things that will get in the way we like to be yourself or other people and that's lack of self discipline or lack of assertiveness and goals will help with both of those. But really, you don't need to worry about how it's gonna work to start with. Really, all you need to do is write these goals down, and then your subconscious will just make it happen for you. So that's the first thing to do, right your goals down really clearly. And I'm going to look at this in a bit more detail in the second section. But before we got the second section, I just want you to get a piece of paper, write down what your ideal life would be like. What things would you like to be doing in your ideal life? 3. Refining Goals: Okay, so in this video, I want to refine your goals a little bit more. Most people's goals are to do with achievement successes. They want tohave or whatever, but I actually think enjoyment is just as important. In fact, maybe it's more important than achievement, although ideally you would do a little bit of both. So if you achieve things, but you don't have any fun on the way, that's no good. But also, if you're having fun but not achieving anything, that would be good in the short term. But it will become unsatisfying in the longer term. So I think your goals should include enjoyment, goals, things that you want to spend more time on on. Also achievement goals, things that you want to achieve in the future. So you've got enjoyment in the present on achievement in the future. Now I think most people's plan is achievement at work and enjoyment at home, so their enjoyment is partying on Friday night, partying on Saturday night, and then they're depressed on Sunday when I have to go back to work and maybe they have a great summer holiday, but then they're depressed at the end of that but I want more than that for me and for you . So what I'm thinking is, would it be good if you could enjoy your work as well as achieve at work? Would it be good if you could find some sort of work that you could enjoy? And maybe the search for an enjoyable job should begin Now? Maybe it's not good enough to do a job that you don't enjoy. Maybe you should start thinking about what kind of work would you enjoy, even if it's not so well paid? Don't worry about that, because the money will sort itself out later. Start by thinking, What sort of work would you love to do? You got to spend five days a week doing it. You must will find a job that you enjoy and also achievement outside of work. So I'd like to enjoy and achieve in my personal life and achievement in your personal life doesn't mean being famous or rich or anything like that. It's not about that. It's just finding some things that you want to achieve that you can say I did that and it might be just have 100 types of few sure in your greenhouse or to stand on all the highest mountains in Scotland or toe upload a book to Amazon kindle or something. But it's something where in your personal life, you can think I did that. So the objective is to have enjoy and achieve at home and at work, and maybe even divide your goals into those four boxes, although don't worry too much about which box things go in. So you know, playing in a band, for example, is that enjoy or is achieve. I don't know, and it doesn't really matter. The main thing is just get it on there somewhere. But if there's nothing that you enjoy it, work or you're not achieving anything outside work, then maybe you should do a bit more thinking and add a few more goals and just one more thought about improving these goals even better as well. It's just a list of things you want to achieve. You could add three more things to them first. You could add dates so you could say not just I'm going to go to Australia and drive around it in a camper van, but I'm going to do that by the end of next year. Let's say on that slightly anxious feeling that's your subconscious thinking, all right. Gonna have to actually do this. I have to take some action. And so that's great. Seconding to add is a plan of how you're going to do it. How are you going to save the money? You know, how you going to get the time off? So just having a plan of how you're going to get there, I've actually Mike guilty. Confession is I've never actually done a plan for my goals. I just write them down and they happen anyway. So this is brilliant, even if you don't have dates in a plan. But I think you'll agree. If you've got dates and a plan, they're much more likely to happen. And then the third and final thing I want you to add to your goals is a bit of daily focus . So maybe spent one minute a day just thinking about those goals. So rather than write it on a bit of paper and then lose the paper, I'd like you to every day. Just imagine that you're driving around Australia in a camper van or imagine that you're in your house that's got a big garden, whatever it might be, whatever your ideal world we like, imagine you're playing in that band. Or imagine that you're super fit and can run a mile in six minutes or whatever. So just spend one minute today focusing on those girls, and that will make your subconscious constantly be aware of them. And it will be constantly focusing for you and making you move in the right direction. So, to sum up, divide your goals in to enjoy and achieve at home and at work and then put on dates a plan on, then focus on them every day and then they will happen. 