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Getting Things Done

Lesson 2 Chapter 1 Module 1

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Hello, and welcome back. My name is Neil Morecraft, and this is Autom8. And in this module, we're going to cover getting things done, how to get things done. And I've got to talk to you a little bit about technique that I kind of developed, but probably nicked from someone else. I guess, after the many books that I've read called the power of six and what it is and how to use it. And then talk a little bit about time management. And then we're going to have a much deeper look into Asana and I'm going to help you build that project workspace and complete all the things in there so that you're starting off on the right foot. So, first and foremost, what is the power of six? Well, years ago my mentor told me to go away and sit under a tree and think about what I really wanted in life, because you know, like anybody in business, I guess initially my thoughts was I want to be a millionaire, you know, I want a million pounds and he asked me to go away and really think about that.

And what I thought about that I realised that if I just had the money and I had nothing else, I'd be pretty unhappy. And I really did visualise just myself in a room with a pile of money and then realised that that was totally the wrong goal and the money wasn't the goal at all. And as I started to really think about that, I thought, well, you know, what do I want? And as I went through that process, I realised that there were different areas of my life and that I wanted to have, be of sound, mind, body. I wanted to be fit. I wanted to have good relationships. I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to be a value in business. At last and least actually I wanted the money. So when I started to really think about that, it meant that I was able to divide things up into one of these six different categories.

So mind, body, personal lifestyle, business, and money. And I created a little folders for each one of those things. And I created a goal with each one of those things. And then I created six calendars. So I started to really utilise my time differently and understand the balance better so that I wasn't always thinking about business, that I was conscious of the times that I would go to the gym and the times that I would sit and meditate. And the times that I would just be grateful for things in my life. So I developed this power of six in terms of breaking things down into six categories. And then I took it a bit further and I looked at the six pillars of my business. And you see initially that there were eight and the kind of still is eight, but HR, I eliminated through a use of technology and legal, you kind of do it once and forget about it. But those other six areas of business, again, I'll break them down and I'll make sure that what I'm doing fits into one of those categories. And that really allows me to focus. And then I realised that if I concentrate on doing six things every day and starting with the most difficult, that I've actually be really, really efficient or quite productive. So that's what I started to do. And then I took it further than that. And I then worked six hours, not eight. Now I break things down into two hourly slots. So I'll work for a couple of hours. I'll have a break. I'll work for another couple of hours. I'll have a break at work for another couple of hours. And if I do that six hours a day in this way, really conscious of those areas of my life and what I'm actually focusing on I know that I'm going to get things done far, far quicker than I ever did in the past and achieve a lot more than a lot of people do sometimes in a year and perhaps even their lifetime.

So when you really start to understand this and this wasn't just my methodology, I mean, I'd read a lot of books and different mentors were telling me different things. And you know, a lot of this comes from Brian Tracy and his Smart Goals, or the way that you you know, prioritise tasks and stuff like that, but kind of wanted to make it my own. So as I say why this is important in this module and in this course is because as I say, this is not just about the transformation of your business, it's about the transformation of you, in your business of being able to reclaim your time and your life. And as I say, these six areas here made such a massive difference to me. But when I really started to understand, because at first I would see my diary just full up in here and I realised that I wasn't spending time with my kids and I wasn't going on holiday when I should have done and that I was focused maybe too much more than money. So I became very conscious of all those different areas. I created a sheet which I'll share with you, which is a statement of income and assets and that kind of stuff. And I just got really clear on what, where I was and where I wanted to go. And then I started to work very differently. And as I say, as I started to do that, I saw massive change in my life. And I, and I really hope as I say that you can follow those that methodology and see massive change in your life too. So that's the power of six. That's how I use it. You can choose to ignore that if you like, but as I say it really works well for me.

And you'll note that as you go through this content, you'll see this theme over and over again. So as I say, you'll see everything broken down into these six core categories. And ultimately, as I say, when you start to do tasks that they're in blocks of six, you can just get them done. When we talk about time management, of course we all get the same amount of time. So again, you know, a mentor told me years ago, you can't manage time but you can manage your activities in that time. And that is important. And as I say, I've really built this course so you can do the right things at the right time, in the right order. If you start jumping around, it's going to get overwhelming and arguably complicated, and potentially you're going to get frustrated. But if you don't and you just follow things to the letter, yeah, fundamentally this is very systematic. It's very methodical. And you can go through this process and get the result out at the end of it.

So on that note, we're going to dive into Asana and I'm going to show you exactly how to use this platform to your advantage. Now, as I say, I've got different projects going on in here. This is the project that I'm actually going to be using as a demonstration for this course, this is a new client that I've just picked up and we're just going to do a partnership, but this is a, so this is a new thing from scratch, if you like. And this is the template and it's a blank template. And as I say, I'm going to talk you through here very quickly, just so you can get an idea of how this works. So right now we're in this overview, getting things done. As I say in each week, there's the overview videos, and then there's the various different tasks. So as an example, now, we can put the date in here and say, the due date of this is today, that's fine. And then equally the due date for that is to date. That's fine. And if we want to, we can click in here, we don't need to categorise that necessarily, but we can click in here and say, right, that task has been done. Now we can set the status of these as in progress, waiting approval and that comes becomes more applicable when you start doing the tasks. So as we start to dive into things that need to be done, you can set a status on these and I'll show you how that works in a minute. But really what we want to do first is look at the due date and start from the back. So we might think like, when do we want this course complete? And I think this is going to take me maybe four weeks. So let's go to the end of the year. Right. And if I then work back from that, I know that if that's the final date I'm looking for, I'm going to want to activate my ads, maybe a few days before that I'm going to want to set up my missing letter campaign a few days before that I've got to want to complete this overview section maybe by Friday and so on and so forth.

So you kind of get an idea of what I'm doing now. The reason I'm doing that, is that when you look in your timeline view, you'll start to see that this will create a Gantt chart for you. And just give you a visual of where you are in the course. He says there isn't.Yeah. Like that's not giving me a visual at all. Why hasn't it worked? So another look of that, here we go.  

And you can start to see, now you can then start to move these around in here, if you want to, and you can make them bigger and you can put dependencies on them and all that kind of stuff. But the idea about doing this first and just spending a bit of time going through putting all of the right dates on it, it's that all of a sudden this project timeline will pop into life. It would also create those tasks within your calendar. So you can see what's going on. I don't personally use that calendar, but you might want to use that if you want to. And it will also keep a track in your dashboard of what you're doing and how you're doing it and all that kind of stuff. So it becomes a really easy way of managing the course tasks. So you can go into the module and look at the stuff that you need to do. And then you can dive into Asana, come into this list, view, know exactly where you're at and just tick these things off one by one, as you do them. And and that's about it.

So that's just the end of this very short intro video. I'm going to do another video in a minute on support, and then we're going to talk about effective outsourcing.

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