That One Thing

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I was doing a lot of thinking and reflecting coming home. And if you can imagine, we have a business, just found out recently we hit the Inc. 5000 list for the third time in four years.

(0:13 – 0:25)
So we’re in a, to say we’re in a phase of rapid growth would be an understatement. We have a lot of activity. We have a lot of changes, a lot of new products coming out, a lot of old products that we’re phasing out.

(0:26 – 0:57)
We’re in a massive transition and growth phase. And yet four to five times a year, I allow myself to be sucked out of the patterns throughout the year of habits and meetings and this and that. And I asked myself when I get back, how do I get back kind of plugged in? Are there certain rules I’m living by? My brain, for those of you that have ever heard me present, is not quite wired like most others.

(0:58 – 1:15)
There’s a, I usually have a second slide in my presentation where I talk about the ADD, ADH wheel, ADHD wheel, excuse me. And I’ve got about three to four of the main components, including OCD. And I’m a little jumbled without a to-do list yet.

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Gary Keller proved a few years ago in his famous book, The One Thing, that one of the largest killers of business today is the long streaming to-do list. I am in such agreement. I have a to-do list.

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I’m not exaggerating. It has 4,100 columns. If you count all the tabs at the bottom, I have growth columns.

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I have idea columns. I have must-do columns. I have site partner columns.

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It’s pretty intense. So when I come back after being gone for eight days, I’ve got a couple hundred emails I couldn’t get to. And so the question is, what exactly do I do when I get back to get right back on the horse? And I think everybody’s faced this at some point.

(2:09 – 2:35)
Excuse me, when you go through vacation, a challenge, a personal challenge, and all of a sudden you find yourself, it’s almost like going back to the gym. How do you get back focused? I want to take this deeper because I think on a microscopic level, a lot of people self-sabotage themselves after setting a goal. So they’ll set a goal.

(2:35 – 2:47)
They’ll even do it with a group, maybe a group of management, maybe their spouse, and everything’s awesome for a few days. And then they pick their head up and they’re no longer losing weight. They’re no longer exercising.

(2:47 – 2:56)
They’re no longer hiring salespeople. They’re no longer doing whatever they said they were going to do. And it was just four to five days ago that they set the goal.

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So I was kind of, you know, just taking notes and trying to really, really put together what do I really do? And so I want to run you guys through kind of my routine, if you will.