Part 2: Feed The Animals (FTA)
The second part of my daily action plan is something I call "Feed The Animals," or "FTA" for short.
Allow me to explain.
Before we moved to Texas, we owned a five-acre Christmas tree farm in British Columbia.
After a bear ate 11 of our 15 chickens in one night, the remaining 4 were too traumatized to lay eggs. So we fed and watered and cleaned-up after those free-loading chickens for months, waiting in vain for the laying to resume.
My point is this: animal feeding is a peculiar type of work. It isn't hard, or complicated. It isn't "game-changing," either. But if you DON'T do it… the animals die.
One day, when I was trying to explain to my wife why I had to duck up to my office for a few minutes to check on an advertising campaign, even thought it was a holiday, I told her it was like "feeding the animals." She laughed at the analogy… but it clicked for her.
It's been our humorous shorthand for tedious-yet-necessary forms of work ever since.
So, FTA is "Feed The Animals."
Part II: FTA
Here's how it looks on my one page action plan:
For me, I treat as FTA…
* All meetings
* Most phone calls
* Checking email
* Creating and reading reports
The key here is that I push all my Feed the Animals work to the afternoon, AFTER my Core work.
I limit myself to no more than 5 or 7 items… doing the mental math to make sure I'm not adding more than I can get done in my allotted FTA work window.
Why?
This is huge… the biggest secret to my system BY FAR:
I don't finish the work day until and unless my list is done.
EVER.
It's 100% execution, every day.
If something comes up… if one of the kids is sick and my workday gets thrown…
That means I go back up to my office after dinner, pick up the thread, and get the list done.
No matter what.
I used to treat each day's action plan as negotiable… working to "get as much done as possible."
But what I learned was this: that thinking will destroy you. It's a slippery slope… a cancer that slowly coopts the entire organism, causing it to rot from the inside out.
I KNOW THIS because that was my life in my twenties and much of my thirties.
Now don't lose heart: don't think for a minute that means this system depends on Herculean effort.
The secret to 100% execution isn't working crazy hours: it's shortening your to-do list.
It's in exercising extreme prejudice on what you will and won't put on your list… in not putting something on there unless you know you can and WILL get it done.
See the difference?
This daily action plan process is one of THE most powerful things you can do… so if you take NOTHING else from this series, do yourself a favor and TRY IT.
Now, a word of warning:
As powerful as this action plan is, it's just one part of my productivity system… the tip of the iceberg:
What you DON'T see is the page I write BEFORE this page…
OR the one habit that supports the entire practice (I'd never be able to execute 100% without it).
So, by all means, start using this daily action plan:
Just make sure to read the rest of the series as well, so you can gather ALL the pieces and leverage the FULL power of the system I'll be teaching you.
On the next page, I'm going to NAME AND EXPOSE the six biggest productivity lies you and I were raised with.
If you try to work this system while still under the grip and delusion of these entrenched lies… you won't get far, unfortunately.
I sure didn't.
What you're about to read on the next page is ugly, pulse-pounding, ire-raising stuff, so sit down and strap in:
