The Little Book of Less=More (How
to change your life by doing less)
January
Less=More: FUN, 85 Years Old, Visualisations, Affirmations, My Possibility,
Change Now! Have a Break, Roles in Life, My Updates, Organic Growth, More, Self
Promotion, More of the Less Bit, Organic Goals, Goals, Vision and Action,
Newspapers, TV, Sleep, Less, Introduction.
Feb Less=More:
Attributional Thinking, Success Motivates, Motivation and Luck, Mind Maps,
Priorities, Word Strings, Conscious Competence, Morning Pages, Unblocking The
Artist (Creative Expression), Mix with Positive People, Winning Formula – If
you want something doing then do it yourself, Confidence, Perspective, Work
Patterns, People, Awareness, Synchronicity, Breaking Promises!, Equal =, Play
Big in Life and Shine Your Light, What’s the Worst that can Happen?,
Perception, Good Days and Bad Days.
March Less=More:
Perfectionism, More Georgia, He’s Stupid Enough to be Neutral, Move On,
Anti-Role Models, Role Models, Sunshine and Vitamin D, Risk and Failure, Twix,
Doing Less Again!, Fitting it all In, Family, Paradox of Leadership, Commit,
Timetable, Neuro Linguistic Programming
(Six Step Reframing Outline), FreeCell, Quality of
Time, 2 Chairs, 3 Perspectives, Motivation Again!.
April Less=More: Sharpen the Saw, Reframing,
What Can You Give?, Action not Words, Play to your Strengths, Windsurf or
Cycle, 5 Memorable Things per Year,
Legacy, Anger, Commitment Again, Just Do It!, Roller Coaster Day, Smile,
Live Today, Animal, Dreams take time to come true, Eat LESS, Form Storm Norm
Perform, Shoot for the Stars and Hit The Moon, !, Get Up
Early and Go Out for Breakfast, Book Shop, Top Dog, Underdog, Parts of
Yourself, I Can’t Even Motivate Myself!, Myers Briggs, Beware of Symptoms and
not Cures.
May Less=More:
Having a Child, Group Psychology, Peer Mentoring, More Chaos Theory, Pain to
Change, Repeated Patterns, Tension for Change, Don’t believe the Hype, Looking
Forward, Be Careful of What You Ask For, Nothing, Coaching, Rhythm, Energy
Level, Hitting the Low, and Dreams, Give it a Go, Change, Can You Face What
You’ve Become?, Just one good thing each day, Yet More of the Less, Degrees of
Separation, Give and Take, Bad Hours, Be
Honest with Yourself, Sleep, Chaos Theory, Dreams Coming True Again, Draw a
line now and Start Again, What is it You Really Want in Life?, You are what you
Eat, Roller Coaster, Commit and all else will follow.
June Less=More:
Fate, Motivation Quote, Call Reluctance and Motivation, Kick Start, What Colour
is Your Parachute?, Best Use of Time, Nothing to write about. Baby Grounding,
Have a Dream, and Put in the hard work and it pays off later, Possibility
Again, Open your mind, Easy Networking, Luck, Joy, Money, Beating Oneself Up,
How to be an Artist, More Chaos Theory, Having a Child, Group Psychology, Peer
Mentoring, More Chaos Theory, Pain to Change, Repeated Patterns, Tension for
Change, Don’t believe the Hype.
July Less=More:
Back to Less, Hang in There, Back to my Goals, Conditions for Lack of
Creativity, Creative Watersheds.
August
Less=More: Perfectionism, Think Big, Time Out for Nature, Scott Adams, Making
the Time, Home by the Sea, Bouncing Back, Catch Phrase, Adversity, Coincidences
and Public Speaking, Life Plan.
Sept Less=More:
Have you plateaued?, Creativity, Life and getting on with things, Action Fork,
What do Dream Mean?, Tired, What God Wants, What really matters, If you keep on
doing what your doing, What’s Important?, Kick Starting Yourself, First Things
First, Sharpen The Saw and Set Goals, Will you have any regrets?, Persist, What
Matters?, Just Write, Setbacks, Gut Feel and Luck, SuperNetworkers, Complete
One Thing Every Day, Pushing the Boundaries again, Think Big, Commitment
Phobics.
Oct Less=More: Spooky Contacts, Problem Solution Problem, Going off at a Tangent, Circle of
Innovation, Life is too
short to be jerked around, Public/Professional
Speaking, Business Mix, What Kind of Animal are You?, Time Planning, Covey’s
Weekly Planner, Unlimited Resource, Personal Mission Statement, Moneymaking, Profile, Not Enough Time, Oprah says, 5 Things
Everyday, Personal Mission Generator,
What’s getting Tony, Con’s History Teacher and Michel
Thomas, Plan the Big Things First,
The best way to predict your
future is create it! Response-able, Homeward Bound, Walking
in Sunshine,
Thursday 31st October 2002
So I took all the
people I want to contact, family, friends, colleagues, clients, and put them
into Outlook Tasks, to contact them on the appropriate rotation.
