Lifehacker on 30 Days of Getting Results
Lifehacker is hot.
Just when I forgot about how hot it is, I noticed that I got 31,000 page views in a day for 30 Days of Getting Results.com
I got curious what the buzz was about.
It turns out that Melanie Pinola of Lifehacker, wrote an announcement:
This 30 Day Program Teaches You to Get More Things Done the Agile Way
Beautiful.
And true.
After all, 30 Days of Getting Results is my ultimate self-paced training program to help you master time management, master productivity, and master work-life balance.
That’s quite the tall order.
Anyway, I noticed some interesting comments in the post, so I thought it would be worth elaborating on some of the big ideas, important concepts, and points of confusion.
The Agile Way
30 Days of Getting Results is based on the book, Getting Results the Agile Way.
Getting Results the Agile Way is not about how to do Agile development. It is an “Agile for Life” guide. The time management and productivity approach inside is Agile Results. Most importantly, Agile Results is a personal results system for work and life.
It will help you do things better, faster, cheaper, and most importantly … it will help you focus on meaningful results and impact, not just getting things done. It’s also a continuous learning system, so if you are a lifelong learner, this will help you learn things better and deeper.
(Note to insiders – the “enso” on the cover of the book is actually a symbol of enlightenment, but I went with the loop to imply a loop of learning and continuous improvement, which Agile Results is all about.)
30 Days of Getting Results is a “30 Day Improvement Sprint” or “Monthly Improvement Sprint”
I’ve used various names, but the big idea is to focus on something for a month. Behind the scenes, I went from calling it a 30 Day Improvement Sprint to Monthly Improvement Sprint back to 30 Day Improvement Sprints and sometimes just 30 Day Sprints.
Two things are important:
- I call it a sprint because it’s a focused timebox. It’s not a marathon (although you could use a 30 Day Sprint to take up marathon running
- 30 Days is important. So is the idea of using a month. So much so, that sometimes I really just have to say Monthly Improvement Sprints.
I really have to elaborate on point #2 – how 30 days AND a month are both important. Let’s start with, why a month? Originally, I suffered from “shiny object syndrome.” I wanted to dive into too many things at once. As a results, I dabbled in too many things, and lost focus. Yet, I wanted a simple way to experiment or try new things. I had found that spending a week or two on something, wasn’t enough to give things a fair chance. I really needed to try something for about a month.
I basically decided that I wanted the chance to focus on something new each month, or to go back and try something again for another month. But I very clearly wanted a theme or focus for the month, and where at the end of the month, I could decide whether to continue or not. It’s like a “try it for 30 days” sort of program, or like a “30 day challenge.” I used this approach to try out new things and to brush up on old hobbies and to learn new skills. I used it for everything from trying a “living foods” diet to roller blading many miles a day to learning the guts of WCF and other technologies.
I really, really, really liked the idea of getting a fresh start each month. And, I liked the idea that over the span of a year, I could invest in 12 significant things, on top of what I already do. Basically, each month, I could add something new under my belt, or replay a previous focus. At the same time, this made my months more meaningful. I could focus on a 30 Day Sprint for work or a 30 Day Sprint for something personal.
I also learned that starting at the beginning of a month and ending at the end of the month was more important than I thought. If you ever tried starting something part way through a month and losing track where you are, and trying to do it for a set numbers of days, you know what I mean. In fact, I found my success rate at sticking with something was lousy if I randomly started somewhere within a month.
So to make this point super crisp, I deliberate renamed 30 Day Improvement Sprints to Monthly Improvement Sprints. And to keep things simple, periodically, I would just say a 30 Day Sprint or a Monthly Sprint, which helped, especially those that didn’t want to “improve” but rather just focus on something for a month.
And then I learned something. Even though you should really start at the beginning of a month and end at the end of the month, and turn the page, people prefer to call it 30 Day Improvement Sprints or 30 Day Sprints over Monthly Improvement Sprints or Monthly Sprints.
I get why. Quantity is precise. 30 days is specific.
Specific trumps.
3 Wins to Rule Your Day (and To Rule Them All)
Agile Results is insanely simple. In fact, one of my first early adopters said the big deal was how to get started:
Write 3 things down today that you want to achieve.
That’s it. You're doing Agile Results.
The mantra to remember is this, and this is how you get the ability to zoom in to your day, or zoom out to the balcony view:
Think in terms of 3 wins for the day, 3 wins for the week, 3 wins for the month, and 3 wins for the year.
Again, it’s super simple. But, it’s super powerful.
Behind the scenes, I had stumbled on this pattern out of necessity. I had to stay on top of big teams spread out around the world, and I needed a very fast way of knowing what matters. I didn’t want to focus on all the negative (that was natural for me and easy for everyone else, too.) Instead, I wanted to focus on value and flowing value. But, to make it significant, I wanted to boil it down to 3 things.
3 significant things.
3 significant things could easily be remembered. I could use the 3 significant things to focus and prioritize all time, energy, and attention. What a powerful tool. And, it worked both at the individual level, and the team level. I wanted a way to easily tell the story of 3 wins for the team each week, so management could appreciate the value, and, most importantly, so the team could feel good heading out into the weekend.
Working backwards from the end of the week, I realized that I could ask a very simple question:
“What are 3 outcomes you want under your belt, if this was Friday, and you were looking back?”
