System One – The Master Project List – Every project (defined as something you want to get done that requires more than 2 tasks, taking longer than 2 minutes) that you want to accomplish in your life.  All down on paper (or in a system somewhere)

System Two – The Filing System – Active projects, Reference files, Archives

System Three – Your Tickler System

System Four – Your Calendar

System Five – The Waiting On System

System Six – The Next Action List

System Seven – Your In-Basket

System Eight – Your Weekly Review

Your homework for the week:

1) Tell me what you would accomplish if you achieved “Stress-Free Productivity”

2) If you are already a GTD fan, tell me how your story of getting your systems to work together.

This is not just a rhetorical question.

If you are coaching someone, and that person is failing to complete their assignments, there is a good chance that your coachee has either lost connection to their vision, or their vision has expired.  Riding your coachee about the failure is pointless, they don’t care anymore.

Assignment failure is only a trip wire for noticing vision disconnection.  This is where you as a coach get to visibly and dramatically do your job; vision creation.

Lets assume that at one point in the past, your coachee had a vivid compelling vision of their future.  A future that was so bright they had to wear shades.  A vision that was so compelling that you had problems getting them to get enough sleep because they are so busy driving towards the fulfillment of their vision.

Now they don’t have that connection anymore.

So how do you get them back in touch with their vision?  How do you create one in the first place?

I’ll be coming back to this question, I think you’ll like my approach.  But in the mean time, what’s your approach?

Before you go, I’ve got a quick question for you while we’re here.

What is that question?  I’m glad you asked.

It’s really simple, “Why are you here at ‘How much success can you handle’?”  Are you looking to administer your wordpress site (cuz that’s what I seem to be talking about the most), or are you more interested in the nominal topic of this blog, which is taking the game of your life to the next level?  Either way, I thank you for being here.

As a quick warning, if you thought that this blog was going to be, “everything is rosy, all the time” then you thought wrong.  The road to success is full of pot-holes.  Deep, suspension destroying pot-holes.

I am involved in an organization called Toastmasters, and last week, my member speech blew chunks.   Toastmasters is a global organization dedicated to improving the art of public speaking.

Bottom line, this week, my speech was “good enough” it wasn’t horrible, I spoke, I was coherent, I had a minimum of distracting habits, but it wasn’t practiced, or polished.  It had no structure.  None.

It really had me thinking, where else am I “good enough”?  Where am I just phoning it in?  Conversely, where are you just phoning it in.  Where in your life and your business have you reached “good enough” and what could be possible if you were to take it up a notch to “good”?

What he said was something to the effect of, “You need to join the let’s-find-out club.  Will that idea work?  I don’t know, let’s find out”

At the same time, if you are using someone’s already successful system and that system has worked for others, but not for you, just maybe, you’re not really following their system.

And don’t say, “but we’re different here.” No you’re not, you’re just unwilling (or in some corporate settings, not allowed) to make the changes dictated by the successful system.

I once heard a trainer explain

If I told you to dial (555) 123 – 4567, give my friend on the other end your name & address, and he’ll send you a check for $100, don’t come back to me and say,

“I tried your system, and it didn’t work, I didn’t dial the number in the order you gave me, but I dialed all the numbers”

“I tried your system, and it didn’t work, I didn’t use the number 4 because I don’t like to press the number 4, so I just replaced it with two 2′s.”

“I tried your system, and it didn’t work, I put in the first 6 digits and didn’t get any result, so I didn’t bother to finish implementing your system you fraud.”

Laugh, but I have watched people, at great expense, implement their version of other peoples systems and then complain that not only did the original system not work, but that the people explaining the system were unyielding zealots who didn’t understand how things worked in the real world.