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Milestones
Let's talk about milestones. And the question we ask here: What are three subprojects that I can commit to and complete? The two words that I'm always looking for with milestones: What, by when? What, by when? Now, the first two questions are setting me up to win there. So, as I start to think to myself, wow, what do I want to be known for, and I shared with you I wanna be known for qualifying to race at the Olympic-distance level at nationals for triathlon, which I actually, I did. So, this year, I was qualified to race next month in Cleveland, Ohio. But I wanna be known as a triathlete who trains healthy. So, in May, I injured my arm, so in May, I had to make the decision I wanted to be known for competing at the Olympic-level distance triathlon. But I wanted to be known as a triathlete who thinks about his future and races and trains healthy. So, I withdrew the submission. See, when you think about milestones, when you think about mentors, when you think about motivation, it all sta...
rts to come into play. And we have to make some hard decisions. Probably the hardest decision that I know that my clients have to make is what not to do during the day, especially those of us who are building up something new in a new company, those of us who are building something that's ours or ours. The beginning of the day, my goodness, one new email can change the trajectory of everything. How do we hold fast, how do we hold to? And so, this concept of building up milestones. Why don't we take the energy, the momentum that we're building, through the afternoon, through this course? And you've got those known fors, those roles that I asked you to scribe, to write down a little bit. Now would be time to pick one, pick one. So, if you've been with us through the whole course, you remember I had a volunteer come up, and we talked about a couple of roles, one of them was world traveler. Or you could take one of the other ones. And what I invite you all to do is to identify what are, by role, three milestones that you can look at and go, yep, within X number of days, I think I should be about here on that, by Y number of days, by Z number of days. Now, notice I left this blank up on top because I need you to fill that in. You had put out there 36 months, so why don't we just roll with it, 24 and 12, so that way we get our three. So, if up on top you, or I guess, if you have the world traveler, great. In 36 months, this is the magnet, this is the, sorry, did I just totally fall off the screen? That's the magnet, that's the flag that we're marching toward. What could I imagine we being able to commit to and make progress on within two years? I know it's big, what could I imagine? We might be able to hit by one year. So, again, I'm just gonna getcha kick-started, give you about 45 seconds for this here in class. You've got, in the handout, a matrix for this. For those of you who are tuning in online, just pull out a piece of paper, give yourself a little matrix; down the left-hand side, your roles; across the top, periods of time that work for you. Is that a month, a quarter, a year at a time? And then, just to get you started, what are some of those milestones, subprojects that you can work toward? And for those of you online, one of the things that I encourage you to do, fill out this matrix and socialize it. I mean, heck, if you wanna put it up as a picture on CreativeLive, and tag it on Instagram or Twitter, we would love, as a community, to see what you're working on. And remember, you're just one awkward eye-contact session away from someone being able to help you with that goal, with that milestone, with that subproject. So, let me leave you with a couple of tools from this area of milestones. We wrote about this extensively in the book, so I wanna give you little bit of background here. But in this book called Get Momentum, we spend quite a bit of time talking about this thing we call the 30-30 Rule. Now, the 30-30 Rule, it is defined very simply. The 30-30 Rule is me spending 30 minutes talking about, working on, diving into, researching, discussing, brainstorming, imaging in, I could keep on going. It's 30 minutes where all I'm doing is looking at something that's 30 days or more away. And by the way, that's why I asked you to get these milestones. Because if you can leave the course, if you can stop the video, if could sit down with a mentor and you can say, hey, within 45 days, here's where I know I need to be, what can I spend 30 minutes on this morning? What can I put on my calendar and spend 30 minutes on this weekend? Now, every now and then, someone will ask me, "Jason, what's the magic behind 30 minutes?" The magic behind 30 minutes is it's long enough to actually get in. I don't know about many of you, but for me, if I have a 10-minute gap between things, let's say I have a meeting scheduled at 10, another meeting scheduled at 11, and I end a little bit early, a seven-minute gap, I'm not gonna really pull out the article that I'm working on, the web edit that we're thinking about, the new client acquisition plan. But if I had a half an hour built into my day, what could I pick? And this is how it works: Open up your calendar, go out 30 days, or 42 days, or 68 days, doesn't matter, go 30 days or more into the future, and you're gonna ask this question: What will I wish I had started thinking about, working on, researching, discussing, et cetera, sooner? Now, here's what I know about this process. If you'll look at your calendar, if you'll open up and go 30, 45, 60 days out, and you ask that question, I promise an answer will come to your mind. Wow, we got family comin' to visit, I will wish we had started workin' on cleaning up the back room. Wow, we're takin' that trip to the East Coast, well, I will wish we had started lookin' at tickets to see what play we wanted to see. Wow, school's about to start, for my parents who are watching or in the room, within 30, 45, 60 days. And, by the way, let's change the pronoun. For those of you who are working together, what will we wish we had started thinking about, talking about, or discussing sooner? So, for me, this idea of spending 30 minutes at a time, where I get to look out into the future, it allows me to do, one of my favorite quotes of my seminars, it allows me to control the controllable because I know chaos is coming. I can promise you, in the next 30 to 45 days, I'm gonna get an email, phone call, text message, someone's gonna knock on the door, and they're gonna present me with an opportunity I didn't see coming. So, that means that 30, 45, 60 days from now, I need to have handled all the birthday cards that I need to send, I need to have handled the car reservation that I need for the city I'm traveling to, I need to have handled submitting the workbook to the client that needs it. In fact, what I think the 30-30 Rule does best, is it helps me not have those days every day. I don't know if anyone's ever had one of those days, where it seems like out of the blue, everything is now due. Speaking of milestones, I'm gonna pass through this slide, but I have to say it out loud. If ya like the 30-30 Rule, you're gonna love the 90-90. And here it is: 90 minutes where I think about, work on, research, discuss, talk about, something that's not due for 90 days. Here's the little difference: When I do a 30-30, I'm very OK doing that on my own. I can hold my attention for 30 minutes, I can usually be that disciplined. Once we get to 90-90, I need someone else with me. So, I'll do this with a colleague, I'll do this with a client, I'll do this with a vendor. A lot of our vendors that we hire all meet monthly, maybe every six weeks for 90 minutes, and we're not workin' on what we're workin' on that week, we're lookin' at three or four or five months from now. And I know when I do this together, it goes a long way in helpin' me out.
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Sylvie Leroy
Worthwhile and interesting. Lots of great ideas to implement. No waste of time during all the course. Thank you!
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