4. SMART Goals: So we saw in the last video that it's really important to have clear goals for your life. Where you going in your life and in this section we're gonna look at How could we make those goals as effective as possible? Now you've probably seen smart goals, and I think it's quite cliche aid. Actually, I don't really like smart girls. The idea that goals have to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed. My objection to smart is that a It's a bit boring, doesn't really excite to me and also specific and measurable are the same thing really and achievable and realistic are the same thing as well. Are they or have I missed the point in some way? So I don't really like smart. I would like to suggest that your goals should be spend and Sprem the first s doesn't stand for specific it. It actually stands for scary. So I think your for first goal or the first feature that all of your goal should have is that they should be a little bit scary. You should be thinking, I don't know. Could I do that? Could I really do that on that feeling of fear. Is that feeling of your subconscious expanding slightly as it sort of things? Well, maybe I could. And as you start to visualize that goal more and more, you start to believe that you actually can achieve it. So your goals should be a little bit scary. They shouldn't be within your comfort zone, because those are gonna happen anyway. The p of them is that they should be positive. They should be, um, you shouldn't have a goal to have less stress or or to be a bit less unfit or something like that. Your goals should be things that you want to do that you can imagine doing. So instead of watching less TV. Let's say your goal should be to read for an error or to go out and do exercise for half an hour every night, something like that. So they have to be positive because your subconscious can only visualize positive things. So goal to give up. Smoking is not a very good goal because your subconscious just thinks about smoking. You got to think about what you'll do instead. What will your life be like when you're not a smoker? Such the p positive. The V of Sprem goes with that in that it's got to be visualize Herbal. It's gonna be visual. So if you just want to live in a nice house, what does a nice house looked like? Exactly? Will it be a cottage? Will it be a flat in the middle of town? Will it have a garden? So it's got to be visual on something like to have more security. What does that actually mean? Is it money in the bank? Is it a skill that's always in demand? Is it have lots of small customers so that if you lose one, it doesn't matter what the security actually look like. So it's got to be visual on the best way, actually, to make things visual is to actually get a picture off it, maybe stick the picture on the wall. Even so, if you want to be in good shape, maybe actually get a picture of the perfect body. Some people stick their head on the picture of their perfect body. They like toe have. But then in your mind, you're your subconscious than thinks. Okay, right. I'm gonna aim for that. Well, they get a picture of their perfect house or whatever, and then that helps them aim for something similar to that. So the more visual those goals can be, the better. And that's the V of SPEN Now that E actually can't decide whether the E stands for emotional or exciting. It's the same thing, really. I think we should probably pick exciting. So your girls have actually got to excite you, so you mustn't just right when I suppose I better write down a Ferrari cause Chris says, I got to write down the girls. I put Ferrari unless you're excited about Ferrari's don't have that as a goal because it's your emotions that actually drive you to take actions. So you've got to feel emotional about your goals. And finally, the M is measurable. It's the same as in smart. I think your goals do need to be measurable, so to be fitter or get more exercise is not really good enough. It's a good start, but ideally your goal be to be able to run a mile in six minutes or to be able to do 30 press ups or something like that because that's a measurable goal that you can work towards on that. You can definitely say I have achieved my goal. So that is spend. So what I'd like you to do now is just go through that list of goals you wrote earlier and just refine them a bit more. Make them a bit more exciting, or think about how you're gonna visualize them or how you're going to measure them and tweak your your list of goals to make it a little bit better. And then in the next section, we're gonna improve your goals even more. 5. Creating Security: in this last video on the goals section. I just want to say a little bit more about work goals and about careers and the first thing official. Four points I want to make about work, and 1st 1 is self development. You're only really as good as what's in your head. So build up your your brain power and your knowledge. Self development is so important on really the input you get into your head. It comes from two places. It comes from the people you mix with on the books that you read. So make sure that you mix with good people. Don't just go down to the pub every night and mixed with load of people who are all depressed and negative. By the way, the pub could be fine if it's if it's full of positive friends who are building you up. But but don't just makes with negative people all the time because that's gonna be bad for you. And similarly, if you just read depressing newspapers or something, that's not gonna be good. Don't feed that into ahead. You only read good books, books that are going to teach you useful things. So the people you mix with on the books you read a worth thinking about. That's the first thing I want you to do. A second thing to do with your career is don't bother creeping to the boss. The boss is actually not that important in the end. Clearly you wanna have a nice boss, It looks after etcetera. But don't put all your effort into just getting into the boss's good books, because will they be around in the future? You know, five years time, will