We are more than halfway through the week, so let’s talk about the goals I planned on Sunday.
My priority was to continue to keep increasing my value. I decided to focus on auditing the following traits:
- Activity
- Credibility
- Engagement
- Actionability (May or may not be a real word)
Activity
After really looking at the way I log my time I realize that my activity falls short of being the best use of my time. Even this week I have spent time in banal conversations that could have been spent around quality opportunities and managing important projects.. I aim to measure 1/3 of my day as being actually progressive activity. For most of us that means that if you work 8 hours a day to use those 8 hours for work and absolutely nothing else. This also suggest that the work is the best investment of your time, not busy work or filling a space to make wage.
Credibility
I run digital technology companies and like to focus on clients and industries in wellness and well being industries. Do I carry an aura of credibility and authority for my knowledge, skills, mission, and values? Part of this project is to create a high transparency, high accountability system to help instill the habits and actions I will use to improve myself, but it’s also to provide a window towards what I am actually doing. Make your value and experience obvious.
Engagement
Value is a purely human judgement, so to be valuable I need to provide value to others. The old adage “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” comes to mind. If I can add something to a conversation with useful experiential knowledge, or at least well placed practiced wit, I contribute. If I can’t, I listen. If I have no business in that conversation or scenario, it’s a distraction and I walk away.
Actionability (still may not be a word)
I recommend you do anything to remove phrases like “how about this weather” from your vocabulary. The idea here is to work with highly actionable thoughts, plans, and speech. In conversation ask questions that dig deeper around the concepts and subjects of the conversation, and give responses that are direct and lead into follow up conversation. With plans be certain that there is a measurable follow through. And with your thoughts go from “why me” to “I can fix this by…” and from wondering to investigating.
The process
To work these I took a block of time out to engage in new conversations online and at networking events following a very simple formula. Introduce an interest in a person and ask them about what interested me in them. Ask 2 or 3 intelligent questions as they responded. Craft a short sentence about how our conversation satisfied my interest. Offer a “pitch” about what I do segued from the context of our conversation. Offer to be of some service to them or ask them how I could be helpful to them. This doesn’t mean you have to try and sell something. In several of these conversations the service I offered was an opinion or an introduction.
Three days of this trained and instilled the habit.
Other marks to hit
I began training for the Black Man Running 5k. The week has been rainy but I got one good day of running 4.6 miles and 2 days of cycling to follow up.
To help learn more and promote my business community I have begun writing for Exit Event, a site focusing on startups and entrepreneurship in North Carolina. This puts me in front of many quality professionals and up and comers, as well as teaches me an incredible amount.
Finally I am innovating a product to turn a job I do fairly repetitively into a product to increase revenue. I will be launching this to select existing clients with my consultancy this week.
Thank you and please comment with opinions, experiences, and suggestions.