And what is
amazing is that before I’ve contacted some of them, who haven’t spoken to in
weeks and months, they contact me.
Spooky.
One person, I
don’t have their new email address or number, and hey presto, they contacted
me.
ESP Outlook
Tasks.
Cool.
Well done
Microsoft, you’re even having influence on the unknown forces and spirits,
though some claim you already talk to them!
Wednesday 30th October 2002
Did you know that
the solution to your problem results in your next problem.
So if you leave
you current employment because you hate your boss, guess what, you get an even
worse boss for the next job!
If you change
jobs because there’s too much paperwork, then guess what, you get more
paperwork in the next job!
What’s the
solution?
Stop running away
from the problem.
The more you run
away from the problem, the more the problem resurfaces elsewhere.
Resolve the
problem, don’t run away from it.
Learn to get on
with your boss, resolve what’s not working.
Learn to love
paperwork!!
Face up to what’s
causing the problem, don’t run away from it.
Otherwise you perpetuate
Problem Solution Problem Solution Problem.
I just thought of
another example which is common in I.T implementations.
Our forecasting
system isn’t accurate, so let’s install a new forecasting system.
The issue is not
the system but the forecasters. Crap in,
Crap out.
All too often,
I.T is installed to improve a problem that is wider than just an improved
system.
Tuesday 29th October 2002
Today I did what
I wasn’t supposed to do.
Instead of head
down and working, I developed my all time England Football team.
I’d done my all
time Man Utd team last year and somehow lots of work happened after it.
I picked my team
this morning, and strangely enough after having a play for so long, I started
to work on my big big project which I started today.
So there you
go. Letting myself play paid off, big
time.
Monday 28th October 2002
I was listening
to my tape of Tom Peters’ Circle of Innovation.
It’s more
brilliant now than when I first heard it, even though it’s 5-6 years old.
I must listen to
it tomorrow and put some quotes in here.
Sunday 27th October 2002
That’s all there
is to say on this subject!
No, there’s a bit
more to add.
If people don’t
have the intelligence to see when their on to a good thing, then no amount of
convincing from me is going to change that.
So why waste my
time.
I’m not going to
waste my time.
Time is the most
precious thing we have.
Thursday 24th October 2002
The following are
the 8 competences required for public speaking, according to National
Speakers Association.
It’s no good
having one competence without the others.
Food for thought.
Wednesday 23rd October 2002
Where do you want
your business mix to come from?
Where is your
business mix coming from now?
It set me
thinking being a trainer where it is now and where I want it to go to.
0% 1-3 Hour talks
100% 2-3 Day Workshops
0% Coaching
0% Product (Tapes, Books, Website)
Where I'd like to be in 5 years time is,
40% 1-3 Hour Talks (Big Guru on stage)
20% 2-3 Day Workshops
0% Coaching
40% Product
What’s your business mix now and where would you
like it to be in 5 years time?
Tuesday 22nd October 2002
I was asked last night if my work was an animal
what kind of animal would it be.
I couldn’t think at first.
My old images of the seagull and albatross.
The seagull scavenges on the beach and shits on
everyone! Action!
The albatross flies high and glides for
months. Vision!
But the reality is what came to mind is a Three
Toed Sloth.
Slow, lazy, methodical, difficult to shift, and
sleeps a lot!
Monday 21st October 2002
I’ve spent a lot
of time organising my time yesterday and today.
But it seems to
be paying off.
A mixture of
Mindmap, Weekly Planner on a spreadsheet, and Outlook for calls.
I finally worked
out what works for me with setting up a cardbox on Outlook.
I’ve never been
able to find something that works.
I’ve set up the task
list just for making contacts on rotation, as soon as I’ve spoken to someone, I
set a reminder of when to call them next.
The key has been
to not put action tasks other than contacts into the task list.
More importantly
is my weekly plan to include the big things in life.
Guess what my
number 1 priority is and I did something about today?
Georgia, my
daughter. I went out and bought the
elastic bands that I’ve been meaning to buy to secure the cupboards, and also
fitted locks where needed.
Amazing what a
bit of planning can do.
Consequently,
I’ve made quite a few phonecalls today, though many people are on voicemail or
in meetings.
I hate leaving
messages in case they don’t come back to me.
All credit to
those who did come back to me!
I finally started
my work on who is Tony and why let him Sales Train you document.
I realised of
course that this is my most important thing to work on, workwise, but I mustn’t
let it put me off making the calls.