the boss be there? Are you investing all your time in someone who won't be there On also, do they really care about you? And you may have a boss who actually does care about you, and that's great. But what about their boss? Your boss's boss probably doesn't really care much about you. It all on your boss's boss's boss probably doesn't even know you exist. You're probably just a number to them. So creeping is not. The answer is not the way Teoh to get on in your career now. 1/3 point is what is the way to get on your career? And self development is clearly really important because if you've got all sorts of skills , you're more likely to be offered opportunities when they come up on. I'm actually kind of come later to the whole idea of how to be more promotable. I'm going to talk about the pair of promotion, but what I want to just say here is B T shaped in your skills. She had the idea of being T shaped. Is that your multi skilled? So the cross shape of the tears that you're a generalised and you know lots about lots of things, but also the vertical of the tea is that you have a specialized niche, something that you're really good at now. If you're only multi skill and you don't have something are really good at, there is a risk that I think, well, why do we need this person? And that you won't be the best anything? But if you only have one specialist niche, that's also quite risky because you know what if something changes in your specialist niche is no no longer required that she quite hard to say specialist niche. But what if you're if you're niche is no longer required, you could be in trouble then So the idea is to be a generalist, but also to be specialist in one area B T shaped if you can, and you might want to think about for you. What are the extra things you need to add to be more of a generalised on? What is your your niche that you want to be a real specialist in? And can you learn more about that? Going conferences, read books and become a real expert in one thing you might even want to have to niches, because then you got a backup plan. If something happens to one of them is just a thought on. My final point is, go on every training course you can go on to improve the offering that you have. So just volunteer for every training course, every conference everywhere you can learn. If work is paying, take it on. Do more of these types of courses because the more you've got in your head, the better on that has to make you more secure for your longer term career. So that's the end of this section on goals. Have a really clear goal. Have a plan for your career and develop yourself as much as you can 6. The Pear of Promotion: now in this video, I want to talk about the pair of promotion, P, e A and R. How important is promotion? Well, for some people, it's really important they really desperately want to do the next job up. I'm not convinced that going up the mention tree is the answer. Always in life you might prefer to be self employed, or you might prefer to do a nice, easy job and do loads of things outside of work. But nevertheless, promotion may make you happy just to go one more level up to do a job that's a little bit better paid on where you have perhaps more control of what goes on. You can make a difference. So if you do want to get promoted, I'd really recommend these four things. So the P of Pair stands for being positive. Nobody wants to work with somebody who's negative and is always moaning. So it's really important. Have a positive attitude on I'm gonna come to this in detail in a later section, but just make sure that at work that you don't spend your time moaning and complaining and win. Jing always have a positive attitude when you're given a job to do. Don't go a bit busy, but go Yeah, great. I can do that if they're thinking about promoting you up to their level so you'll be working with them. Or make sure that the managers regard you as a positive person. The e of Pair stands for easy to work with and easy to work with. Means low maintenance. Really, there's a trainer I know. And if you book him, he says, Well, I've got over a parking space and I need to have a pen of each color and there's got to be a white board and a flip chart and you just think I can't be bothered with that. I want to hire a trainer who's just gonna be there and do it, and it's the same at work. You don't want to be high mentioning. So be easy to work with. That would be asking loads of questions and checking all the time and and stuff. Just say yeah, I'll sort that for you on. I think a subsection of easy to work with is easy to get. Hold off a swell, so always answer your phone. Always reply to your emails you know, just be efficient. So you're easy to work with. So that's the 2nd 1 of pair. Ask yourself, Are you easy to work with? Do you think you could even ask your colleagues? Now the a of pair is appearing in control. So what I mean by appearing in control is having a tidy desk on and being organized, phoning back when you say your phone back always reply the same day to emails and voicemails so that it sounds like you're really on top of things. Have a really good voicemail message, something like Sorry, I cannot to the phone right now, but I'll phone you back the same day and then you do actually phone them back the same day . And then you really look as if you're on top of it. So tidy desk. Good voicemail message. Always replying. That's appearing in control because if they're thinking, can I promote this person? You've got to be easily dominating your current job, haven't you? If you're going to be promoted, if you're struggling in the current job, they're never gonna promote you. So that's what the A of pair stands for. Finally, the are of pair is reliable, always