Index Trivia

It’s fascinating looking through the index of my new book. It was produced by a professional indexer so it’s quite an eye opener to see what random words and themes in my book were seen fit to index.

I had to scratch my head with a few of these to remember why they are in.

Here’s some odd ones:

James, Sid (p62)
Jellies (p164-165)

Then a couple of companies get a mention:

Innocent Drinks (p46)
Spinvox (p111)

And then of course, the real important bit in any business

Coffee Shops (p121)

And then the growing importance of the T word:

Twitter (p45, 92, 101)

JUGGLE TAKEAWAY #1 Ask Yourself: 'Where Is The Value In What You Are Doing' (right now)

With lots to do, one of your biggest challenges in juggling is not so much what to do, but more importantly what NOT to do. Choose to spend time on ‘the wrong stuff’ and you’ll be wasting your time.

How can you ensure you focus on the Right Stuff? Apply value criteria in calculating what is a priority. Is the boss or client screaming for something? Is there a courier waiting outside for it? For everyday task prioritisation and ‘Do I do this now?’ stuff, you need to constantly ask this question:

‘What or where is the value in what I am doing. Right now?’

Apply that question to dealing with that email, browsing that website, attending that meeting, seeing that supplier. You have to be ruthless with your time (and in ‘play’ too). That doesn’t mean rule out everything else; it just means make sure you know there’s value in all you do. You can still take that ten minutes to browse FT.com over a coffee or to take half an hour to go for that run. Because both of those have value (hey, take ten minutes for a power nap, so long as you benefit from it!).

Ditto with tasks, meetings and projects. Value may not always be strictly about the bottom line, but other benefits. You have so many opportunities to evaluate, you have to – and in a flash – decide and prioritise. You have to make choices constantly.

We are all aware of the stuff that can take over our day. The stuff we don’t really need to, but get sucked into it. You need to try and eliminate distraction.

Stuff like random web surfing, browsing Facebook aimlessly, watching that ‘Father Ted’ clip on YouTube, anything that will give you cause to procrastinate what you are meant to be doing.

The other day I decided I needed some new office furniture. I can’t remember what prompted me to do it there and then but I drove to an out of town store, found nothing. Wasted time. Drove to another store. And then I got frustrated, at 40 minutes in, and then 90 minutes in. How did I get sucked into this? What was I thinking? All that time invested and nothing back. I should’ve just looked online or thought about where I wanted to go before I started.

Asking the ‘where is the value?’ question is another way of looking at the much talked about 80/20 rule; the principle that 20% of your efforts is responsible for 80% of your success. It’s maximising that 20% and reducing wastage.

Also try asking yourself, ‘is what I am doing now making a contribution to what I am all about’? Sitting in this meeting, hanging out with this team, delivering this project, making this phone call, is this part of my DNA, is this who I am? And if you feel, 'this isn't me?' then act on it. Get out.

Use these criteria to make sure what you’re doing now has a pay-off. That pay-off might not be today, might not be next week, but somewhere, where is the Return On Investment? It doesn’t have to just be financial; it might be stimulation or fulfilment.

If there’s no return, dump what you’re doing.

Me & Business Books

Although I have had a long-interest in all things businessy, I've sometimes been a bit cynical about many of the titles that take up shelf space in a business section. Evangelical titles and cheesy covers with promises of how to make a million or be a super success. Cynical because I don't think you can 'learn' business like that. But there are some business writers that I have always had time for, two of whom I discovered in the late 80s while at college -Tom Peters and Charles Handy. Neither of these business gurus spoke in a cheesy language, their style was down to earth and the simplicity of their messages really struck a chord with me. Peters especially became a great source of inspiration throughout my early days in junior management when I was literally handed a directorship with zero guidance or mentoring. Tom Peters filled that vacuum. I was so fired up by reading his 'Liberation Management' I bought a copy at Waterstone's and presented it to my boss, I just wanted to share the Tom Peters gospel with someone. I stuck a post-it on the front cover signposting 2 case studies that had really spoken to me. Unfortunately my passion fell on deaf ears and he never acknowledged the gift; I think he always misread my intentions and thought I was telling him to polish his own management skills (I wasn't).

When I started working for myself I enjoyed Peters' series 'Reinventing Work': I loved the style and format of those little hardback books. I picked up the first in Borders in Palo Alto on an inspiration trip to California when - paradoxically - I was in the book store researching titles in pursuit of writing my own business book, then billed 'The Self Sufficient Entrepreneur'. Reading that first one on the 'plane back to London it helped give me the confidence to shake things up and reposition my business based on me. It was the start of a journey, and I don't just mean the flight. I forgot the idea of the book and reinvigorated my own business.

