Recently I blogged about hyper-relevance and how this might be the big year of the unsubscribe & defriend. Okay, so you’ve read the blog and began reducing the noise. Now you have the focus to be able to work on the task at hand.
Wait, do you have the systems in-place to make you more efficient?
If not, then you should probably read Getting Things Done & The Four Hour Work Week for starters. There, you will learn about brain dumping, putting things in their place and taking massive action. They are also about coming up with a plan for immediate action and not letting things fall through the cracks.
Reducing the noise is one thing, but becoming efficient about taking action is paramount!
Here is an excerpt from Jeffrey Gitomer’s Sales Caffeine that really resonated with me on this subject:
You’re at a seminar.
Great information is being offered.
Information that will help you succeed.
Your mind is open.
You’re taking notes.
Recording what is being said.
Even taking snapshots of slides.
You take in the talk, and get your own ideas.
Great ideas that you know you can use and you know will benefit you and others, ideas you can turn into money.
You are pumped!
You make a mental commitment the moment you write each note: “change cold calls to referrals” – “be more creative and daring when leaving a voicemail” – “sell value, not price” – “get more video testimonials.” But then you don’t fulfill them when you get home. Why?
They seemed like great ideas at the time.
You had AHA’s and epiphanies at the event.
And you wrote notes that were golden.
But something happened between the seminar room and your first moments back at work.
ANSWER: You dropped the ball. The mental ball. The focus ball. The commitment to yourself ball. And maybe even the success ball. Whether you were at a trade show, an annual meeting, an association meeting, or a business event, what you decided to do IMMEDIATELY AFTER the event determined your fate.