keeping your promises, and you would think this is a basic. But I've found over the years that if you always keep your promises, it puts you into the top 10% of people straightaway because most people don't keep their promises. So if you say you'll do something, always do it. And I suppose a subset of of keeping your promises is being on time. So always be on time yourself when you go to meetings or whatever. Always be on time to those but also deliver work on time. If you say the report will be in by the end of the week, make sure it's in by the end of the week, whatever it takes. So always keep your promises. Always be on time yourself and always deliver work on time. And if you're reliable, that's another sign that you can easily be promoted to doing a more difficult job. And the only way to really be reliable is to write everything down. As we've seen in the previous section. Two really important to write everything down Master list data lists, etcetera. So as soon as you agree something, write it down and they will see you write it down on. They'll think he's a reliable person. He writes everything down. I like that. So write everything down. Assumes you've agreed it have a plan of how you going to do it, possibly broken down into a gunshot, if necessary, and keep to your plan. So that's the pair of promotion, and you might just want to review that and see if there's any actions you can take to make yourself a bit more pear shaped, so to speak. So there's one more Section two g o on this efficiency part of the course, and it's about what to do about repeating problems and hassles so repeaters we're gonna come to that next. 7. Introduction to Systems: this section is about systems about being really organized. So we're gonna cover things like lists, master list, daily list, that kind of thing. We're gonna look at diaries. We'll look at sorting out your environment, working environment, your home. We're gonna look at how to stop problems repeating on. We can look at the pair of promotion. 8. The Magic of Lists: Okay, so Section four of this program is to get your systems organized on this first video is about lists. When I do training courses, I asked people if they liked lists on, they nearly always say, Oh, yeah, we love list. So that's great. If you don't like lists, then I'm afraid you still do need to do these, though. And the thing I've realized about list, I think the key point I want to make is that you need to types of lists you need to have a master list on a daily list, and you absolutely need both of these. So the master list is a great big list of everything that you're going to do at some point . You don't know when just all written down in one place, and you need that so that you don't forget anything and that you don't feel stressed about whether you for gotten anything. Also, it will reduce your stress because it won't be as bad as you think. On when you actually look at the whole big long list, you'll realize that, you know, some of those things are not that urgent, some of that important, so you can chip away at it, so it feels good to have a view of everything that you're going to do. The other list you need to have is a daily this to every day, just a very short list. 10 things at the most probably only five or six things, or even less than that that you're going to do today. You must have a daily list Onda Master List. Now what some people do is they just have one combined list. But the problem with that is that you never finish it and it gets too depressing. And also you cherry pick. You look down through this big long list and you think, Shall I learn Italian or shall I phone Fred? You think actual just phone friend, cause that's easier. So the learning of Italian never gets done, so you need to have a big list of things. You could do some time on a daily this for just today. What physical form would they take? Well, the big list could be a piece of paper could be stuck on the wall. I actually think it's good to have it on the wall somewhere because it's in the back of your diary, you might forget about it and never look at it. I've actually got mine on a white board because I'm a bit sad. And actually, I've got mine as a mind map on a white board. So I've got branches of house and holidays and work and things. I want to film and stuff, and I've got I've got it all drawn out as a mind map on my white board. I really like that. But it could be in an app on your phone, whatever you want. So that's your master list and your daily list again. It could be just written in your diary, typed into your phone in the diary party or phone. Or you might have some sort of app. Have you do it? Doesn't really matter. I actually think a scrap of paper is probably the best way to do your daily list cause you just got it there. It's just easy, But whatever system works for you for your master list and your daily list, and then you can transfer things across from the master list to the daily list. So let's suppose you've got on your master list. You're going to learn Italian. You can't transfer the whole of Italian across, can you? What's led you today? I think I'll learn Italian. But what you can do is say I'm gonna today I'm gonna buy a CD from Amazon to listen to in my car, or I'm going to read the first chapter of Teach Yourself Italian so you start to nibble into those big tasks by moving them across from the master list to the daily list. Now your daily list needs to be every day. What some people do is they only do a daily list when they're busy, so snowed under. I need to do a job story list and they do that and it works really well. And they work through the list that day, get loads done and then the next day. And you think, Well, I have got too much to do