18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done

But I wasn’t the person who needed to use it. Here’s what I figured out: My perfect is not their perfect. They don’t have a perfect. In fact, there is no they. There are two thousand individuals, each of whom wants something a little different. The more perfect I think it is, the less willing I’ll be to let anyone change it. The only way to make it

Delegating work to someone? Give him the task and then ask: Why won’t this work for you? When he answers, you respond: That’s a good point. So how can you change it to make it work?

A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine put 811 overweight adults through four different diets, each one a different proportion of fat, carbohydrates, and protein. The result? On average, participants lost twelve pounds after six months and kept nine pounds off after two years. No matter which diet they followed. Certainly, some di

Fifth, I had tremendous patience for things I felt were useful and enjoyable.

So there’s no simple formula that will get you through every situation you encounter. Well, except maybe this one. Before you do or say anything, ask yourself three questions: What’s the situation? (The outcome you want to achieve? The risks? The time pressures? The needs?) Who else is involved? (What are their strengths? Weaknesses? Values? Vulner

You’ll have an immediate, instinctive reaction. Maybe you desperately need the money to stay profitable. Maybe you believe that contracts should never be broken. Maybe you don’t trust your client; you think he’s taking advantage of you. But before you act instinctively, pause. Take a breath. Ask yourself the three questions. What’s the outcome you’

if you’re a manager, your first duty is to do no harm. A friend of mine, Kendall Wright, once told me that a manager’s job is to remove the obstacles that prevent people from making their maximum contribution. That’s as good a definition as I’ve ever heard.

herself. The only way people will use it is if they do change it in some way. The only way I will encourage them to change it and make it their own is if I make it imperfect. So I stopped the roll-out immediately. And I changed everything to make it half right, half finished. It wasn’t pretty, but it was usable.

Sixth, and perhaps most important, there was no downside. Nothing was lost by not multitasking. No projects were left unfinished. No one became frustrated with me for not answering a call or failing to return an email the second I received it.