And then last year suddenly - and strangely - my own book appeared on in the business section of Waterstone's and Borders. My first book 'Leap!' was never meant to be a great work of intellect or a big idea; it was very much my own story, written like a blog but it helped readers change their own working lives giving them the confidence to take the leap to work for themselves. I kind of felt it was like the book 'The Best Friend's Guide to Pregnancy' that I gave my wife when she was pregnant with our first child, not a how-to guide, but a book offering you advice, tips and inspiration. And now my second book 'Juggle!' is somewhere between a warehouse and book stores in the UK.

So as I look back on my relationship with business books it's great to have a companion to review some of the classics, remind myself about the key messages of past reads, see what I've missed and identify some new books for my must-read list. 'The 100 Best Business Books Of All Time' by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten segments their selection in different genre categories offering the reader 'what they say, why they matter and how they can help you' in short, punchy chapters. Each chapter is a really good tease, communicating the essence of each book and some key points. Not only have they created a really useful guide, but they've also created a great looking book in design and layout (something that is really important and often neglected). It feels good to read. I've only just started flicking through it but already it's made me want to pick up a Guy Kawasaki book.

There's a really good website for the book at www.100bestbiz.com

I'll end with a quote from Charles Handy that Jack Covert reminded me about in his review of 'The Age of Unreason'. As ever, Handy was formulating ideas ahead of his time. Here's his take on the changing landscape of work (published back in 1990!):

"Now for the first time in the human experience, we have a chance to shape our work to suit the way we live instead of our lives to fit our work. We would be mad to miss the chance".

Thanks

I am enormously grateful to Dylan and the team at Change This for publishing my manifesto ‘Living The Juggle Life’ this week. I have had some great feedback and comments both on Twitter and through blogs that have put posts up; it’s great to take my ideas to a wider audience and gratifying to hear they resonate with so many.

Writing my book and banging the Juggle drum as I go about my daily business can be tough, and it’s great to get such instant feedback from people via the PDF Manifesto format. And that’s what Change This is all about, spreading and sharing ideas, what a great idea in itself.

Here’s just a couple of the blogs that have posted about it:

http://likke.info/2009/02/broke-laid-off-live-jugglers-life.html

http://glimpses.squarespace.com/journal/2009/2/12/going-forwards.html

How Martha Lane Fox Juggles Karaoke with M&S

This week’s ‘Juggle Tapes’ interview is with Martha Lane Fox. Martha is one of the UK’s best known entrepreneurs. She was a real icon of the dot com years having co-founded the travel website lastminute.com. She now juggles a business portfolio that includes running a karaoke business Lucky Voice (or as she prefers calling it, ‘a singing business’), being on the boards of Marks & Spencer and Channel 4 as well as having a charity foundation Antigone that provides funding to criminal justice charities. She juggles a portfolio that enables her to dip in and out of different interests, she talks about being excited by change and growth and – like everyone else in the series – says you should ‘only do stuff you are passionate about'.

Here are her thoughts on juggling:

‘You need to be brutal about what am I actually good at and what do I think will add something to the various things I’m doing’

‘it hadn’t been my plan to have a portfolio of interests quite so young … but things happen and you deal with them’

‘(Work and life) is knitted together; we’re lucky to have tools to live life in a more integrated way’

‘One of the great joys of having all these different things to do is that you can juggle them and you don’t really switch off’

‘By being across many different things you bring something a bit more interesting to each thing you’re doing’


WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE

CHANGE THIS!

I am pleased to announce that the influential ideas-sharing US website Change This has selected ‘Juggle!’ as a manifesto published today on their website.

ChangeThis is an online media source that was initially founded by Seth Godin and exists to spread ideas that change minds and improve lives. Each month, they publish between 4-6 manifestos in PDF format. Manifestos, usually between 2,000 and 4,000 words in length, appear in a wide range of topics from business and technology to parenting and politics. They have nearly 20,000 notified readers and subscribers and the site shows a history of over a million and 1/2 downloads. Publishing a Change This manifesto in a downloadable PDF form is an innovative way to get your ideas out to a new audience.

You can see a summary of the 'Live The Juggle Life' manifesto here http://changethis.com/55.01.JuggleLife

And get a 10 page full PDF of the Manifesto here http://changethis.com/pdf/55.01.JuggleLife.pdf

Why Harry Drnec prefers instinct to market research.

Episode ‘5 in our Juggle Tapes series is with Harry Drnec (ex Red Bull, Sol Beer, Gallo Wines). Going through the archives prior to the intetview I found a cutting from The Independent On Sunday 1992 in the ‘My Biggest Mistake’ column. In this piece Harry tells the story of whilst working for Gallo Wines he made the mistake of listening to research rather than his gut. Click on the article to read it.

“My biggest mistake was in allowing market research to dictate one of my major decisions ... Where I went wrong was in allowing a system to dictate my decision. Now I know why I hate market research. ... If you know your business well enough, you ought to be willing to take a chance on a product that you believe in”.

The Harry Drnec video interview goes live Friday 27th February on Viddler.