Relaxing with colleagues and their spouses is always entertaining while at company events. The topics spin all over the place. Fueled by a little alcohol, these chitchats are often knee-slapping hilarious affairs as we get way too much information on what’s going on behind closed doors. During one such event, the conversation meandered into vacations, home activities and the big dreams we had for the future.
Really Living the Dream
The wife of one of my colleagues jumped into the conversation to tell us how her husband was making their dreams come true. She attributed their accomplishments to a daily ritual he faithfully performed. My attention piqued hearing about a magical daily habit that might help me break free of the leaden chains slowing my progress from reaching my dreams. She went on to describe all of the things they’ve done and the places they’ve been and what their future held, all because of this practice.
Doubters
Inevitably, conversations, where magical rituals cure everything, tend to turn negative. After all, most people don’t really believe the crumpled paper slips holding their dreams are more than fantasies lying helplessly at the bottom of their bucket lists.
“Oh yeah, we want to do this or that too but it’ll never happen because of….” generally is the follow-up you hear.
What they’re really saying is that they’ve already conceded that it won’t happen nor are they even planning for it to happen. Personally, I never publicly admitted that my dreams were out of reach, but internally a cloud of self-doubt hung over me many days.
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to their grave with the song still in them. Henry David Thoreau’s eloquent words are prominently displayed on the first page of my portfolio along with other meaningful quotes. Unzipping and flipping open the portfolio each day, my eyes instinctively avoid this quote when my previous days actions didn’t advance my cause.
Make Each Day Count
His daily routine took seconds to perform, recalling recent journeys to ancient lands where local history was measured in thousands of years. Those BBs created memories of walking through markets unchanged in their location for centuries, where the air is filled with unknown savory scents and observing architecture unimaginable by today’s standards, built over generations. His thoughts then shifted to this family’s next adventure where he could hear his kids screaming with joy as they jumped off a houseboat into the bottomless clear lake in the Ozarks.
Each BB representing the relentless march of time and the opportunity to each day holds for those willing to take it. It prompted him at that moment to consider more seriously whether his actions were aligned to meet his family and personal dreams.
My colleague shared a story of his parents scraping by as farmers and their lifelong struggle to raise a large family with no certainty of income. His parents’ focus was always on their kids, but the unrelenting labor demands on the farm never left time for the family to venture outside of the farm. The conviction to pour himself into his family carried through to him from his parents but he wanted more.
Each day he plucked a tiny BB from one quart-sized clear jar stuffed with thousands of these copper-colored spheres. Then, releasing the metal ball into a matching jar where it bounced into its permanent geometric location. This jar receiving the BB was filled with only a few rows of these miniature orbs but it totaled over 2,000 BBs.
He explained that each BB represented one day. The transparent jar brimming with BBs totaled the number of days remaining until his 75th birthday. There was a seemingly endless number of days remaining given his age, just a year or two past 40.
He started this practice about six years prior and credited his business success to this daily ceremony.
A Metaphor for Time
As a kid, I shot thousands of these metal pellets from the Daisy Red Ryder air gun my dad handed down to me. Dozens of years later, I began contemplating how ammo used to plink bottles and birds could help me fulfill my dreams.
Today, on my desk still sit two lonely jars of BBs, the dusty lids not lifted for a dozen years or more. Although I abandoned this custom after a year or so, it did propel me in another positive direction. In fact, this new daily routine turned into a highly effective practice that continued for about a decade.
Being Busy is Not Necessarily Being Productive
Running out of working days became a chronic issue for me. Even though reviewing my calendar was a daily habit, no concept existed of how many actual business days remain in the quarter. Feeling the strain and pressure to deliver my forecasted business, I took a moment to tick off the days remaining in the quarter to pull off what felt like a hail mary necessary to meet my commitment. The tabulated total turned out to be just enough but the epiphany that I was driving 90 mph to get stuff done but no clue of the finite time available to reach the finish line.
Too Much Stuff To Do
My biggest struggle was the chronic pressure to take a ten pound bag of work stuff and cram it in a five pound bag. Apparently, counting down the number of days wasn’t a new discovery because a conspicuous figure neatly positioned in plain sight on my paper calendar noted the number of days remaining in the year. Applying a bit of third-grade math, I added my own more meaningful countdown numbers and posted them right next to the annual countdown figure precalculated on my calendar.
Knowing what the total number of business days for each quarter and a running total for the year proved extremely helpful to guide my daily activities. The math was pretty simple. Compiling the number of business days and subtracting holidays and vacation days left the total workdays remaining each quarter and for the entire year.
Planning the next quarter became a much more effective activity knowing how many days remained to reach a positive conclusion. Excuse followed excuse over the past few years until purchasing a basic monthly paper calendar dropped from my annual routine.
In the past few weeks, my ten pound bag of work stuff doubled in size, but there was still a wrinkled old five pound bag to stuff it all in. Perhaps it was a desire to only look at one calendar instead of the electronic company calendar and an old school monthly calendar. Whatever my reasoning…not having a paper calendar was killing my production. This crucial calculation is now prominently displayed at the top of my daily action list.
Different Ways to Use the Countdown Approach
Many of you may already incorporate a countdown calendar in your daily work. If not, consider its many uses. Instead of selecting an arbitrary date required to complete a task, a simple sizing of the effort needed to complete the work can set realistic expectations rather than letting you live in hope of an outcome that’s not possible. If you’re a manager of a sales team or any other functional group, keep track of the workdays for the team and ensure they’re doing the same for their individual tasks. If you’re in sales and you’re tracking a deal to get closed for the quarter, make sure to bake in any days critical client staff won’t be available due to vacations or professional commitments.
Avoid the Q4 Surprise
A daily reckoning of workdays in the quarter and another for the year is important to help avoid the surprise of the fourth quarter. This is not a joyful surprise. It’s a reality check that there are not enough days left in the year to get your deal(s) closed.
Focusing on the right work each day to meet our personal and professional goals seems blatantly obvious. The crush of information sprayed on us from multiple channels, the distraction of social media, and demands on our time at work and home are just some of the ways to lose focus on what’s important. Whether you use BBs in a jar, the countdown method or any other approach to staying focused on what’s important, the most important part is that you use your method of choice and stick with it.