Sunday 20th October 2002
Tomorrow I’m
going back to Steven Covey’s weekly planner, taken from his books, 7 Habit’s of
Highly Effective People, and First Things First.
It’s about
planning your week around putting the big things first, the Important/Non
Urgent items, the ones that get you in the end, and become urgent.
It’s all about
realising what your roles are in life and integrating them into a whole
week.
You can’t just be
successful at work to the detriment of family, nor the other way round.
It’s about
balance.
I have so many
things on at the moment that I’m using this planning to help me out.
I’ll say some
more on it this week.
Friday 18th October 2002
Two interesting question from yesterday,
“If I had unlimited resource, what would I chose to do?”
“When I daydream, what do I see myself doing?”
Those have really
set me thinking. Very expansive
questions.
My initial
answers were,
Writing, Internet
Surfing, Travelling in Australia, Sea, Ski, Windsurf, Buy lots of software and
play with it, Gadgets, Time with Annie and Georgia, Read, Legacy, Give Big
Talks.
Writing books and
articles, Coffee Shop, St Kilda Pier with Mark, Website, Sport.
Thursday 17th October 2002
I’m reading more of
Steven Covey’s First Things First, and there’s an exercise for generating a
personal mission statement.
First answer
these following questions….
Phew. Got that?
Now answer them and you are on your way to your mission statement!!
For further help,
buy the book, or go to the franklincovey
website, or use the Dilbert
Mission Statement Generator.
Wednesday 16th October 2002
There’s a good
book to read on “how to make serious money”.
It’s Ken Blanchard’s – Big Bucks
Two of the rules
from the book are,
The two seem
contradictory but the first is about identifying where your heart is, what
you’re passionate about.
Once you’ve done
that, the thing is you can set up a business and enjoy it with passion and
following your heart and having fun, but unless you focus on the moneymaking
then your work becomes a hobby and goes nowhere.
Do you get
it? If you don’t, go buy the book. Buy
the book anyway!
Tuesday 15th October 2002
Bala sent me his
profile.
It has the
following headings which have sent me thinking about what I’d answer;
Sunday 13th October 2002
“Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same
number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller,
Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci,
Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
- H. Jackson
Brown
Saturday 12th October 2002
"If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that will suffice." - Meister Eckhart
Thanks Oprah
Friday 11th October 2002
Every day write
down 5 things you are grateful for!
As a start these
are mine today,
Thursday 10th October 2002
Hey, check out
this Personal Mission Generator.
Look what it’s done
for me!
Personal Mission Statement
To find
happiness, fulfilment, and value in living I will:
Tony thinks is creative, dependable,
and faithful.
Georgia thinks is fun, witty, and
wise.
John thinks is creative,
enthusiastic, and proactive.
Annie thinks is caring, committed,
and giving.
Not sure about
it, too many words and it is the first draft.
Wednesday 9th October 2002
Sometimes the
best thing I can do is write about what’s happening for me and my process,
after all part of my purpose in life is;
“to improve the
quality of people’s lives, by example.”
I’ll come back to
that one later.
I rollerbladed
(in the sun!) for the first time in months, it’s the first time I’ve done any
exercise for months.
It was great to allow
myself to make some time to do it and take in the successes I’ve had over the
last 6 months.
It also helped me
gather my thoughts, as I bladed from North Rd, Brighton, to St Kilda pier,
where I sat down and made my plans.
Firstly I
restated my possibility;
“Who I am is the possibility of Integrity,
Creativity, Inspiration Love, Fun.
This is who I am.”
It’s a bit
difficult to explain a possibility and how it’s developed.
It’s about seeing
those words as possible for myself, others and the world at large, not matter
what.
They’re the words
that get me, that capture my imagination, that I believe in.
What struck me
when I wrote them down today was how much they’re coming true since, I first
developed them in 1999.
I then checked
out my purpose in life which came to me on a train going to Moorgate in 1995,
whilst reading a book on developing a purpose in life.
“To provide health and security for my family
and close friends.
To be a teacher and leader. A Guru.
To improve the quality of people’s lives
by example.’
Providing health
and security sounds a bit God-like but what I mean is the key reason I’d like
to earn loads of money is to help my family and friends, be it a financial
problem or a health problem.
It’s amazing how
the teacher and leader thing is coming true since I’ve written it. The guru thing, I’m not sure what I mean by
it, just something higher than a teacher and leader.
It’s a paradox
between not trusting those who are in public eye, and wanting to be up there
myself in the public eye. I want to make
a difference.
To improve the
quality of people’s lives, by example.
That one’s the easy bit to explain.
You can’t make people change, the best I can do is lead my life in such
a way that people say Wow I want some of that, and in the process by following
my example they improve their own quality of life.
I then looked at
my roles in life. I checked them with
the roles I’d developed from reading Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly
effective people.
