Tips and Tricks for Business, Personal Productivity and Life

Do anything you want, just set your mind to it.

- Will Steger

I had the opportunity to hear Will Steger’s keynote speech at the Live Green expo in Duluth, MN on September 7, 2008.  While Will’s keynote primarily focused on his first-hand observations of the changing climate at the poles of our planet, his thoughts on life were equally fascinating.

How DO you become an explorer?

Will lead the first dogsled traverse of Antartica, the first dogsled trip without re-supply to the north pole, and countless other expeditions.  When I heard him speak, it was clear his inspiration and lessons for becoming an explorer are directly usable in any context (not just polar exploration)!  For example, you may be innovating and challenging conventional thinking in your current career.  Or, maybe you’re a teacher trying to find the inspiration to push the boundaries of education.  Whatever the case may be, I found Will’s story so relevant that I had to share it here.

3 Ways to Become An Explorer

Tip #1 - Leverage the freedom you have

Will grew up in a household with 3 simple rules.  Outside of these rules, he was given the freedom to do pretty much whatever he wanted.

1. Get good grades
2. Stay out of trouble with the law
3. Pay for things yourself

There is a lesson here for leaders, project managers, educators, and others: give your people the freedom to innovate (with some simple rules to follow), and they will AMAZE you.  It can be scary, and you might get some unfavorable results, but in the end, you go places with them that you never imagined were possible.

Tip #2: Seek inspiration from magazines, and travel places you’ve never been

Will got his climbing inspiration from reading National Geographic, a magazine that typically takes it’s readers far away from where they physically are located on the planet.  This forces the reader to dream, visualize, and wonder what such places are like.  I once read the Dalai Lama recommends visiting one completely new place every year.  I love that idea, and try to practice it annually.

What magazines, books, blogs, or people help you dream?  What trips have you taken lately that push you out of your comfort zone?  When was the last time you sifted through magazines relevant to your career, and non-relevant magazines too, searching for applicable ideas?

Tip #3: Just do it!

When he was fifteen, Will built a boat and sailed it down the Mississippi, from Minneapolis/St. Paul to New Orleans.  He set his mind to exploring, and then he got busy doing it.

How much time do you spend truly doing things you are passionate about every day?  It may sound crazy, but I love internet marketing.  Always have, probably always will.  The desire to be the best internet marketer possible gets me going each morning more than the seriously big cup of coffee on my desk.  If you’ve found a passion but aren’t investing time in it, that’s just as tough as not finding a passion to begin with!  Make the time, and just do it.

Bonus Tip: Persevere like Will Steger

Check out these stats of a Will Steger expedition to cross Antarctica:

• 3,700 miles, 220 days
• 1 dozen mountain ranges to go over
• 56-day storms
• Temperature: -30 degrees farenheit
• Wind Chill: -80 degrees farenheit

And what does Will do?  He endures these extremes and brings back amazing lessons for those who will never go there.

The next time you are working on a project that takes you to extremes, remember to take some notes along the way to teach others.  They’ll benefit tremendously from the “places” you explore.

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The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence.

- Vince Lombardi

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Note from Regis: One of my goals for Dot Connector is to connect you with a variety of people we can all learn from: from best-selling authors to successful entrepreneurs, and everyone in between!  This is a guest post from entrepreneur, friend, and colleague, Dave Rigotti.

Being in college, on the executive board for multiple student organizations, and running my own online business, I’ve developed a knack for personal productivity and efficiency.  As I became more and more active, I found myself going to bed later and waking up earlier - usually only getting 4 hours of sleep a night.  I couldn’t keep that up.

Here are my tips for getting that job done and freeing up a few extra minutes in your life.

1.    Get a planner.

You know, the kind you had in school.  They are extremely effective at planning your day and can help find inefficiencies.

2.    Download and use RescueTime.

RescueTime is a fantastic application that tracks your computer usage and reports how efficient and productive you are.  It’s free to use and quite easy to set up.

3.    Watch your TV shows online.

I watch most of them at Hulu.com, which has approximately 5-10 minutes less advertisements than if I watched it on the television.  Additionally, you can pause and come back and also watch it at your convenience (on the bus, doctors office, or even on the John).

4.    Stay focused online.

Using RescueTime or FireFox plugins, monitor you unproductive site usage, such as Facebook or Myspace and other sites that do not contribute to you accomplishing your tasks and goals.

5.    Set goals.

I’m surprised hoe many people do not set any goals, even if they are simple as “I’ll write 500 words of this paper by 5pm today.”  Goals formalize your work and for me at least, I hate not accomplishing a goal I’ve set for myself.  Just make sure they are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

Bonus: Find where you work best.

I can’t work at home – it’s too distracting – so I go to the local coffee shop that has free wifi.  In fact, I’m writing this article from one.  I suggest you find where you work best.

What are your tricks for staying on track?  Let me know in the comments!

This post was guest blogged by Dave Rigotti, owner of Career Fire.

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[Reposted from Unconventional Thinking, the blog of Mark Stevens]

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

- Albert Einstein

Throughout his life, my Dad taught me that I truly could be whatever I decided to be. His confidence in me gave me the strength to believe in my ideas, challenge conventional thinking, and take risks.

Below are 6 techniques I’ve used to successfully challenge conventional thinking in my life.

1. Identify and ignore “noise” in your life.
Noise is the unnecessary stuff that distracts your attention and limits your effectiveness: naysayers, gossip, opinions of news media, fear, etc. If you are determined to challenge conventional thinking, you have to train yourself to ignore noise.

I work for Quicken Loans, one of the nation’s largest direct mortgage lenders, in arguably the most challenging time for the financial industry in 20 years. If I listened to all the noise about how bad the mortgage crisis is, I would become paralyzed by negativity and fear. Instead of focusing on the constraints around me, I consciously look for opportunities. Don’t let yourself become a product of your environment; let your environment become a product of you!

2. Don’t recreate the wheel.
I’ve seen companies launch huge new initiatives without ever stopping to ask themselves: “has someone done this already?” Be curious! Instead of blindly jumping into a project, take a step back and think “someone must have run into this situation before, what did they do?”

We recently decided to focus on a particular marketing strategy at Quicken Loans. Instead of starting from scratch, we flew several key people to another, non-competitive company to discuss our plan. Because that company had already executed this strategy really well, the day we spent with them saved us months of trial-and-error.

3. Take a stand.
A couple of years ago, I was leading a project that a senior executive didn’t agree with. He didn’t think the project could make an impact on the business. I believed that it would. We compromised, and he gave me 90 days to prove it. I did, and the executive was proud of the accomplishment.

It can be hard to challenge consensus. But if you truly believe in what you are doing, you can’t be afraid to voice an opinion or do things that others don’t understand. Remember: the thinking that got you where you are will seldom get you where you want to go.

4. Get excited when people tell you “no.”
So many people let others dictate what they can and cannot do. Before they know it, they have lost the ability to be effective. When people tell me “no, we can’t do that,” I immediately think “how can we?”

Every day, I have conversations about ideas that are too hard to do, solutions that are too complicated, and costs that are too expensive. If you attack these situations by creatively brainstorming alternatives, you can inevitably find ways to turn these “no’s” into “yes’s.”

5. Keep it simple like Forrest Gump.
“When I got tired, I slept. When I got hungry, I ate. When I had to go… you know… I went.” Forrest kept life simple. Do you?

At Quicken Loans, we have a “no big projects” rule. Why? Big projects usually mean lots of over-complicated ideas that simply aren’t needed to solve the problem at hand. You can have big visions but still execute them in small chunks. Doing this encourages constant improvement, and helps prevent marketing projects that are out of sync with current business needs.

6. Be effective, not busy.
My team completed over 1,100 internet marketing projects last year alone. While that’s an impressive accomplishment, I’m most proud of the impact those projects made. Every single thing we do has a legitimate business reason, or we don’t do it. And every morning we meet to discuss the thing we can do that day to be the most effective.

Every person on my team has (literally) hundreds of things on their to-do list. Our concern is not getting them all done. Instead, we ask ourselves, are we working on the right things, right now? Once we focus on being effective, instead of being busy, we automatically get into
a mental mode of challenging conventional wisdom.

Try one of these techniques, and you can take an ordinary day and make it great! Try them all, and you will hone your ability to challenge conventional thinking.

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