The Jason Womack Company

In 10 minutes (that’s about 1,200 words)

Jason Womack — Sat, 25 May 2013 17:48:52 +0000

As an “adjunct faculty member” in many corporate business and leadership programs, I often get “a few minutes” to talk about me, our company and the presentation I offer: Mastering Workplace Performance. Whenever I get invited to one of these, I always ask, “How much time would you like me to take to share this information with you?”

You see, if I only have 5 minutes what I share will be much different than if I had, say, a full hour. Well, today I get to talk with a client group I'll be working with in New York City later this year. When I asked, they emailed back and say, “Please plan to use 10 minutes.” Well, in just that amount of time, I've got to be pretty “choosy” about what I say. So, here's some brainstorming…

A little about you

My first insight to the power of purpose and productivity came when I was 7 years old. It wasn't a positive one. I recall that day as if it just happened. I was at the restaurant (more on that later) one afternoon, and though I have no idea what the topic was, I remember my step-father looking at me with an angry/serious look on his face to say, “If you ask me 'why' one more time you're going to get it.”

Well, I look back on the subsequent 34 years and realize that everything I do is founded on the question, “Why?”

You see, as a social psychologist and expert educator I know that learning happens deeply and meaningfully when the “What?” is intricately woven in to the “Why?” from the learner's perspective. (Incidentally, the more time and activity I dedicate to the exploration of “Why?” in my programs, the higher the participants seem to score in the post-event surveys. There's something there…)

I have two master's degrees – one in education, one in psychology. I've dedicated my professional career – since 1996 – to the study of optimized human performance and maximizing organizational potential. The two questions that drive my research, my writing, my coaching and my speaking are:

Why do you do, what you do?
What support do you need from your community/network so you could do that better?

A little about your organization

Founded in 2007 as an S-Corporation, The Jason Womack Company serves clients worldwide, advising and teaching them how to maximize productivity from three significant perspectives. We research and report on the: Psychology, Sociology and Technology of high performance individuals and teams.

Our seminars and coaching programs are presented in both English and Spanish, and have been requested in more than 30 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Western Africa. The book – Your Best Just Got Better – has been translated into Chinese, and is sold in more than 10 different countries.

Our online community coaching program – called Get Momentum – has more than 50 members, from around the world, who collaborate on productivity and organizational challenges each month via discussion groups and webinars.

An overview of your presentation

NOTE: The presentation I'm planning is 3 hours long…

I simply sent over a link to www.womackcompany.com/services

This “3 hour tour” is designed to showcase the two signifant factors of a most productive day:

Knowing WHAT to do (clarity in purpose and outcome)
Knowing HOW to do it (maximizing resources such as time, energy and focus)

Check that link above for more…

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You’re building something, now what?

Jason Womack — Thu, 23 May 2013 02:19:20 +0000

Recently, I spent another half-day work session with the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute. This was just a day after I spent a day in service to the F.R.E.I.N.D.S. and Fatherhood Program in the Bronx, New York City (of the Visiting Nurse Service-New York organization).

Those two experiences created enough notes, reflection and feedback to fill in more than 5 pages of my Moleskine notebook with ideas, possibilities and (two specific) projects.

What are you building?

This is a great question to get mentors to ask you…regularly.

Can you find someone to meet with you once a month for the next 5 months? That person who has “a little more” experience than you have, a bit more wisdom, and unique perspective on life/work/play/culture/future can offer you ideas and perhaps even push you toward a new direction; notice, I'm not saying toward a new destination, I'm thinking a new way of doing things that is going to move you along further…faster.

As an entrepreneur, I've been fortunate over the years to get some great counsel, sound ideas, and amazing feedback from mentors around the world. I hope that if there's something I could help you with you'll join GetMomentum.co and push to realize what it is you're building.

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Make More, Make Efficient, Make Less

Jason Womack — Wed, 22 May 2013 03:01:47 +0000

I know you’re busy. I know. Sit down with anyone – a coworker, a friend, or a mentor – and they are sure to say they are busy as well. With only 96 blocks of 15 minutes each, our day goes by so quickly; often, we wonder where time went! So, instead of getting frustrated, make three decisions.

There’s no lack of how much you COULD do, where you COULD go, what you COULD have. Choice making, full engagement and productivity are terms you will hear being used more and more. Now is the time to practice.

Make More

1. What do you want to make more of? In the book, I dedicate three full chapters to this very topic. You see, people I know (and the ones you know too) don’t just want to “make more money.” Recently, I asked a group of leaders in Zurich, Switzerland to write a list of “what they want more of. On the top of the list: healthy decisions, friends, vacation memories, family dinners, and opportunities for other leaders to excel.

Give it a try yourself. On a piece of paper, or in your journal, make a list of 5 things YOU’D like more of. Then, take an action today to get closer to one of them.

Make Efficient

2. What do you do, that you have to do, that could be more efficient. I attended a time management course years ago, and the facilitator said we “should rewrite yesterday’s to-do list on today’s calendar.” I remember thinking, “What? Spend all that time redoing something that was already made?” Today, I look at almost everything through this lens. It’s why I wrote the www.OutlookDashboard.com website, and make the videos on how to use the BlackBerry and iPhone more productively.

In chapter 6 of Your Best Just Got Better, I show you exactly how to track what you’re doing, so you look for places to be more efficient. I hope you’ll challenge yourself to this exercise. You may be amazed with the results.

Make Less

3. Just stop doing it! Ok, it’s kind of a play off of the Nike saying that I start the book with (on page 3) and a combination of something I learned from Nido Quibein some time ago: Make a “Stop Doing” list.

So, your homework, should you choose to accept it, would be to identify some thing you do, every day or multiple times daily, and cut it out of your routines. Not every day, and not forever. Find something that you do every day and do it more efficiently 4 days a week… let me know what happens!

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Are you faking it?

Jason Womack — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:15:47 +0000

Why do you want to be more productive? Really?

I read an HBR update recently, a quick note about a study coordinated by Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University. For quite some time, they have looked at the psychological effects of what happens when people are faking success. (Check out the link here.)

It got me thinking about the people who sign up for a workshop, buy a book, or subscribe to a program designed to help them improve, get better, and enhance their productivity. I wonder about the gap between them thinking it is what they should do vs. doing something significant to change the results their achieving.

I know there are three factors to initiating, taking on and experiencing significant change. Here they are:

Decide why…and then what.
Make small choices, consistently and unwaveringly
Celebrate, together.

What is your “So that…”?

First, Put off to the side the “what” you’re going to choose to focus on as you make this change. Do NOT make a decision like, “I’m going to stop procrastinating.” Or, I’m going to start arriving to meetings on time.” Or, “It’s time to get my life in order.” For too many people reading this, that kind of focus is not just unproductive, it’s downright defeating.

TACTIC: Frame your “what” in terms of a WHY. What we call the “So that…” acts as a magnet that pulls you toward your successful outcome by making it easier to make better choices that are on course toward your goal.

“I am going to work every day on the bigger, longer-term projects I’ve been given so that I show my managers that I’m responsible, and may ultimately be considered for a promotion.”
“I am going to arrive to the next meeting 10 minutes early so that I can be present in the room, and review the agenda and my ideas before we get started.
“I am going to meet with one of my mentors each month for the next 3 months so that I talk about my bigger goals and listen for their ideas and advice that will help me get there.

What are the small things you can do…every day?

Next, make those micro-decisions throughout the day that put on you course to achieve more of the tasks as they relate to your outcomes. The goal here is to gain momentum every day, knowing that as you progress through the project, you’ll get to the end and experience more success. Try this, you may find that at the end of more days you’re actually feeling the momentum of success.

TACTIC: Pick smaller verbs. On your to-do list, write down the smaller steps that would get you started on the medium-sized actions so you progress toward the bigger goals. The “smallest” verbs of action that I know of are: Call, Draft, Email, Review, Search for, and Read.

Who can you talk to, to tell you’re making progress?

Finally, Realize the power of completion…when it’s publicized. I renewed my focus on this last point after thinking a bit more about the article I read, The Counterfeit Self: The Deceptive Costs of Faking It.

TACTIC: Ask 3 people who are close to you if you can call them from time to time to “brag” about a project you’re working on. Instead of turning to a social media platform and telling the world all the great stuff you’re doing, you turn to people you’d consider a friend, or a coach, or a mentor. The purpose of this is very specific: they are the ones who will hold you accountable. (Share your wins, too much, with your social media world, and you may be accused of “tooting your own horn” too much. Share your wins with the people who have your best interests at heart, and you may wind up with ideas and counsel you never have received before!

Instead of faking it, ask yourself, “How real can I be?”

The Counterfeit Self: The Deceptive Costs of Faking It

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The ROI of Personal Productivity

Jason Womack — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:21:00 +0000

I know that you are very, very busy.

There’s a saying out there that you are not your job, but what you do, that makes up your living. So what we want to take a look at is, how does our time management, organization, and productivity — how is all of that combining to be of a benefit to us? I need you to study the ROI of productivity. Being efficient, being effective, managing our time, the ROI of productivity is not saved time. It’s not more efficiently run meetings. It’s not more effective travel or teleconferences or webinars. The ROI on productivity is building large chunks of time where because we were efficient, because we were effective, because we managed our time well, we now have these larger chunks of time to dive in and focus on one particular outcome, one particular project, one particular event.

There’s a book that I read years ago. I was handed this book from a mentor of mine and the book is called The Effective Executive. Now I’m sure you’ve seen it. It might even be on your shelf. If you have a copy or go get a copy, read chapter two. This book, The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker, chapter two is titled “Know Thy Time” and in this one chapter of this one book, Mr. Drucker made the case for me to really recognize where my time goes, and how I could efficiently use large chunks, larger blocks of time to work on my most important things. I call those my MITs.

The ROI on productivity is going to be collecting these large blocks of time, 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, 15 minutes there. If during the day, I can be a little bit more effective, if I can be a little bit more productive, and because of that, I get a 30-minute window available, well now what I want to do is I want to sit down and I want to use those 30 minutes, I want to use that large chunk of time to again dive into something of significance, to dive into something of importance.

I’ll give you this example. Have you ever had a meeting get cancelled about right before when the meeting was supposed to start? The 11 o’clock meeting and it’s 10:53 and you’re getting yourself ready to get your materials together and walk down the hall and then all of a sudden, there’s a notice on your computer. Someone calls and they say, “Jason, the meeting’s been cancelled.” There are three things you do, by the way, when a meeting gets cancelled just before it’s supposed to start. The first one we all do is celebrate. Woo-hoo! A little celebration, maybe a little smile on our face.

Why? Because we just opened up a one-hour block of time. The second thing that we all do is we leave the meeting on the calendar. Because if our team sees that we suddenly have an open block, well, they’re going to swoop on in and try and grab that from us. The third thing most people do when a meeting gets cancelled, about when the meeting was supposed to start, and by the way, this is the mistake we make — The third thing most people do is they ask themselves sitting in their space, sitting in their desk, they say, “What should I do?”

Now, I know a little bit about how the brain works. And if I give my brain a question, the brain is going to go answer the question and what’s the first answer that comes to mind when you have a sudden free block of a one-hour time and your brain says, “What should I do?” Most people answer that with a lower level, lower priority, maybe a lower developed outcome. And by the way, the answer that most people come up with is, “I should check email.”

Now here’s my question. If at 10:53, you had planned to be away from your desk, maybe you still had your mobile device with you but if you had planned to be away from your desk and away from email for an hour, and suddenly that hour opened up, why would I go check my email? The ROI on productivity is going to be what you do with that sudden block of time.

Now, it might not be an hour for everybody watching this video. It might be short bursts of 10 minutes here and 5 minutes there and 15 minutes at another time.

What I’ll encourage you to do is to be prepared for those little blocks, those little windows of time to see if you can sneak in, slip in, something that would be of a more productive experience.

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What if the impossible became probable?

Jason Womack — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:19:28 +0000

After attending Singularity University in 2011, the ideas coming from alumni all over the world continue to show us just how much is possible…Make that probable. Please take a look through these 23 slides; it will take you less than 3 minutes.

What do YOU think about this big goal?

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The Only Constant is Change

Scott Wasserman — Tue, 07 May 2013 04:44:04 +0000

When you think things “should” be different, it’s time to to make changes. However, you have probably already found that knowing what to do and “doing” what you know you need don’t always come together at the same time. Here’s how you can put action to intention.

Listen to this podcast below!

Subscribe to the Your Best Just Got Better podcast on iTunes to receive a new episode every Friday!

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How I’ve lent $25,000 to entrepreneurs worldwide

Jason Womack — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:09:36 +0000

Seriously, $27,150 is MORE money than I made my ENTIRE first year as a high school teacher.

And, thanks to this organization, I’ve been able to loan that much (and more!) to entrepreneurs around the world.

Would you give away more than $27,150?

In this brief video, I put my money where my mouth is. You see, I believe in making things better. Do you? Click here to watch the video. Oh, and if you’d like to get started and give away $25.00 to an entrepreneur (to be paid back so you can use that same $25.00 again!) click here.

Because I call myself your friend, you get that first $25.00 at no co$t to you; how’s that for cool?

I first discovered Kiva.org when I was visiting my parents one weekend a while back. As an “inbetween” news story (one of the few times I watch the nightly news is when I visit them!), I heard about this San Francisco based organization. The moment I heard of them, I went immediately to the Web site and start loaning to individuals and to groups. In the short video I made for you here, I tell you WHO and WHY I loan to; you might be surprised.

Look, it doesn’t take that much to change your world for the better. Make a loan, change your world. Then, go tell one of your friends; who knows, one little thing done 7 billion times today just could make things a lot better.

Would you share this with your community? Click here to tweet…

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In 7-minutes or less…an idea you can use!

Jason Womack — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:38:11 +0000

This is the “Best” Podcast, it’s based on the book and we call it Your Best Just Got Better.

In the latest episode, I want to share what I can all about how to:
Move your bigger ideas forward…
faster…
with fewer resources than ever before.

I know you can use this.

The idea I talk about here has made it possible for me to leave two jobs at the “height” of my career, start two companies, take a month of vacation every year, and more…

Enjoy.

Listen now! (Click here.)

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[VIDEO] Do you ever feel like your job eats into everything in your life?

Jason Womack — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:58:52 +0000

Thanks SO much to Jeremy for this opportunity to talk productivity. Please check out his other discussions here

If you’ve ever said:

“I feel distracted, I have too many projects and ideas, I get side tracked a lot , I find myself at the end of the day having a million screen tabs open on different browsers and have not gotten to them, I feel overwhelmed with balancing work and family.”

Thank this video course is for you!

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