why email sucks !!!

First there is this group of people driving around looking down at there smart phones at every opportunity they can?

Next there is the fact that only 10% of what you are trying to say comes across in the written word. 55% is lost when there is no body language, 35% is lost without tone.

Then there are those that are just walking around and doing the same, they even do it while they are talking with others. It seems that the tighter you are with someone the more likely they are to be glued to that email reading while you are around.

Workers are in their offices, responding to every email as they come in, how is it that they are actually getting any real work done?

There is tons of data out there that supports how unproductive email has actually made the work force, but that is not the big point.

First we had telephone break ups. Then some even went so low as to do it on the voice mail. The TMZ crowd will most likely text a break up and soon its not just going to be in a tweet, but in a re-tweet. There was even a movie with George Clooney, Up in the air where he went around the country firing people as an outsourced agent.

What is happening to people, when did the woosification of America hit us all so hard, we have become a bunch of passive aggressive maniacs and this needs to change.

Last night I got fired from a vendor that I have done business with on and off for 10 plus years, we have done more than 5 million dollars in business together and communication has been quite regular on the phone. An email came to me and here is the copy.

Kris,

Give me a call when you get a chance. I need to talk with you. We here at _________ after much deliberation and tossing and turning over the decision, have decided to give our 30 day notice. This has been a very hard decision. I really wanted to get the team to make the decision before the web meeting tomorrow and am sorry I am so late getting to you today. It would be very unfair for us to run thru the training and then come back with the final decision. Please give me a call and lets make it as easy as possible for all to transition out.

Thanks,

America, please never ever do this to someone. Get on a plane, skype them, pick up the phone and do it like a human being. Grow up, look up and do it like a man.

What are you Outsourcing ?

Today I tried to teach my 6 year old son about outsourcing and here is the scenario around a deal I made with him.

He gets an allowance of 5 dollars a week in an effort to teach him about the value of money and how to save for the things he wants. It's his money to spend as he wishes and he is not parting with any of it as of yet. He wants to get a really expensive Star Wars LEGO set and it has to come from his own doing. I also want him to learn to tie his shoe, but just don't have those patients for teaching.

The deal is that if he learns how to tie his shoes and does so for a week on his own then I will take him to the LEGO store and get him whatever one thing he wants except the Millennium Falcon or the Death star.

I told him to offer his camp counselor 20 bucks if he could teach him how to tie his shoes and if he could learn how to do it, I would take him to the LEGO store. His eyes lit up and I am sure it will be the first thing he asks next week when he goes to camp.

Wins:

• Matthew saves about 50-100 bucks of his money and gets the toy he wanted.
• I save the few patients I have.
• The counselor makes 20 extra bucks.
• The economy is that much stronger.
• Matthew will be so proud of what he learned.
• No more tying shoes for me.

I can hear the naysayers already, but the point is that outsourcing the small stuff can be cheap and easy and the end results can be far better off than if you did the yourselves. Think about all the time you can save to tackle some of the Big Dreams in your life. Don't sweat the small stuff, stay focused of the Big Dreams and all of it is possible.

Thinking about outsourcing? Try Odesk or Elance.

Peace out.

Kris

How much can i get done in one year?

I am sure there will be plenty added to this list and I will update on a regular basis as one more form of accountability. This years EO/EMP 2nd year class was an amazing 4 days of learning, sharing, inspiration and so much more. It was as if we had not been apart for a whole year and that our relationships had all grown along as they would if we were together for the entire time apart. There is a mix of personal and professional goals on this plan. The idea is not to see if it can get done, it's to get it done and return back for graduation year in a much better position than this year. It was humbling to see how much so many got done as it related to the program and i am truly inspired. So here goes.

2010/2011 Get it done list Kris Kaplan

• o Write and publish Mission/Vision/Values
• o Write and publish Painted Picture
• o Finish and distribute and implement One Page Plan @ KCO
• o Go see All Top Customers
• o Define and publish Bucket Program for Priorities
• o Complete first dvd set of learning French
• o Maintain QuickBooks in real-time 100% of the time.
• o 13.1 pace down to 7:30”s
• o Add 2 additional A-List Vendors
• o Hire 2 Additional sales reps
• o Get 100% alignment with Reps and all goal management
• o Family plan worked out (use 3 big questions, from Lencioni’s book)
• o Outline for a Book
• o Outline for a speech/program
• o NDA agreements in place with all reps and vendors and to all prospects
• o Master Listening Skills
• o Launch new website
• o Set up hootsuite for posts and tweets
• o Reports and programs @ KCO defined and published and placed in calendar
• o BOOKS: Dan Pink, Roy Spence It’s not what you sell…, Peak by Chip Conley.

How many things do you have to do?

I hear everyone tell me all the time that they have too much to do, too many things to get done, to many people to see and never enough time. It's like it's some fricken ego trip for them to share how busy they think they are. I am never impressed in the slightest. There is a saying that I really like and it goes something like this. stupid people talk about others, average people talk about things, great people talk about ideas and what is possible.

