Professional Coaching Blog

Let’s face it – no one enjoys interviews. They’re awkward, stressful and time consuming. In many (but not all) hiring cases, they’re a necessity.

This cartoon is a funny example to illustrate how you can create a memorable interview that reveals if the person you want to hire is right for the job. It’s both a metaphor as well as a practical example. In this instance it’s appropriate if you’re hiring for a position that requires the person to be able to read instructions, have manual dexterity and patience!

When I was in the printing industry, I had 3 or 4 specific tasks I would give a candidate at the first interview. All the tasks were designed to weed out the inexperienced or unskilled who “oversold” their abilities by revealing their deficiencies.

For example, I would ask them to open a ream of paper – if they proceeded to peel open the wrapping paper, I would stop them and end the interview.

I would ask them to stack a pile of a few hundred A4 sheets that had been collated, but were not neatly stacked. (There is a specific strategy to do this.)

These are revelatory and instantly assessable – they are pass/fail with no grey area for misinterpretation.

Every industry, profession, trade or process has tell-tale habits and techniques that you can use to quickly assess a person’s skills, abilities and aptitudes.

Ideally, you create 3 or 4 to ensure that the analysis is multi-dimensional. In my case, I had 4 tasks and a candidate had to pass 3 out of 4 to continue to the second, short list interview.

I worked for an IT company that had a technical proficiency test that you had to get 17 out of 20 to proceed to a second interview. PhDs would often struggle, obtain a score of 15 or 16 and would be rejected – to their utter bewilderment.

A process is a process and if it works to acquire the skills, aptitudes and capabilities you’re looking for – stick with it!

Of course there are thousands of personality and behavioural tests that can complement this approach, but that’s a discussion for another blog post!

I have mixed feelings about willpower and it’s importance in goal setting and achievement. The main reason is that if you have a clearly articulated goal, outcome or dream you want to achieve that really excites you, you don’t need any willpower to get it done.

Willpower to me is an excuse for impotent goal setters.

Without exciting goals you would need willpower to get motivated.

For example, I don’t smoke. It takes no willpower for me to avoid picking up a cigarette, cigar or pipe. The same is true for overeating. I value my vitality, health and wellbeing so much that I don’t overeat or abuse alcohol or other ‘substances’.

If you’re struggling with willpower and are trying to harness more of it – you’re probably heading in the wrong direction.

Focus on your goals, dreams and aspirations instead.

When you do, you’ll find an unquenchable thirst for achievement that will create relentless enthusiasm within you and you’ll be of the same point of view that willpower has no place in genuine and authentic achievement that is congruent with your life’s purpose.

Give it some serious thought the next time you think you’re lacking in willpower – or when you see someone with very little of it.

Share these thoughts with them because that’s what someone did with me when I was a teenager and it changed my life and perspective forever.

Back in the days before the Internet, there was a time management concept I heard about called the “1 Touch Rule”. Simply stated, it meant that when a paper came into your IN Tray (or on your desk), you were supposed to deal with it the FIRST time you touched it, hence the name – 1 Touch Rule.

I totally understand that at first, it’s much easier said than done, but with practice it gets easier. In fact, you’ll quickly reach a point where you simply won’t touch anything UNLESS you can deal with it in 1 TOUCH.

One of my pet peeves is people not managing their emails. They open them, skim and close them WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING other than wasting time. The next time they go to that email is the SECOND TIME = another waste of time.

The 1 Touch Rule led me to create a concept I call Gap Management. In simple terms, it means using the gaps that occur in all our lives. For example, if I got a message to call a client, I would do it when I knew I would get his/her voicemail. I would leave a FULL message so he/she could deal with the issue BEFORE they called me back – avoiding telephone tag and another multi-touch scenario.

I teach these strategies in my Platinum Program. All I can really do in a blog is introduce the concept and let you know there is a better way to get more more things done in less time. At my workshops, over several hours, I can explain and show you how it’s done with real case studies and examples as well as answer your specific questions. Contact us if you’re keen to learn how to get a lot more done in less time.

I know what you’re thinking… This is just another motivational play on words. It’s not. I mean it, I’m dead serious.

This is one of the most important time management lessons I learned early on in my career. When I got out of university and the whole world lay in front of me and my career was just starting, I wanted to ‘do it all’…

The problem is – there are only 168 hours in a week.

So what’s a driven, ambitious go-getter to do?

Simple: Apply the concept of Concentration Of Focus. Do one thing and only that one thing until you master it and can do it exceptionally well BEFORE you start something else.

Easier said than done when you have multiple interests and a lot of enthusiasm!

One of the strategies I use to ‘park ideas and concepts’ is to write them down and explore them in my journals. By writing them down and adding to them whenever I get a flash of inspiration helps me remain on focus with my current, primary goal or outcome.

