My GET IT DONE System In A Nutshell (Part 1 of 2)
By Bryan Ward, Husband, Father of 4, Inc. 500 Entrepreneur, and Founder of Third Way Man
I used to be the WORST procrastinator.
I'm talking a whole 'nother level of dysfunction… as in waiting so long to change my watch after daylight savings time that it synced up again six months later 'cause I'd never changed it.
Yeah. Like that.
I use to blame it on being a "creative type."
The REAL reason? That eluded me for years (more on that in a minute).
I tried every productivity system you can think of.
I read "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey.
I read "Getting Things Done" by David Allen.
I tried day-planners, tickler files, productivity apps, and every time management method under the sun.
And I was still a frustrated, procrastinating, nothing-to-show-for-it-all mess.
In the next few pages, I'm going to show you the breakthrough system I developed that works specifically for busy dads, so you, too, can seize the opportunities around you and GET IT DONE.
To kick it off, I'm going to give you the crown jewel of my system: my daily action plan process, captured on one piece of paper.
It's embarrassingly simple… and it has absolutely changed my life.
Thanks to this one piece of paper, I…
* Grew a client's company 10X from $20K to $200K per month in sales in 6 months
* Cofounded a health supplement company and grew it from nothing to $33M in annual sales in 5 years, earning a spot on the Inc. 500 and 5000 list two years in a row
* Spent over $1M a month (profitably) on Google AdWords
* Wrote copy that brought in over $3.3M in sales
* Generated over $1.2M in affiliate commissions
* Sold over 240,000 books online via paid advertising
…all while working roughly 6 hours a day (sometimes more, sometimes less).
Given my distractibility, and laziness, and the fact I have a wife and four kids, age toddler to teenager…
…I needed a system that was simple, effective… and Bryan-proof.
After years of trial-and-error, I finally nailed it.
Here's my favorite part… my one page daily action plan:
(See, told you it was stupid simple…)
Now I'm going to break it down for you, one part at a time, so you can see the elements that make it so powerful.
Part I: The Core
The first part is what I call The Core:
What's the Core?
Put simply, it's the "legacy-grade" work that SHOULD constitute the core of your workday:
The big, bold actions that change the game and create legacies…
…the work that builds empires…
…the work with the potential to OUTLIVE you.
For me, that means…
* Writing content
* Writing sales copy
* Creating and refining the vision
* Selling products and services
* Brainstorming new products, collaborations, and strategies
* Finding talent
Notice that CORE work comes first, before FTA (I'll unpack "FTA" in a sec).
There's a reason for that: these are the FIRST THINGS I do every workday.
BEFORE my meetings.
BEFORE I pick up the phone.
BEFORE I read the reports.
And, most definitely, BEFORE I check email.
Not just because I'm at my most creative and productive in the morning, but because this allows me to plant my flag on each and every workday:
To say to each and every distraction… to every person who would happily derail me, "this day is MINE, not yours."
Notice also that there are only THREE action items here.
That is by design: a minimum of 3 hours dedicated to a maximum of 3 tasks (I actually prefer ONE task, done for three hours, for ultimate work flow).
So… that's the first piece.
If you do nothing else but block off your morning to do CORE work… your life will change DRAMATICALLY.
Of course, that isn't the only piece of the puzzle. You're a dad, after all: your life is busy, and complex, with multiple demands…
…which leads us to the next part:
Part II: FTA
What's FTA?
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."
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:
