Time Management within the Pop-A-Lock Box

GTD: Time Management within the Pop-A-Lock Box

In a recent exchange with a franchisee, they asked me ‘How do you keep up with all this stuff?’ I gave them a quick history on my background and the simple philosophy that I have adopted. Additionally, I have some pretty neat tools that I’ve picked up that help me keep track of things. As a disclaimer, I get less done than what I would like, I feel some sense of guilt nearly all the time for not ‘doing’ enough ; be that at Pop-A-Lock, at home or with my family. I always feel as though each day is my last. I’ve felt this way since I was about 15 years old and don’t really know why, I had no significant event that I can remember…the feeling just ‘popped’ up on me one day and provides some sort of ‘fundamental drive’ to most of my actions and interests.

So the base ingredient of the ‘system’ is a day to day near death experience type of motivation to ‘do’ stuff.

Next, Interwoven into that is a strong commitment to not letting down Carl, Steve, Don, Jim Fetherman, Paul Sewall, Sam Landers or any of the other franchisees that play such an important part in my life. In the back of my mind I hear a constant mantra…If you don’t help these people in your own particular way, who else will?

The System: I give full credit David Allen and his book GTD (not a self help book) for systematizing many of the process below. I (and probably you) have hodgepodged together many of the same concepts own my own from other sources such as Officer Candidate School and super high intensity training at the University of ‘Trial and Error’.

Rule 1: Collect every thought, every input, every request, every suggestion, every complaint and every piece of feedback into a ‘trusted system’. For me this is surprisingly a very non-technological device; a small hardcover notebook. The purpose of the notebook is to get everything OUT of my head because if I don’t I start committing items to memory through repetition and review. This mental effort of reviewing ‘what’s next’ and ‘don’t forget’ items is very disruptive to any productive time I have. By getting it out of my head, I can step back look at the items and work on them in a more logical manner. I don’t go through a lot of ‘preparation’ or use a special planner with prioritizing letters etc. Those things have always seemed to waste more time. On the electronic side, I do use Outlook to create emails to myself as described in more context later.

The second step is determining if something is ‘Actionable’, in other words is the stimuli that I am getting require some physical action in space. If not I do one of three things with it:

-I delete it, throw it away or otherwise decide that there is nothing to be done with it. The phrase ‘get into empty’ is associated most closely GTD. This goes for your inbox, your calendar, your notebook whatever. If it can be deleted…get rid of it so it doesn’t take up space in your mind. However, I never actually delete anything I just move it to delete and can pull it up at any time later but it is clear of my ‘Mental Ram’ so I can torture myself with other projects and Next Actions.

-I file it away as Reference. Thanks to Google Desktop I do this pretty liberally in the My Documents folder because with Desktop I can find it later by using keywords. Outlook is also very helpful for this as I have one folder that says ‘reference’ that I throw anything that I may need to look at later in it. Google desktop also indexes all Outlook mail.

-Sometimes I’m not sure if an input is actionable or not, for these items I open a new outlook email make a quick note on it then drag it over to my calendar, put it on a ‘recurrence’ reminder for some interval say once a week for certain items, maybe as long as a year for other items. If it is ‘just not that important’ then I will fold the page over in my notebook and every several months I’ll flip through my bent pages in my old notebooks and see what I ‘thought’ was important at the time. The best most powerful aspect of the ‘drag and drop to the calendar’ is that I can ‘Fire and Forget’. Often times when it Pops on my calendar I have some new information or perspective on the issue that will allow me to delete it.

The second ‘rule’ is that if something takes less than 2 minutes to accomplish…I just do it. There are hundreds of things a day that people ‘put off’ because they think they are prioritizing but actually they are just using ‘planning’ as an excuse to procrastinate.

A common challenge to this practice is: If I keep stopping what I am doing to do these little things, then I’ll never get anything done.

There is something to be said about staying focused and ‘on task’ however, there is a little hidden truth here: If you really intend to do both tasks, then there is only one way to ‘waste time’…that is by putting off the 2 minute task. If you continue to ‘revisit’ or have to set up a reminder or ANYTHING except just doing the task…then you have truly wasted time.

This is a lead into the misunderstood term ‘Multi-tasking’, very few people multi-task. I do many true multi-tasking for example: Brushing my teeth, putting on deodorant and watching the morning weather. However, what most people refer to as ‘multi-tasking’ is the ability to quickly and fluidly shift from one task, to another then back the original task without much ‘friction’ or loss of efficiency. For many of us that means, quickly switching from talking to a customer, to looking up a keyblank, to sending in an order, then putting ourselves onsite and taking care of the issues at hand.

A choice: If it takes longer than 2 minutes then I decide if it is a Next Action or a Project. The two aren’t really different except for the ‘scope of work’ involved, however every project has a ‘Next Action’ at the very front of it.

Next Action: Is a physical action that occurs in space and whose description is normally started with a verb: Email, Call, Write, Order, Read, Go to, Schedule flight, make reservation. I avoid what Chris Appelton the San Diego franchisee refers to as ‘Orwellian’ speak, which is characterized by fluffy words like: Coordinate, Plan, Arrange, Review or Foster. You don’t ‘coordinate’ you call someone, you email someone else, you speak to someone in person. This is most closely associated with a ‘things to do list’ however, most people’s ‘things to do list’ is really full of fluffy stuff.

A Project is a multi-step action and I can use my ‘fluffy’ words to describe that but it has to be composed of Next Actions, for example:

Project: Coordinate Baltimore 2009 tow show with Tony
-Write email to tony with suggested agenda
-Call Scott to verify his needs and intentions
And so on.

The concept of ‘Waiting for’ is a status of an specific next action in a project. From the above example of the Tow Show, a ‘waiting for’ is “Waiting for decision by tow show personnel if they are going to allow us to use a room if we aren’t exhibiting. These are the nagging little things that can drive you crazy trying to ‘follow up on’. For me these are the bane of my existence, because I know that most people aren’t carrying on their day to day business the same way that I am and resolving that 2 minute issue will be put off by them for days, weeks or even months before they respond back. However, there is a good way to deal with these issues, for me I drag the email with the substance of the project into my calendar and set a reoccurring reminder on my Outlook so that instead of me nagging myself…I nag the person who I am ‘waiting on’. Often times people come to the realization that you mean business and really need an answer and it is easier for them to address you than to ignore you any longer.

Waiting For usually takes one of two form ‘delegation’ and ‘depending on’. The first one is when you are in some leadership role and have to delegate tasks to others. Whereas the second one is a ‘followership’ role where you are dependent on someone else to do something but they are outside of your sphere of influence. Depending on can range from Waiting on a boss or partner to do something, an outside agency, a skillset provider etc. Sean is a good example of that for me, there are many things that we do that I am ‘depending on’ Sean to accomplish, Royalty Adjustment on 411 is a good example of that type of project for me.

Managing large projects taps into another level of skillset but for the most part the same general rules apply.

Scheduled Review: I look at my stuff constantly in real-time, however I have a pop-up that comes up twice a week during the week and I have a specific time on the weekend that I just go through everything. This usually generates a lot of deleting and crossing out because they were things that were ‘actioned’ already and no longer need my attention. The physical action involves going through my email in-box, going to the last page in current notebook and going through my calendar deleting or changing stuff. When I get through with this I usually rewrite my ‘next actions’, putting at least one ‘next action’ from any current projects and my mind is at ease.

Troop Leading Procedures

Another time tested and battle tested process are the 9 Troop leading procedures. It is a systematic combination of the two old axioms: The Best Plan rendered too late is worthless and the first casualty of any war is the best laid plan. I have always said that these are more ‘descriptive’ than ‘proscriptive’ in that they describe what is ‘supposed to be going on’ however direct application is never perfect…big however If you miss any steps you are likely doing something wrong.

