The Simple Truth to Accomplishing Significantly More, Faster
Dead Space is the real reason that the latest John Grisham novel is still sitting on your nightstand, why your half-written book manuscript is still sitting on your desk, why your start-up is six months from running out of money.
If you want to accomplish more in your life at a rate faster than you’ve ever imagined, you can. You have to kill the Dead Space. Here’s how.
Dead Space: the silent killer.
Most tasks in life are significantly easier than we’d like to believe. In fact, nearly every goal you have is really just made up a series of small decisions followed by short actions. However, it’s the in-between that consumes the most time. That’s the Dead Space.
For example:
- When it takes you three months to read a novel – did it really take three months? Or did it take three hours spread out over a three-month period?
- Or for those looking to write a book – does it really take two-years from conception to publishing or just a few hundred hours spread out over a two-year timeframe?
- Or for those looking to raise money for their start-up – does it really take six months or a dozen meetings over that six month period?
Dead Space could manifest itself in numerous ways, such as fear, uncertainty, lack of focus, distractions, limiting beliefs, waiting on other people, or even physical restraints.
It doesn’t matter what form this Dead Space takes, nor does it matter who caused it. The cause could be 100 percent your fault or 0 percent your fault – but if you want to accomplish significantly more in far less time, the solution is 100 percent on your shoulders.
Supercharging productivity.
So the simple truth to accomplishing more, faster is this: when you reduce the Dead Space, you reduce the time needed to accomplish your goal.
Dead Space is the reason why Parkinson’s law exists. Parkinson’s Law, if you are unfamiliar with it, is the adage that “work expands to the time allotted for its completion.” When you have less time to complete a task, you subconsciously decrease the Dead Space and knock it out quickly. When you have more time – you fill almost every moment.
Think of it: the last time you had a looming deadline, did you stop to check your Facebook every five minutes? Did you take a break to read the newspaper? Did you wait a week for a phone call back from your company’s legal department? Of course not! You got it done, no matter what it took.
So how do we reduce this Dead Space? It’s easier than you think.
Follow these three painfully simple steps and you’ll immediately reap the rewards.
1. Identify the next task.
Moving your goals ahead requires that you first identify the next step on your journey. What’s blocking you from finishing your goal? Get specific!
David Allen, author of the Getting Things Done, calls it the “Next Actionable Step.” Gary Keller and Jay Papasan call it “The One Thing” in their incredible book by the same title. It’s been called “MINS” – the “Most Important Next Step.” Regardless of the name, this is the very next item you need to accomplish to move forward toward your goal. And surprisingly – it’s usually something quite quick and easy to do.
It could be as simple as “pick up the phone and call mom” or “send an email and ask for a status update” to something more complex like “sit down and write chapter two” or “call Bill into the office and fire him.”
If you can’t accurately identify your next task, don’t feel bad; sometimes this can be tricky. Try asking a friend, mentor, business coach, or mastermind group to help. Sometimes others have a vantage point and can see the path more clearly than the wanderer trudging through the weeds.
2. Do that task now.
If you can do that incredibly important next step right now – do it. Not tomorrow, not tonight – now! If you cannot do it now, block the task into your calendar and hold yourself to it like you would a meeting with the Prime Minister.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until success is achieved.
The faster you can identify your next step and the faster you can schedule time to accomplish your task, the sooner you can get to your next step, followed by the next, followed by the next.
Before you know it, the project is complete, the book written, the new employee hired, the money raised, or whatever else your goal is – you’ve reached it.
Dead Space will occur in nearly every large project, but when you seek to minimise its potency, you will increase your own productivity. Projects that seemed overwhelming at first suddenly become bite-sized and manageable because the fluff has been removed.
So get into the habit of always asking what the next step is, and know that the clarity you find will lead you toward getting more things done in far less time.
And as, Tony Robbins says, “It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”