today. I don't need a daily list, but actually they should carry on doing the daily list because that's when it's really going to come into its own. They've got rid of all the small stuff. They can now start to move some of the big things across bit by bit, So that's when the that's when you start to nibble in to those really big things. Those important things that you've got on your master list. So do a daily list every day, even when you've not got much to put on it, because you can move stuff across from the master list. And finally, what time of day should you write your daily list? Well, I would recommend last thing before you go to bed or lasting before you come home from work . Some people like to do it first thing in the morning when they get Apple. When they first get into work, that's fine. I'm not really a morning person, but also, when you first get into work, you might get blown away by a big crisis and not do your list. So what I like to do is I like to write it at the end of the day, just all the shrapnel that's not quite finished. I bung it all on my list, and that gives me a nice feeling of closure at the end of my day, so I can then go home safe in the knowledge that everything's captured ready for the next day. So when I'm going to sleep, I don't have to worry about whether I've for gotten anything. So that's the daily list written at the end of every day. Okay, so that's a sectional list. Master list. Daily list. You must have both. Your daily list needs to be. Every day in the next section, we're going to look at diaries. 9. Diary Tips: So in this video, I want to talk to you about diaries or as the Americans call it, your calendar. There isn't really the right word for it. Actually. Is that cause a diary could be Dear diary today I did this and it could be like a record of what you did, and a calendar could actually be. You know, photo goes photographs of lovely mountains with all the dates on. But whatever you want to call it, this is where you write down your appointments. So first of all, your diary should include home and work in one diary. Some people don't like to think about work when they're at home. But if you hate work that much, then I think you should get another job. But you need to have them both in the same place because you need to know, Have you got the dentist? You have to leave homework early because your daughters in a ballet show, whatever it is, so you need to have home and work in one diary, and it needs to always be with you Now, whether it's a little paper book or a file of facts, I used to love my file a facts when I have one of those, whether it's computerized, I've now I'm using a Google diary now, so I've got that on my phone. The reason I do that, by the way, is that once I lost my file a facts, it was incredibly traumatic. But now I've got it as a Google diary, which means that if I do lose my phone, it doesn't matter. And it also means I could look at my diary on my laptop, my iPad on my home computer work, computer wherever. It also means I can search for things and I can have repeating events and stuff. So I think it computerized diary probably is the way to go. But have you do it? It's got to always be with you synchronized onto your phone, so that's really important. Ah, a little tip, I would say is, put aside half an hour a day for yourself. This is for you to do a bit of thinking or to get organized, get ahead of the game, try to find out what the root cause of problems are that kind of thing. Don't fill your diary up completely with appointments, but put in 1/2 an hour appointment with the most important person of all, which is yourself and that will really add up, and that will help you to get ahead. Generally, you don't want your diary to be full. Ideally, it would be about 50% full of appointments maximum and keep 50% free. But that's my opening offer. I would be reluctantly pushed down to only 20% free. But never let the space in your diary go below about 20%. Because if your diaries completely full, then you know what's gonna happen. When you get to that day, What's gonna happen is extra things they're going to come in, emergencies are going to come in, and then you're gonna have to cancel things that should just never have been put in there in the first place. The other thing that will happen is you'll start to run late. So what will happen if your diaries completely full is that if one appointment runs late, it's gonna push all the others late, and then you're gonna have real difficulties. So you always need to keep space free and your diary to cope with the unforeseen things cropping up now. What this means is if you've got a couple of hours free in your diary, we'll see you down to any one hour on Friday and somebody says, Can we beat up on Friday? You must say no. You must say no. I've got no time. I'm afraid even though you're looking at that empty our because the point is, by the time you get there that our will have gone and you'll or you'll need that our for things that are going to crop up during the day. So So don't commit to that last hour. You must save him. I got no time free, I'm afraid. How about Monday and just pushed them out to the next day? You're not lying. That time will have gone by the time you get there. So keep the time free on book things further into the future. Now, just two final thoughts on diary one is the unbroken chain on. What I mean by this is if somebody promises me that they'll do something for May I ask them when and if they say we'll do it by next Thursday. I go to Thursday in my diary and I write in Thursday. Louisa's promised me this because then I've got her. She can't escape. When Thursday comes around, I can have a look and see if she's done it. And if she hasn't, I can