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4 min read Friday at Five: Finish Your Week Well

Friday at Five: Pea Pods, Steak Sauce, and Date Nights (but not all at the same time)

Happy Friday, friends!

Can you remember when you were totally overwhelmed? Aren't you doing twice as much now?

With a few exceptions, last year's craziness is this year's expectation. Last decade's completely overwhelming list is next decade's vacation. Life has a tendency to build on itself. And even a full calendar and list of great things can challenge the enjoyment.

We all collect tools on how to manage the load and enjoy the journey. I'm really excited about this week's Friday at Five because these are some of my favorites to help manage the load while enjoying the journey. Here we go!

🥩 Steak Sauce

To be effective, not only do you have to get a lot done. You've got to get the right things done at the right time. Over a decade ago, I read what is still, to this day, the most helpful guide to managing what I have to do. You can do this digitally or with pen and paper. The nickname is "Steak Sauce," and here's how it works:

  • List out all the things you have to do
  • Label them:
    • A: Priority, urgent, important, on fire
    • B: Important, can wait if need be, smoking
    • C: Unimportant, needs to be delegated or wait for longer, cold
  • Take your A's, and add a number to each based on priority. (A1: Most important, A2, next most, etc)
    • Do the same with B's and C's
  • Attack A1 (A1 Steak Sauce... get it?) with vigor. Attack A2 right after. On down the list.
  • Manage the Bs
  • Delete, Automate, or Delegate the Cs
  • Keep your list in front of you at all times.

This works because it keeps the important things important and the less important on the back burner. Clarifying this each day really does make a huge difference. And once you find your steak sauce, you can apply the pea pods:

🤔 Pea Pods

Maybe you, like me, struggle with figuring out how to do what you need to do in the time you have. About eight years ago, I read the second most helpful insight when it comes to productivity. It stacks on the first, and it involves pea pods. This combines two ideas:

  1. Pareto Principle - 80% of outputs come from 20% of inputs. (A philosopher and mathemetician named Pareto discovered that 80% of his peas came from 20% of his pods. Then he discovered that ratio lives pretty much everywhere else.)
  2. Parkinson's Law - A task will swell to the time you give it. (Most of us give too much time to ourselves and others.)

Now, to combine them. First up: what is the 20% of what you do that creates 80% of the results? Do you know right off the top of your head? If you work 40 hours in a week, 8 hours of your time creates 80% of your results. What makes up those 8 hours?

Secondly, take that 20% and give yourself stupidly aggressive deadlines. If you think it takes 2 hours for one of those tasks, why can't you do it in 90 minutes? How about 1 hour? If you have an hour meeting on that list, could it be done in 45 minutes? 30 minutes?

Could you produce 80% of your results in 4 hours of your week?

📚 Entreleadership and The Four-Hour Work Week

Both of these books were phenomenal reads all the way through. Here are the links. I'd recommend both:

❤️ Date Night

Life isn't all about productivity. Relationships make it all worth it. Shelby and I are in a crunch season of parenting young kids, but we're working to keep each other first. Here's a picture of a date night we do that's inexpensive in time, energy, and money.

Here are a few things we do:

  • Put on music instead of TV so we can focus on each other (unless Great British Baking has a new episode...)
  • Get a dessert or beverage.
  • Play games. We bought a 12-game set of chess, checkers, Chinese checkers, mancala, etc. The point isn't the game. The point is to interact. Shelby crushes me in checkers every week, so please send tips...
  • Conversation cards. We have a deck of conversation cards that ask great questions. We enjoy letting something else pick the topic (we've been entertaining toddlers all day) but still having a good conversation.

🏃🏻‍♂️ Quick Tips on Running

I find myself rehearsing several quick tips on running repeatedly as I get into conversations about it. Here are a few thoughts for my aspiring running friends on things you might not know:

  • You're Tying Your Shoes Wrong - Use the Runner's Loop.
  • Alternate Shoes - Buy two pairs of shoes. Never run two days in a row in the same pair. This wears the shoes out faster and works your feet in the exact same way. Keep your body guessing.
  • You're Breathing Wrong - Try rhythmic breathing. I don't get side stitches anymore.
  • Register for a Race - Nothing will get you out of bed faster at 5am than knowing you've set yourself up for a day of reckoning a few months from now if you don't.
  • Weather Training - "There's no such thing as bad weather. Just soft people." If you scheduled a run, go running because race day might have that same weather. You want to troubleshoot anything that could go wrong ahead of time.

Finish your week well!

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