Make room for the possible and get some of that shit done, would ya. My guess is that you have so much more to offer and experience in life, and here are some tricks that should help in the process. Try a few, they just might work.

1. Top Five’s At the start of each day (or the night before) highlight the five most important things you have to do in the coming day. Do them first. If you get nothing else accomplished aside from your top 5’s, you’ve still had a pretty productive day.
2. Big Rocks: The big projects you’re working on at any given moment. Set aside time every day or week to move your big rocks forward.
3. Inbox Zero: Decide what to do with every email you get, the moment you read it. If there’s something you need to do, either do it or add it to your to do list and delete or file the email. If it’s something you need for reference, file it. Empty your email inbox every day.
4. Early bird gets the worm: Add a productive hour to your day by getting up an hour earlier — before everyone else starts imposing on your time.
5. One In, One Out: Avoid clutter by adopting a replacement-only standard. Every time you but something new, you throw out or donate something old. For example, you buy a new shirt, you get rid of an old one. (Variation: One in, Two Out — useful when you begin to feel overwhelmed by your possessions.)
6. Brainstorming: The act of generating dozens of ideas without editing or censoring yourself. Lots of people use mindmaps for this: stick the thing you want to think about in the middle (a problem you need to solve, a theme you want to write about, etc.) and start writing whatever you think of. Build off of each of the sub-topics, and each of their sub-topics. Don’t worry about whether the ideas are any good or not — you don’t have to follow through on them, just get them out of your head. After a while, you’ll start surprising yourself with some really creative concepts.
7. Ubiquitous Capture: Always carry something to take notes with — a pen and paper, a PDA, a stack of index cards. Capture every thought that comes into your mind, whether it’s an idea for a project you’d like to do, an appointment you need to make, something you need to pick up next time you’re at the store, whatever. Review it regularly and transfer everything to where it belongs: a to do list, a filing system, a journal, etc.
8. Get more sleep: Sleep is essential to health, learning, and awareness. Research shows the body goes through a complete sleep cycle in about 90 minutes, so napping for less than that doesn’t have the same effect that real sleep does (although it does make you feel better). Get 8 hours a night, at least. Learn to see sleep as a pleasure, not a necessary evil or a luxury.
10. Smart Goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.
11. Eat the Frog: Do your most unpleasant task first. Based on the saying that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a frog, the day can only get better from then on.
12. 80/20 Rule/Pareto Principle: Generally speaking, the 80/20 Principle says that most of our results come from a small portion of our actual work, and conversely, that we spend most of our energy doing things that aren’t ultimately all that important. Figure out which part of your work has the greatest results and focus as much of your energy as you can on that part.
13. What’s the Next Action?: Don’t plan out everything you need to do to finish a project, just focus on the very next thing you need to do to move it forward. Usually doing the next, little thing will lead to another, and another, until we’re either done or we run into a block: we need more information, we need someone else to catch up, etc. Be as concrete and discrete as possible: you can’t “install cable”, all you can do is “call the cable company to request cable installation”.
14. Slow Down: Make time for yourself. Eat slowly. Enjoy a lazy weekend day. Take the time to do things right, and keep a balance between the rush-rush world of work and the rest of your life.
15. Batch Process: Do all your similar tasks together. For example, don’t deal with emails sporadically throughout the day; instead, set aside an hour to go through your email inbox and respond to emails. Do the same with voice mail, phone calls, responding to letters, filing, and so on — any routine, repetitive tasks.
16. Covey Quadrants: A system for assigning priorities. Two axes, one for importance, the other for urgency, intersect. Tasks are assigned to one of the four quadrants: not important, not urgent; not important, urgent; important, not urgent; and important and urgent. Purge the tasks that are neither important nor urgent, defer the unimportant but urgent ones, try to avoid letting the important ones become urgent, and as much as possible work on the tasks in the important but not urgent quadrant.
17. Handle Everything Once: Don’t set things aside hoping you’ll have time to deal with them later. Ask yourself “What do I need to do with this” every time you pick up something from your email list, and either do it, schedule it for later, defer it to someone else, or file it.
18. Don’t Break the Chain: Use a calendar to track your daily goals. Every day you do something, like working out or writing 1,000 words, make a big red “X”. Every day the chain will grow longer. Don’t break the chain! That is, don’t let any non-X days interrupt your chain of successful days.
19. Review: Schedule a time with yourself every week to look over what you’ve done that week and what you want to do the next week. Ask yourself if there are any new projects you should be starting, and if what you’re working on is moving you closer to your goals for your life.
20. Flow: The flow state happens when you’re so absorbed in whatever you’re doing that you have no awareness of the passing of time and the work just happens automatically. It’s hard to trigger consciously, but you can create the conditions for it by allowing yourself a block of uninterrupted time, minimizing distractions, and calming yourself.
21. Do it Now: Fight procrastination by adopting “do it now!” as your mantra. Limit yourself to 60 seconds when making a decision, decide what you’re going to do with every input in your life as soon as you encounter it, learn to make bold decisions even when you’re not really sure. Keep moving forward.
