Nicholas Bate

Work Less; Think Proactively; Earn More: 25

1. Refuse back-to-back meetings.
2. Reject meetings longer than 45 minutes and/or three people.
3. Run the meeting yourself if nobody else is doing it: know the goal, manage the time, capture the actions.
4. Dress like you're serious, not as if you are planning to work on your car nor attend a cocktail party. Unless you are, of course.
5. Don't say 'but'. Think 'and'.
6. One pad, one action list. Work it.
7. Work hard; play hard. Initially separate the two, but as work becomes less (just) a money earner and more a soul enhancer, merge the two.
8. Start the strategy outlined in 7 by becoming so good at some aspects of your work it becomes play.
9. Simultaneously, get so good at having and managing real down time you become amazingly creative.
10. Break the time=money rule and replace it with value=money through your creativity. The former limits your earnings, the latter allows them to take off exponentially.
11. Now you are Motoring at Level 1.
12. Build your brilliance at your job.
13. Thus build your unique value to your clients.
14. Thus build your earnings by earning more in less time.
15. Manage your standard of living and cost base so you don't need more money. It's simply one expression (only) of how good you are.
16. Take more time off and get out of your cubicle to build your non-fee-earning-creativity i.e. creativity with no purpose at all. Crazy? Not all all....
17. Surprisingly this will produce your best stuff because there is no external pressure. You're just messin'.
18. Your best stuff will build your value and your personal brand.
19. And thus your earnings.
20. Now you are Motoring at Level 2
21. With your gained time write a non-fiction book. From your heart and gut. Your expertise, your thing. You know you've got it right when no publisher wants to touch it; it's too damn niche for them.
22. Get it published even if you have to pay for it yourself with the money you are earning.
23. Get the book out there to build your brand.
24. Now you are Motoring at Level 3
25. And that's a level at which you can work less, think proactively and earn more.

 

Jagged Thoughts for Jagged Times: 33

It's a shame that people often don't appreciate you until it's too late and you have resigned. So start knocking their socks off with your sheer brilliance sooner rather than later. And with more ooomph.

More Detail

for your planned sabbatical.

Sales

a movie about a sales team and the construction of the perfect sales presentation. Kurt has this and other movies in mind.

Matt Gemmell

and The Reconstructed Man. Sexism, Dance School and Star Trek all feature....

Jagged Thoughts for Jagged Times: 32

The long three day weekend was nice. That extra day makes all the difference. But how about if every week were like that; what would it take to design a life that had a 4-day working week and a 3-day weekend?  Employers are increasingly keen if it saves them cost. You are chasing quality of life, not standard of living. Could be a win win.

Matt Gemmell

and tips for a great blog.

Build A Better Business: 20

E-mail isn’t free. It seems free. It feels free. We’ve been living with it for perhaps twenty years or so and it is now totally ingrained in our lives. It’s fast, it’s ubiquitous and damn it, it’s free. But only two of those three are true: it’s not free. Every e-mail sent has enormous consequences for the recipients. In an old world of work messages had overheads: typists, time invested to ensure correct layout and spelling, time to consider sheer courtesy. It meant that messages were considered and not wasted; they were not free and often not easy. Now they are easy and standards can become very low. Consequently for so many people time is wasted every single day coping with mails which are tricky to understand, are fragmented, to which you needn't have been copied, which are too demanding too soon... Imagine every e-mail needed a postage stamp and you had a small daily budget and thus you had to make every mail count and you could save money by sending fewer. Send fewer. To fewer. CC fewer. Build a better business.

Build A Better Business: 19

In good times, strategy discussions can be postponed, profit preservation isn't so critical and poor attendance records can be ignored. And in so doing bad habits are established.

In tough times only good habits will get a firm out of the mess.

Insist on good habits even when they aren't vital. Then when they are, they'll be in place.

Time For More Personal Style?

the blog you need.