7. Ability to Get Things Done

Challenge

You, or other leaders in the company, are not being effective enough; you are not getting done all the things that need to get done.

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Three Fundamentals to Consider

To get done what needs to get done and to significantly improve overall effectiveness, consider:

1. Focus on the important, dedicating sufficient and uninterrupted time to the few most essential and vital activities.
2. Eliminate and simplify so that you can do what you say.
3. Create a life balanced between the short and long term and between work and personal.

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Relevant Blog Posts to Read

• Prioritize on the Most Important
• Minimize Distraction for Better Results
• To Get Things Done, We Need More Meetings…With Ourselves
• The 9 Biggest Time Wasters in Business
• Losing Focus – The Most Seductive and Dangerous Mistake Smart Leaders Make

• ‘Tis a Gift to Be Simple
• How to ‘Do What You Say’ and Distinguish Yourself From Everyone Else
• 6 Ways a Business Leader Wins by Doing Nothing
• The Lost Skill of Delegation

• Go Home – Work Fewer Hours to Get Better Results
• New Year’s Resolution – Do a Little Less to Get a Little More Done
• The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

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Pertinent Book Summaries to Review

• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful (Marshall Goldsmith)
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (Stephen R. Covey)
• The 8^th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (Steven R. Covey)
• The 4-Hour Workweek(Timothy Ferriss)
• Skills for Success: The Experts Show the Way (Soundview Editorial Staff, Eds.)
• Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney)

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Appropriate Book Chapter from 110% Success

• Chapter 7 – Personal Success

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Appropriate Book Chapter from Build a Better B2B Business

• Chapter 16 – Consistent Execution

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Related Quotes to Think About

• “What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.” Tim Ferriss (Author of The 4-Hour Workweek)

• “Beware distractions; workers distracted by phone calls, E-Mails, and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana.” TNS Research (As quoted in Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar).

• “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen.” Henry David Thoreau (19th century American poet and author of Walden)

• “The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.” Niccolo Machiavelli (Renaissance Italian historian, philosopher, and author)

• “After all is said and done, more is said than done.” Aesop (Greek writer credited with writing Aesop’s Fables)

• “Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.” Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect)