Episode 43 Getting the Most from the New Year

In Top Form Podcast

Today we look back over the last few years of the show and select some of the best tools, techniques, strategies and tactics for getting more out of your business, professional and personal life in the areas of profit, marketing, fitness, health, communications and negotiating skills, goal setting, systems, and more.

Some principles and techniques apply across business and life. Since it’s New Year’s Eve let’s start with goal setting and systems.

Goals vs. Resolutions and Goals vs. Systems

Goals and Goal Setting:

Better Ways of Creating goals –

Common: I want X result

Better: I want X result by Y date

Better Yet: I will do the following to achieve X (Measurable result) by Y Date

Superior: What systems and actions can I create/do to achieve X [measurable goal or more/better] by Y [specific time frame OR SOONER]

Systems vs. Goals

Frameworks for organizing/optimizing Information You Use

Meta Level Principles – These are built upon natural laws. They are the most important drivers of your thinking and behaviors and remain true in most cases, and across time and experience. You may get better at understanding and articulating them but they rarely change.

Example: Building discipline and the idea that discipline is the source of freedom is a meta principle that makes business and life better. Another example would be optimism. Hiring for optimism and developing it in yourself are both scientifically proven to be beneficial and

Strategies – These are high level thinking and can be applied consistently for better results. However, they strategies you use may work better I some circumstances than others

Example: Do more of what works and try to eliminate what has been repeatedly proven to fail. In business this assumes for example that you’re watching data and that you notice who your best customers really are and what problems they have that you can solve. The you stop spending on advertising and marketing to others who consistently fail to buy.

Example: Using software and automation in your business systems is strategic. Choosing which systems to automate is a strategy. The particular software you use is a tactic and how you use it is also tactical. So that brings us to…

Tactics – These are the hacks, tricks, and individual tools that can be guided by meta principles and strategies. They need to be monitored and evaluated constantly. They often need to be varied to respond to changes in the environment/workplace/market

Meta Level Secrets:

Frameworks – For stories, ads, marketing, blogs, etc.

Algorithms- Yeah or Hell No” Derek Sievers

Resources:

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Wilink

http://amzn.to/2lE30oP

The Language of Parenting by Dave Frees

http://amzn.to/2iJQZeg

Silent Power by Stuart Wilde

http://amzn.to/2zM9WTL