22. Time Log: Lawyers have to track everything they do in the day and how long they do it so they can bill their clients and remain accountable. You need to be accountable to yourself, so keep track of how much time you really spend on the things that are important to you by tracking your time.
23. Personal Mission Statement: Write a personal mission statement, and use it as a guide to set goals. Ask if each goal or activity moves you closer to achieving your mission. If it doesn’t, eliminate it. Periodically review and revise your mission statement.
24. Reverse Engineering: A planning strategy that works from the goal back to your next action. Start with the end goal in mind. What do you have to have in place to accomplish it? OK, now what do you have to have in place to accomplish what you have to have in place to accomplish your end goal? And what do you have to have in place to accomplish that? And so on, back to something you already have in place and/or can put in place immediately. That’s your next action.
25. Tune Out: Create a personal privacy zone by wearing headphones. People are much more hesitant to interrupt someone wearing headphones. Note: actually listening to music through your headphones is optional — nobody knows but you.
26. Write It Down: Don’t rely on your memory as your system. Write down the things you need to do, your schedule, anything you might need to refer to, and every passing thought so you can relax, knowing you won’t forget. Use your brain for thinking, use paper or your computer for keeping track of stuff.
27. Gap Time: The little blocks of time we have during the day while waiting for the bus, standing in line, waiting for a meeting to start, etc. Have a list of small, 5-minute tasks that you can do in these moments, or carry something to read or work on to make the most of these spare minutes.
28. Single tasking: We like to think of ourselves as great Multitaskers, but we aren’t. What we do when we multitask is devote tiny slices of time to several tasks in rapid succession. Since it takes more than a few minutes (research suggests as long as 20) to really get into a task, we end up working worse and more slowly than if we devoted longer blocks of time to each task, worked until it was done, and moved on to the next one.
29. Habits: Habits are as much about the way we see and respond to the world as about the actions we routinely take. Examine your own habits and ask what they say about your relation to the world — and what would have to change to create a worldview in which your goals were attainable.
30. Triggers: Place meaningful reminders around you to help you remember, as well as to help create better habits. For example, put the books you need to take back to the library in front of the door, so you can’t leave the house without seeing them and remembering they need to go back.
31. Un-clutter: Clutter is anything that’s out of place and in the way. It’s not necessarily neatness — someone can have a rigorously neat workspace and not be able to get anything done. It’s being able to access what you need, when you need it, without breaking the flow of your work to find it. Figure out what is “clutter” in your working and living spaces, and fix that.
32. Visualize: Imagine yourself having accomplished your goals. What is your life like? Are you who you want to be? If not, rethink your goals. If so, then visualize yourself taking the steps you need to take to get there. You’ve got yourself a plan; write it down and do it.
33. Tickler File: A set of 43 folders, labeled 1 – 31 and January – December, used to remind us of tasks we need to do on a specific day. For instance, if you have a trip on March 23rd, you’d put your itinerary, tickets, and other material in the “March” folder. At the start of each month, you move the previous month’s folder to the back. On March 1st, you’d transfer your travel information into the “23″ folder. Each day, you move the previous day’s folder to the back. On the 23rd, the “23″ folder will be at the front, and everything you need that day will be there for you.
34. To Don’t List: A list of things not to do — useful for keeping track of habits that lead you to be unproductive, like playing online flash games.
35. Templates: Create templates for repetitive tasks, like letters, customer reply emails, blog posts, etc.
36. Checklists: When planning any big task, make a checklist so you don’t forget the steps while in the busy middle part of doing it. Keep your checklists so you can use them next time you have to do the same task.
37. No: Learning to say “no” — to new commitments, to interruptions, to anything — is one of the most valuable skills you can develop to keep you focused on your own commitments and give you time to work on them.
38. Un-schedule: Schedule all your fun activities and personal life stuff (the stuff you want to do) first. Fill in whatever time’s left over with uninterrupted blocks of work. Write those into your schedule after you’ve completed them. Reward yourself after every block of quality, focused work.
39. Purge: Regularly go through your existing commitments and get rid of anything that is either not helping you advance your own goals or is a regular “sink” of time or energy.
40. One Bucket: Minimize the places you collect new inputs in your life, your “buckets”. Ideally have one “bucket” where everything goes. Lots of people experience an incredible sense of relief when everything they need to think about is collected in one place in front of them, no matter how big the pile.
41. 50/30/20: Spend 50% of your working day on tasks that advance your long-term, life goals, spend 30% on tasks that advance your middle-term (2-years or so) goals, and the remaining 20% on things that affect only the next 90 days or so.
42. Timer: Tell yourself you will work on a project or task, and only that project or task, for a set amount of time. Set a timer (use a kitchen timer, or use a countdown timer on your computer), and plug away at your work. When the timer goes off, you’re done — move on to the next project or task.
43. Do Your Worst: Give yourself permission to suck. Relieve the pressure of needing to achieve perfection in every task on the first run. Promise yourself you’ll go back and fix any problems later, but for now, just run wild.
44. Put it in your calendar: Schedule time every week or so just for you. Consider the state of your life: what’s working? What isn’t working? What mistakes are you making? What could you change? Give yourself a chance to get to know you.

Make it Happen.