My roles were in
2001, Moneymaker, Personal Development, Husband, Trainer, Coach, Leader and
Guru, Sportsman, Health.
In order to keep
my roles to 7, I’ve changed them to;
Father, Husband,
Provider/Moneymaker, Trainer/Coach, Speaker, Writer, and I’ve moved some of the
other areas like Sportsman and Health into Sharpen the Saw which has 4
elements;
Physical
Mental
Spiritual
Social
Next, I answered
this question from Stephen Covey’s First Things First.
“List the three or four things you would
consider “first things” in your life.”
Annie and Georgia
Making a
mark/legacy/creating something
Quality of Time
My Health
I had a think
about what is there a demand for in the world out there that I can supply.
I know what the
demand is but I haven’t formulated the solution yet.
And finally, I
thought about some of the adversity I’d gone through in my life and I how
overcame it, and how I want to express in terms of showing others what is
possible.
29th
September 1977
29th
February 1992
31st
July 1998
6th
November 1998
June 1999
Leading to 17th
December 2000, and 24th September 2001.
Phew! That’s an interesting day’s work!!
Tuesday 8th October 2002
I was talking to
Con last night.
He told me about
his history teacher at school who on the first lesson, asked everyone if they
wanted to be here in his class.
He asked them
again for the second lesson, and gave them the option if they didn’t want to be
there to go and play footie, soccer or something else and he’d supply the
equipment.
By the end of
term everyone was committed to history and staying long after the lessons were
supposed to finish.
Brilliant. Gaining that level of commitment from people
by offering them the choice.
It reminds me of
a documentary I saw a few years ago on Michel Thomas, who claims he can teach French to someone in
10 days, or less!
One of the things
he does is allows his students to decorate and furnish the room however they
want it to be so that they feel in control of their environment.
The other thing
he says to them is that if they can’t remember something then it’s his fault
and not theirs. He’s not taught them
right rather than they’ve learnt it wrong.
He takes away the
responsibility for learning from his students and places it on himself.
Again Brilliant.
I thought he died
a few years ago, but looking at his website I’m not sure!!
Monday 7th
October 2002
If you want to fill a jar with stones you have to put the big
stones in first, and then the small stones and sand can fit round them.
If you do it the other way round, you can’t get the big stones in.
In other words, you have to plan for the big things first in your
weekly schedule. If you don’t, you won’t
be able to fit the big important things in.
These are what Covey calls the Non-Urgent and Important items,
Quadrant 2.
I’m just going back to my weekly planner to set it up starting
with my roles on life, and then my goals for those roles and then putting some
of them on to a weekly plan and filling it in with the daily Urgent and Important
tasks.
Big Stones first though.
Sunday 6th
October 2002
“The best way to predict
your future is create it.”
Brilliant. More Stephen
Covey.
If you want to shape your future then say how you want it to look
and it starts to happen.
Use your creativity to say what you’d like for yourself and the
world.
Thursday 3rd
October 2002
“Between
stimulus and response, there is space.
In that space is our power to choose our
response.
In our response lies our growth and our
freedom.” Stephen Covey-First Things
First
At first that sounds a bit dull, but
just as Stephen Covey who found that quote realised; it’s profound.
We have freewill we are response-able,
we choose how we respond to stimulus in the moment before response.
As we decide to smoke, or eat too much,
or murder, or rest, or go to bed early, or love, we have choice to exercise, a
conscious choice.
And it’s that that gives us our power
and destiny, or as Covey puts it,
“Independent will is our capacity to
act. It gives us the power to transcend
paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle
rather than based on emotion or circumstance.
While environmental or genetic influences may be very powerful, they do
not control us. We’re not victims. We’re not the product of our past. We are the product of our choices. We are response-able to respond, to choose
beyond our moods and tendencies. We have
will power to act on self-awareness, conscience, and vision.”
Wednesday 2nd
October 2002
I want to get home
and put my feet up and recharge my batteries.
I learnt to slow down today, to not
worry about the plane journey being in a propeller aircraft with 2 stops
in-between.
I looked out of the plane window, on to
the Great Barrier Reef, the sea, and the coast, and slowed down and thought.
Sometimes we need to slow down a bit and
stop rushing around so much.
I’m beginning to find Melbourne and
Sydney as bad as London.
Tuesday 1st
October 2002
It’s amazing how a
walk in sunshine can change your outlook on life!
I was running a training group today in
Cairns.
It’s amazing how these people are laid
back and open to new ideas.
They’re chilled. They’re fun to be with.
Why are the big city dwellers so serious
and take things so literally?
The pressure of big city I guess?
I thought I moved away from that when I
left London, but I’m beginning to wonder if Melbourne and Sydney aren’t more of
the same.
Perhaps it’s just me.
Perhaps the sunshine has gone to my
head!