Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Executive Stamina

In another example of a book that comes into my life at an opportune time, I have been reading a book designed to help you systematically achieve higher productivity and better "balance" in life. The book is "Executive Stamina: How to Optimize Time, Energy, and Productivity to Achieve Peak Performance," by Marty Seldman, PhD and Joshua Seldman and I am hooked.

This book is similar to another book I've read and liked (but never reviewed) called "Find Your Focus Zone." However, I find Executive Stamina to be more "prescriptive" -- and its focus and style resonated better with me.

One of the authors of Executive Stamina is a clinical psychologist who's done corporate coaching, and the other is a respected cycling and fitness coach. They combine their respective disciplines in an interesting way, producing a guide that is designed to help people manage the natural peaks and valleys of mental and physical energy.

Stop the Thrash

This book is more than just an energy management guide - it also presents some very powerful exercises to help you improve the results you get in life.

Essentially, Executive Stamina seeks to keep you from "topping out" in your career - reaching that point where you hit a performance / interest plateau from which you cannot recover. As shown in the diagram at right, from the book's introduction, the key is to avoid reaching the point of diminishing returns in your work - avoiding what I like to refer to as "thrash."

The book is divided into 5 major sections, each focusing on models and assignments to deal with a specific aspect of your life - resulting in a combined set of skills to keep you out of the Danger Zone shown on the chart. Here is a brief rundown of what you can expect in each section:

  • Work / Life Alignment
    • This section focuses on introspection and answering hard questions about your priorities, values, etc. with the goal of helping you reach your career sweet spot.
    • This was by far the most difficult section for me, since it prompted me to revisit past situations in which my choices probably weren't well-aligned with my values. For the same reason, this was also one of the more impactful sections of the book.
    • My favorite tool in this section was the "Minimums and Shifts/Drifts" model, which is a tremendous focusing tool to drive specific action towards goals, and identify shortfalls quickly while you can still do something about them.
  • Building Your Stamina
    • This is a very prescriptive section, primarily dealing with stress management, exercise, nutrition, and other aspects of physical health & stamina.
    • I had a lot of favorite tools in this section:
      • the Lifelong Fitness Plan
      • the instructions on Meditation and Breathing Exercises
      • the comprehensive guide for "Workday Yoga" which includes yoga exercises designed to be performed at work.
  • Optimizing Job Performance and Results
    • This section focuses on getting better at finding and focusing on high-payoff activities - increasing your win rate, and raising the value of your output.
    • The tools in this section are very simple, and very much aligned with many of the productivity/time management frameworks I know and love. I particularly liked the portions on "Dealing with Toxic People" and the tips and techniques for overcoming procrastination.
  • Career Management
    • In this section, the authors focus on the fact that there is a big difference between high productivity and reaching your peak potential. With that in mind, they arm you to tell the difference between the two.
    • This section is still about personal elements of your performance, and provides a lot of guidance on preventing career mis-steps. However, it goes further and pulls in tools to help you look outward to figure out when other people are discounting your achievements, so you can prevent them from hampering your progress.
    • My favorite tool in this section is the one on Organizational Savvy, which includes the "Org Savvy Chart" to assess your strengths and weaknesses in this area.
  • Personal Relationships
    • The final section of the book emphasizes that personal relationships are a thread that winds through all of the previous chapters - personal relationships play a significant factor in reaching your peak potential.
    • Interestingly, this section describes how you can apply the tools from previous sections to systematically set goals and improve your relationships by focusing on high-payoff aspects of those relationships. Very cool.

Hopefully this gives you a taste for this book. It's smart, actionable, and well written, and I think it is a must-have for any executive (or anyone who aspires to be "master of their destiny").

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Do you bear the mark of a professional?

My pal Bren (formerly the proprietor of SlackerManager and now the proud pappy of BikeHacks) recently pointed me to an awesome thread on "How to be a True Professional."

The thread starts with a sincere question, "What makes someone in a true professional...?" and the ensuing comments are very wise. I encourage you to go and read them.

If I were to summarize what I've read - and weave in what I've learned on my own -- here are some of the "precepts" that pop out from this long list:

  • Be rational: Think before you act.
  • Be reasoned: Don't act in anger or vengeance.
  • Be pragmatic: Remember that business is about what's best for the business.
  • Be human: Remember that numbers don't always tell the whole story.
  • Be magnanimous: Give others due credit (and the benefit of the doubt).
  • Be tolerant: Remember that others can learn from their mistakes.
  • Be humble: Remember that you can learn from your mistakes
  • Be accountable: Do what you say, and keep commitments.
  • Be respectul: Demonstrate respect and foster dignity for yourself and others.
  • Be open-minded: Learn something new every day; and consider the perspectives of others.
  • Be steadfast: Don't compromise your principles.

But don't take my word for it - go read the list. Got any to add? Think I'm blowing smoke? Would love to hear more in your comments on this post.

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10 / 10 / 10

On a flight this morning, I was chatting with a gentleman sitting next to me. He shared a recent learning (he called it a "guidepost") he adopted recently. I thought it was interesting:

A mentor of his told him to think in terms of "10, 10, and 10" when making decisions in life:

Consider the impact of your decisions and actions, and how they will affect your life in the next 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years.

I thought this was an interesting construct to help gauge the importance and relevance of decisions, and will begin trying to adopt this myself. In some cases, this may change my decisions, in others it may reaffirm them, but I think it's good food for thought in any case.

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More Power to the Point

Tinyslides_1 I do a lot of presentations in my line of work, and am always looking for ways to improve. A while back, I read the book "Beyond Bullet Points," by Cliff Atkinson, which provides a process that helps you dramatically increase the impact of your presentations. As the name implies, you get away from using bullet points in PowerPoint and use a storytelling approach to convey your points.

While I read the book a long time ago, I finally bit the bullet (so to speak) and decided to deliver my first presentation using this technique a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas. I was nervous about trying this totally different approach, as I was presenting to a bunch of internal auditors at a conference, and there was considerably less hard data on my slides than usual.

I'm happy to say the presentation went quite well, and I had the chance to tighten up the story for another rendition of the presentation this week in Toronto.

Why am I such a big fan of this approach? As the book says, if your slides say everything you want to cover then why do they need you to show up? Also, the message becomes more memorable - and much more poignant - if you display mastery of your topic by adding personal stories and interpretation to the message.

Beyond Bullet Points provides a very straight-forward approach to organizing and expanding your presentation content using a
screenplay approach. You approach your presentation like you are writing a script, and you create levels of detail to fill 5, 15, 30, and 60 minutes. This is great because it gives you an effective way to tailor your presentation to fit the time allotted without feeling rushed and, most importantly, without leaving out major points.

Once you have your script created, you use a then storyboard process to build effective visuals to support your story. Since there is so much imagery involved, you may find yourself struggling to find good images to use on your slides. I used a combination of photos I took, a few I found on Google, and some that I found in a photo clip art collection from Hemera that I bought on Amazon.

The book also provides links to a web site where you can download free templates (in Word and Excel) to help you build your script, and a storyboard slide template for PowerPoint. These templates make it very easy to organize your thoughts and get into this new presentation process.

If you create and deliver presentations with any sort of frequency, I highly recommend you try the Beyond Bullet Points approach.

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