say, Well, why you kept your promise. When am I going to get it? And she goes, Oh, sorry, I'll do it by do it by Monday. I then move it to Monday, and that's why it's called The Unbroken Chain. It just carries on and on and on until she finally does it. There is no escape. And, of course, what she learned in her dealings with me is that with some people, she could get away with not doing it. But with May, I will remember because it's in my diary, and so she's more likely to do it for me. By the way, what happens if Thursday comes around and she has done it? And the answer is I thank her for doing it. So in a way, she's got two reasons to do it. If she does, it should be thanked. If she doesn't do it, she'll get hassled and have to put it into another date, and she'll never escape. But most people, if you do what you promised, they don't even thank you. So why should you bother? And if you don't do what you promised, they don't notice. So why should you bother? So I have the unbroken chain in my diary on I thank them when they finally do it. And my final thought about diaries is basically write everything down, all promises. If somebody promises me something, then I get a data write in the diary. But if I promised them something, I also make a note of it in my diary or possibly on my master or daily list. But usually I decide when I'm going to do it. I put it in my diary. So everything gets written down somewhere. Everything goes on to either the master list, the daily list or the diary. So there we are. That's a little bit of information about diaries 10. Your Physical Environment: now we've just been looking in previous videos, act lists and diaries. But I just want to say something about your physical working environment. It's really important to have a tidy desk. My desk gradually gets more untidy, and every now and then I tied it up, and when I do tied it up, it feels so good. And that really is the proof that it's been stressing me out until that point. It feels so good when you tidy it, because when there's loads of stuff piled on your desk, it's actually nagging you. It's going well done. Me yet. Look at me. I'm still here and it nags you. So keep the desk under control, tidied up. You'll feel better and you'll achieve more. Also, an untidy desk gives a bad image. So at work, people are going to see your desk, and they're going to think that you're disorganized person on that. You're not really coping with your job. You don't want to give an image that are struggling to do your job because you're certainly not going to get promoted. So tidy Desk is important for image as well, a state of mind and similarly, de clutter your house for a better state of mind. Go through your house and get rid of as much as you can, because you'll feel you just feel more free to think. If you're not being crowded in buy stuff, so you're working. Environment is really, really important. The other thing I want to say about this is it's all very well having goals and projects, but ideally, you would make those visible see working environment would would include everything being visible so you would have your master list on the wall. Probably it might be in the form of a mind map, but if you're working on a big project, you would probably have a mind map for that as well. So just have a big load of lines and all the tasks all mapped out so that you can see it. It's really important for it to be on the wall. You may even want to go as far as again. Chart and gunshots are a whole other subject, but I think to be on to be in control of your life if your life involves projects which it will because any improvement, anything you want to change is a project, you're going to be in control of that. You need to have a Gant chart drawn out. So I'm gonna put an example of a gang chart up on the screen for you to have a look at here . But you can see that all it is is the tasks down the side and the dates across the top. And you have bars for when you're going to do what? And the great thing about having it all planned out like this is that you know, you can do it by the date. You don't have to worry about whether you're going to make it cause you can see that you can. You've got it all broken down into a nice plan. And you can even color in the bits as you do it so that you can see that you're keeping up with the plan. So you're working environment, I think, should probably include several Gant charts on the wall colored in so that you can see yourself making progress towards the goals in your life. 11. Repeating Problems: So this final video of the efficiency section is about repeating problems. There's really no excuse to have a problem that repeats, because after the first time you get that problem. You should find out what the root causes, a nail it so it doesn't repeat. It's amazing everywhere I've ever worked. They have things that keep repeating, keep running out of. I don't know toner for the printer or, you know, keep running out of paper or they keep not ratifying where somebody is. And you get people who whose car keeps on not starting. And you just think, Why didn't you fix it? So whatever the problem is, if it repeats, you've got a nail it. So, first of all, if you can't nail it, you have to have a system so that you can deal with that repeating problem. If you have a customer who keeps ringing up, asking for information, at least having easily accessible so you could just get there straight away or if you have toe regularly, write an email with the same wording and just keep a copy somewhere you can cut and paste in. So your first thought is, Can I just have a system, so I can do it. Linked to that, by the way, is that everything should have a place where you can find it. So you don't want a