I have encountered many people in many different walks of life and violation of these troop leading procedures appears to be a rampant problem, particularly omission of steps 2 and 3.

1. Receive the Mission: This sounds like a passive step but it is usually the first mistake people make. They don’t actively think about what someone is asking them to do, they misunderstand, they don’t capture the details in a trusted system. I can’t count how many new owners have sat in SFA and not written down a thing they encounter, I know they didn’t retain the material because when I ask basic question at the end they cannot answer them. When you are listening for understanding, it is ok to not take notes but when you are listening to ‘receive the details of a mission’ it’s best to capture those items.

*However, the most important aspect of receiving the mission is the ‘brief back’, this when you state back to whoever you are dealing with what you perceived they just told you. It is surprising how often this prevent some major misunderstanding, however many people don’t do it because they didn’t understand and are trying to cover up for the fact they weren’t paying attention, they are embarrassed to ask clarifying questions or they simply don’t really intend to do anything about it anyway.

2. Make a Tentative Plan: Many people, even ‘seasoned’ operators skip this step. They jump straight into researching and trying to dig up all the details on an issue. In many most of the procrastinators I deal with this is their fatal flaw, they don’t want to commit to a simple course of action early on in the process…because they might be wrong.

3. Give a Warning Order: This is letting the people involved in some process know that ‘change is coming’ that ‘action is soon’, this gives them time to begin processing information and taking actions at their level. If it is a subordinate leader under you, then they should be going straight to Step one of this process.

4. Start Necessary Movement: This is the stage that regardless of what specifics you are doing, you likely need to get in place. For us it is things like exchanging contact information, making sure you have your ‘beans and bullets’, setting up accounts, getting credit card processing going, contacting the phone company to find out what information you will need etc.

5. Conduct a Reconnaissance/Research: This is when you begin your strong due diligence, getting the part numbers, going look at the job site, going to a company webpage to see what they are about, contacting other franchisees, calling SFA for questions and support, going to a meeting, meeting with a realtor, meeting with a dealership employee etc.

6. Complete the Plan: This is when you finalize what your next actions are going to be, create time lines, draw the layout of the building, prepare the final order, get the final feedback from anyone you are consulting with on the project.

7. Issue the Plan: You let everyone know in detail what you is going on, what you are asking them to do, what they can expect, answer their questions.

8. Rehearse the action: GET YOUR BRIEF BACK from your subordinates, subordinate leaders, cohorts, partners or others involved to ensure they know what is going on. Test the projector, email the instructions to yourself to see if the format looks correct, send them to someone else to make sure they can read the attachments, do a mock sales call with a teammate etc.

9. Supervise and Refine the Plan: Make it a point to touch back each person to ensure that things are going as intended, if not identify the problems, seek solutions and refine the plan and keep others abreast of ‘Changes’ (I know these as Frago or fragmentary orders).

In summary, these are just some ‘hacks’ that can help you either get more things done, or far the less motivated…get the same things done with less hassle/problem/stress. Warning: The subtle questions “Is this actionable?” and “What is the Next Action?” become very dominant in your thinking. I know that I have personally ‘put people off’ because they frequently confront me with ‘non-actionable’ input and I don’t tend to play along (for long)…I’m polite, smile and say ‘Ok, all that sounds good, but no real action needed?’ This is a brief back to confirm that what they are talking about is not ‘actionable’ and that no ‘next action’ is required. It can come across a little stiff but probably helps both parties.

Follow Up: If you would like to learn more do an internet search for GTD you will find a ton of information...but don't look too much go GSD: Get Something Done.

www.popalock.com

There is no substitute for a SINCERE desire to take care of customers. The motivation to ensure that customer, clients and accounts are taken care of properly and promptly is what drew me to Pop-A-Lock and has kept me here. When everything is said and done, nobody but nobody follow through for customers as much, as frequently or with the same degree of alacrity as the team at Pop-A-Lock. If you need a locksmith please consider using us, we love to prove that the needs of our customers are THE FOCUS of our entire business.