I’ve achieved a lot by anyone’s standards and yes, I have achieved multiple goals simultaneously, but each one was accomplished with laser-focused discipline within the context of this philosophy.

I see it all too often, people flip flopping all over the place, trying to run a business, make money online, trading stocks, buying real estate with NO FOCUS OR DISCIPLINE.

They attend all the free weekend events and seminars hoping for the next big thing and off they go in 1, 2 or 3 different directions.

They are called DABBLERS.

I could go on and on about this, but I’ll save you the rant.

All I want to say is what’s in this blog post title – to get more done, you have to do less.

That means you need to cherry pick what you’re going to put your time and effort behind UNTIL you succeed at it.

What you’ll realise is that you might not be willing to do what it takes and you’ll need to switch to something else.

That will help you to better select your outcomes and goals.

One thing is for sure, if you don’t have Concentration Of Focus, you’re sub-optimising your results.

If you want more guidance on subjects like this, I offer a wide range of Business Coaching and Mentoring Services.

Australia’s intelligence is dropping. Not the general intelligence, but a specialised type of intelligence that is essential for Australia’s economic and general prosperity.

It’s a drop in the natural and intuitive comprehension of technical systems. For years it has been implicitly assumed by educators that engineering students have this comprehension. Even though this is really no longer the case, there has been no major change in the education (primary, secondary and tertiary) system to compensate.

To many of us, this might not seem like a major issue. However, without well-trained engineers (and other technologists), Australia won’t be in a position to develop the new technologies that make it easier, faster and cheaper to do things. When it becomes easier to do anything (travelling through a city, making a product, building a house or sending information electronically, for example), it naturally becomes more affordable.

And those who know how to make it easier not only improve the wealth of society, but are soon in a financially better situation themselves. The value of engineering – and its effective education – to a country is obvious once you think about it.

Nevertheless, because of the drop in the average comprehension of technical systems within our society and no effort to account for it, we cannot hope to produce the quality of engineers that we once did.

This started more than a decade ago.  Clint Steele recalls a lecturer of his about to use a component of a car to explain a phenomenon, but then catching himself and making the comment that ”students don’t work on their cars the way they used to”.

It is harder these days to work on your car or to fix your appliances or garden equipment. These days things just aren’t made to be repaired.

Obviously, the typical exposure to the inner workings of technology that the average Australian can expect growing up is reducing.

In his article, Mr Steele reveals a division where the cars are made of paper. Their design is remarkable, but because the students build the car by simply putting the parts together, they gain insufficient technical expertise of how the car was actually engineered. In other words, they gain less technical aptitude because they are removed from the creative process of engineering.

Without exposure to technology and how it works, young Australians will neither develop an interest that will motivate them to pursue a related career or develop an intuitive understanding that will let us develop the excellent engineers that are so vital to Australia’s future.

For some time, we relied on country students (who gained the required insight from working on farm equipment) and the rare students who maintained an interest in Lego or Meccano to an age that some would consider unhealthy. But these students are becoming rarer.

This reduced interest means students don’t consider engineering until later in high school, and often don’t take the ideal subjects in their final years (physics, chemistry and mathematics). The result is that the entry standards for engineering courses are reduced, and exacerbate the problems already mentioned.

Teaching technical skills in engineering degrees is too late; without the early interest in technology, students just won’t develop the interest and motivation that will encourage them to select the ideal subjects for an engineering degree, let alone the intuition essential for excellent engineers.

If we don’t take this aspect of education just as seriously, Australia will struggle to remain competitive.

That’s why my blogs, programs and events are so vital for engineers to consider – to maintain and further develop the highly sought after skills that employers are willing to pay a premium for.

According to sound and acoustic expert Julian Treasure, working in an open plan office decreases your productivity by 66%… Watch this short video that can help you improve your personal productivity.

Someone sent me this link which is a great metaphor for someone contemplating a career change.  The average person will have multiple careers, changing jobs every 6 to 10 years and careers between 2 to 4 times. Furthermore, people should expect a career change to take between 2 to 6 years to implement. Click here to get a priceless lesson.

You simply have to watch this video to realise that we all have an accent – the only question is which one?!?!

When I talk to my clients about productivity, efficiency and effectiveness, I triangulate or combine the Pareto Principle, Goal Setting and several other strategies in a concept I call Voluntary Simplexity. It has its foundation in the movement from the 1980s called Voluntary Simplicity that was made popular with the International Bestseller “Your Money Or Your Life”.

When you apply it, it slows your life down, much like the slow-motion effects in the movie The Matrix.

Imagine being able to live life with that level of confidence, peace and serenity, all without compromising results but improving them. Have a look at my personal mastery website and you’ll see the holistic approach I take to business growth.

Neo And Agent Smith in The Matrix