Process

Win the morning.

1-10-10-10 – get up early, be grateful, and exercise
Deliberate practice
Make it simple.
Write the outline, then flesh out the details.
Strategic Thinking System
Knowledge + Action = Power

Life is easier if you have a process to follow. And if every day starts the same way, and that same way sets you up for success, there is nothing that can stop you.

A morning process that gets you going in the right way is the 1-10-10-10.

1 minute of purpose. 10 minutes of gratitude. 10 minutes of inspiration. 10 minutes of journaling.

Sit on the edge of your bed, right when you get up. What is your purpose for the day? Is it to be a great father? A great negotiator? A great leader? A great son? Why do you have the opportunity to be here today? Make it clear in your mind.

Now you have your purpose, it’s time to be grateful. Be grateful for life. Grateful for parents. Grateful for all you have, and the moments within. Grateful for the chair you sit in. Grateful for the breath you take. Grateful for everything in this life. There is no end to the amount of things we take for granted that we should be grateful for.

Then be inspired. Read. Watch. Listen. Whatever inspires you to go to the next level.

Then write it down. What you were grateful for. What you were thinking. What you need to do next.

Some questions you could ask yourself: What is the highest leverage thing I need to get done this week? What is great in my life? What am I grateful for? What am I great at? What do I want to be great at? What would make today great? What is the #1 thing to get done? What am I saying no to? What am I saying yes to?

Now go exercise. Go for a walk. Work out. Get moving. You will sit for the vast majority of your days, so start them off right.

When you’re done, shower, and go eat.

Eat right. What does that mean for you, I’m not sure. Experiment. You get 3 or more meals every day to experiment with. Does eating salad give you energy? Does coffee get your motor started? Do you need a snack to keep you energized at 3PM? Try different things until you find what works for you.

What works for me is a yogurt / nuts / fruit breakfast, a salad and protein with light carbs at lunch, then a well balanced dinner. I save up all my snacks and cravings for Saturday, when I have a cheat day. This works for me, but may not work for you.

Practice

The process of deliberate practice makes you better at whatever you’re trying to improve. Think of sports. If you play basketball, and you need to improve your free-throws, then spending the time on your technique to improve your odds of scoring is a great use of time. But you can’t just go out and throw balls, you have to iterate, and improve.

You need to incorporate feedback loops to help you move closer to your ideal state, whatever that might be. Whatever you’re practicing for. They say practice makes perfect, but the truth is practice with feedback, iterations, and revisions, make perfect.

Simple

Not everyone will be able to do what you do. Nor do they have the unique life experiences, perspective, and drive that you do. So what appears to be simple and intuitive to you, may be a completely different language to others.

There’s an old saying that is the acronym KISS – keep it simple stupid. This applies to many things in life, but the process to success is one of them. Every process has component steps. These steps can be broken down into many different parts with thousands of details, scenarios, what-if’s and contingency plans.

The goal with keeping it simple is to plan and outline for the 99% of the time that good enough is good enough. There are different levels of intelligence, and the highest level is simple. Think of Albert Einstein, with his theory of relativity – E=MC(2). There is smart. There is Genius. Then there is Simple.

One of the mistakes I’ve made is walking people through my process, and taking them on the journey of comprehension I go on. I often have to think through all the possibilities that may occur, and the what if’s and the could-be’s. That is part of the process to get to the core of what matters. The keys that make the whole system work, the critical path, is the goal.

That is what I am trying to discover, always. What are the minimum number of steps or actions that must be taken, that get the result you want. It’s like math. The lowest common denominator is what you need.

Now the thing about processes is there is a minimum number of steps, but keep in mind there should be no fewer than required. If there are too few, the whole thing falls apart. So as simple as possible, but no less.

Outline

A key process I learned from James Patterson was how to write an outline. His application was for an outline of a book, but it applies to all areas of life in planning.

Here are the steps to writing a story outline:
Put in as much juicy stuff as possible.
Tons of promise.
Write the story down, not sentances.
Write down scenes:
Something that grabs you
Like a movie – then organize
All possible steps
Then flesh out a little
Multiple drafts
Each time layer on more
If you reveal something early, still have somewhere to go, but don’t write yourself into a corner.
Make notes:
- Things that are essential to get right.
- What do you need to feel to make it work?
- What happens to this character, through the length of this story?
- What is happening in the world?
Read the outline, it should make sense.
The bigger the challenge, the more interesting the story.
Now that you have the skeleton, it should make sense.
Now go write!

The interesting thing is there are a number of parallels to your life’s story, in this story outline above. If you think about what you want your life to be, you can write an outline similar to this above. What do you want your life’s story to be?

Now let’s start with the fact that everyone’s journey is unique, but there are similarities. Everyone goes through life stages. We all have the same 1000 months to live, and that can be broken down into different sections. Let’s use education, work, and family together to build that timeline.

Your simple framework could be as follows:

First 20 years – you’re in school.
From 20-30, you’re starting work, finding a partner, and settling into your life.
From 30-50, you have a family, children, and work hard to make ends meet.
From 50-60 you build your wealth for retirement and your grandchildren.
From 60-80+ you retire, give back, and make a difference in your community, and leave a legacy for your family.
This story isn’t going to be the same for everyone, but gives you a general idea of how to look at today, tomorrow, and the day after.

So let’s go back to the story you’re writing for yourself:

Put in as much juicy stuff as possible. Your life has tons of promise.
What scene are you in? What grabs you? Is it organized, like a movie? Or is it random?
Then flesh it out a little. Is binging Netflix as deep as you go? Or are there layers to you you’re not reaching?
If you are in job / relationship / life choice that puts you on a path that reveals your future early, and you’re not happy with the path, you still have somewhere to go. You’re only as trapped as your story says you are. Change it.
What happens to you throughout the length of your story?
What is happening in the world?
Read the outline, it should make sense.
The bigger the challenge, the more interesting the story.
Solving really impossible problems, is how you get rich.
Now go live it.

Strategic Thinking System

One of the most important things you can do is think in a strategic way about where you want to go, and how you’re going to get there. There is a great busiess book called ‘the road less stupid’ that gives a format for you to brainstorm solutions to all your problems. Here is the basic principle that applies not only business, but personal, family and community as well.

The first thing you have to do is put time in your schedule for strategy. Depending on the demands of your life, and the rate of change, you could do it twice a day, once a day, twice a week, or once a week. If you go out to twice a month, or monthly, you’re not going to be making much progress, but that’s up to you. I schedule an hour each time for the process.

Now that you have the time scheduled, you need to have an undisturbed place to think and jot down notes. You start by stating a problem, whatever that might be, then just jot down potential solutions to that problem. Note after note, line after line, follow your thoughts and solutions wherever they take you. I like to spend 45 minutes doing this process, and continually asking the 5W 1H (who, what, when, why, where and how) questions to keep me going. After the 45 minutes, I stop writing, and look at what I’ve written.

Some problems are big, and will not be solved in one thinking session. But you need to consolidate your brainstorming into useful actionable items. Some of what you think up will be garbage, that’s the benefit of a brainstorm, but some will be good. Some will be useful. Some will enable you to take your thinking to the next step given your current resources and approach.

Even if you don’t come up with a solution, dedicated focused effort on solving this issue will give you a place to start, an action to take, a next step.

That’s my process for starting the day, clarifying my goals, and solving problems. What’s yours?