repeating problem of, say, looking for scissors. Always have. This is in the same place. And if you have to buy everybody their own pair so they don't have to keep borrowing, then do that. Spend a bit of money if necessary, but everything in the right places you can find it. But as I mentioned, even better than having a system is to get to the root cause and to stop it repeating. And the best way to do this is to ask the five wise just ask five. Ask why approximately five times. So let's suppose somebody makes a mistake rather than just telling them off, which would feel good but wouldn't fix anything. Why not ask yourself, Why did they make that mistake? That maybe they weren't trained so you could just train them and you should train them. But also ask yourself, Why won't they trained? It could be that we don't actually have a training plan at all, So why haven't we got a training plan. Well, nobody's in charge of training. Well, maybe we should put somebody in charge of training then. So the idea is, you dig and you dig, and she'll get to the real reason, which is usually management, by the way. And that's why management sometimes don't ask why. It's easy just to tell somebody off. But of course, much better is to get to the root cause and fix it. So asked why and get to the root cause and don't let problems repeat. We used to get a problem used to get down to our beach hut that we hire from the council. And sometimes when we will get there, my life would find that she didn't have the key to the beach hut. Oh, no, you know the keys on my other bunch of keys. So that's just ridiculous to have that it's a repeating problem, isn't it? So, the first time that happens, you need to think, should we get another key made? Should we keep a spare key in the car so that when we get there, we've always got a key? What should we hide? A key in one of those rock shaped key hiding things so that we can always find the key. But don't let that problem Repeat. If you run out of toner for your printer, then have a spare one. Andi. Keep it somewhere so that when you run out, you can. You can use the spare and then you can replenish. And by the way, it's worth having a good stock replenishment system for everything that's important. The other day we run out of tomato ketchup. I can't believe it. We had fish and chips. No tomato source somewhere in the replenishment system had gone wrong and we'd run out. Andi. So what I've done now is I've got a spare bottle of tomato source in my office. Obviously, we've got the main one in the kitchen, but I've got a spare one in my office. So if the kitchen one ever runs out again, I could break into the spare one in my office, and then I can go into maximum nagging mode and get two more bottles purchased so we can replace the one in the kitchen and the office one. So just have a spare of everything that you might need on a good system. so that when you use the last one, you know that you then have to replace it all. So have some sort of marker just before the end, which tells you you need to reorder. So my toner cartridges, I've got a spare one and I've got the phone number written on a piece of paper that's on the wall right next to the cartridges. So I know who to phone to get some more. It's just easy to do and finally check lists. I suppose it's obvious, but it's a really good idea to have a check list of everything that you might need. Um, you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. So when I go for a few days doing training courses, I've got a little list of everything to pack so that I don't have to think on. I don't run the risk of forgetting things I might need to take. In fact, I've actually moved on from my checklist. Now I got a travel bag with a 2nd 1 of everything that I might need in the bag so I could just take the bag and go. But either way, you need to have a system so you don't have to think every time and have the stress and then arrive at the far end and realize that you haven't got your iPhone charger or whatever , and then you're going to be frazzled on you. So having on a checklist will have a spare one that always lives in your car will have a travel bag so that you don't have to waste mental energy on the small stuff of life. So the question for you is what are your repeating problems and how can you have a better system for those? 12. Congratulations: So congratulations, You've made it to the end of this program. There was quite a lot in there, wasn't there on. I hope it's made a difference. It certainly will make a difference if you implement even half of the stuff that's in this program. So the big key thing is put into action. How can you do that? Well, I think maybe watch it again. Maybe watch one video a week and then after each video, think what am I going to do is a result of this. Andi actually have an action plan for that week. You could watch it with somebody else and then discuss each video and think, How can we do it? And obviously, if you liked it, I'd be delighted if you could tell other people about it. Onda also leave a review. If you hadn't already, it's really great. People can leave reviews other ways to keep in touch. Do get my free management tips that I mentioned halfway through. Just go to Free Management Tips CO UK and put in your email address. They'll arrive free forever and they will never repeat. You can unsubscribe if you don't like them, but people very rarely do. So that's a fun thing. Do you check out my other courses? But also keep in touch with me? I'd love to hear how you're getting on if it's made a difference. If it hasn't. If you've got any questions, do keep in touch. The best way is probably via linked in. So please do link into me. Andi, I look forward to seeing you again sometime.