No more regrets. No more wasted efforts. No more frantic scrambling. Just simple clarity of what would be great to achieve before we go through a bunch of time at things. And, it was a great way to make for more meaningful weeks.
This is how the Monday Vision, Daily Wins, Friday Reflection pattern was born.
On Mondays, identify 3 wins you want for the week. Each day, identify 3 wins you want for the day. On Fridays, set aside 20 minutes to reflect on 3 things going well and 3 things to improve.
That pattern alone changes lives (and it’s been used to change businesses and transform execution capability.)
I should point out that I’ve also called it Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Reflection, which is accurate. But, to inject some gamification and add the fun factor, I started going with Daily Wins and focusing on 3 Wins for the Day, the Week, the Month, and the Year.
People like to win. Agile Results is a way to do that.
Ergo, you can win, the Agile Way. (Aren’t you glad I said, “ergo”, and not “thus”?)
So, if somebody wants the minimal, bare bones implementation of Agile Results, or “how to get started”, then I say, just write down 3 things you want for today. Instantly, you just put into focus what’s valuable, what’s worth spending time on, and you’ve given yourself a way to focus and prioritize against your laundry list of incoming time thieves, fire drills, action items, and other priorities competing for your attention.
It’s a very practical way of putting First Things First, in a Stephen Covey kind of way, and giving yourself a mini North Start for the day.
And, if somebody wants a sticky way to both remember Agile Results – then I tell them, just remember the Monday Vision, Daily Wins, Friday Reflection pattern. If you get each day right, you get your week right, and if you get your weeks right, you get your months and years right. And yet, it’s perfectly OK to adapt and adjust along the way. In fact, Agile Results is designed to help you adapt.
… but here’s the ultimate trick to using Agile Results. Add 3 recurring reminders to your calendar (1 for Monday Vision, 1 each day for Daily Wins, and 1 for Friday Reflection.)
Does Agile Results Play Well with Getting Things Done?
I won’t claim to be a Getting Things Done expert. That said, I’ve mentored many (many, many, many) people over the years who struggled using Getting Things Done to get things done. It was ironic, but the true irony is that it was not Getting Things Done’s fault. It’s a perfectly good system. Instead, people were breaking themselves against the system (and I couldn’t help but remember when Stephen Covey said don’t break yourself against the laws … you have to know the principles.)
So when I designed Agile Results, I used everything I had learned from doing process and methodology development, and what I had learned from writing about principles, patterns, and practices for years.
The most important thing I did was rather than get mired in the details of a deep process or methodology explanation, I focused on a few key things:
- Values, Principles, and Practices – I focused on a small set of values and principles for Agile Results. This made it easy so that people could implement the principles as they see fit and easily adapt them, to adopt them. What I wanted to avoid was people breaking themselves against the system. (By the way, as a “process architect”, if you look to any good system, it will boil down to values, principles, and practices … these 3 tools are the ultimate backbone for methodology success.)
- Flexibility –Darwin taught us that nature favors the flexible. I decided that agility and flexibility would be a first-class citizen here. I wanted the system itself to be so simple and flexible that it would be easy to shape or reshape over the coming years as necessary. More importantly, I wanted this to be a simple system that helps people learn to be more flexible. Personal flexibility is a key attribute for surviving and thriving in our ever-changing landscape. I want people to thrive.
- Inclusive – I am so not a fan of zealotry (I don’t think I used that word in writing before, cool). I don’t like one-size fits all. What can I say, I’m a true, blue Bruce Lee fan: "Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own." Those words of wisdom have served me well. Always. So, I designed Agile Results to be a system that can easily be combined, integrated, and applied to other time management or productivity systems. How? By staying focused on evergreen principles, patterns, and practices, and focusing on outcomes, not activities or tasks. I regularly hear from people who say they are using Agile Results with everything from Getting Things Done to Zen to Done to the Pomodoro Technique to their favorite apps, like Remember the Milk, etc. At the end of the day, people get their best results when they create a mosaic of the parts that work for them.
- Easy to fall off, but easier to get back on – And, super easy to get started. In my experience, so many systems and bright ideas fail because the creator builds an insurmountable wall of change, or a sea of information overload. Because I had to teach this system to so many people in so many ways, and often, in so many seconds, it forced me to radically simplify. So, what I have now is a very simple system that scales down to “write 3 wins on paper” and yet scales up to the most advanced proven practices for productivity and time management available (yeah, as a Program Manager, it’s the nature of the beast … I’m constantly forced to innovate in terms of doing things better, faster, and cheaper while making more impact and scaling things and building systems and ecosystems to amplify impact.)
- Continuous learning – By keeping the system simple, and by having a handful of values, principles, and practices, and by baking learning into the system as a first-class citizen, Agile Results easily adapts to whatever your current approach and tools are. This was a crucial design point. I had way too many people coming from all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of experience and all sorts of styles. It forced me to make sure that Agile Results could bend, and not break, and, ultimately be a powerful tool for smart people. The last thing I wanted to create was a tool that got in the way of smart people. Instead, I wanted a tool and framework to help smart people get more out of work and life, and support their continuous growth and transformation.
With that in mind, I have had many, many, many GTD’ers show me how they use Agile Results + Getting Things Done. Like I said, I’m a fan of “better together” and blending the best of the best in a Bruce Lee sort of way.
What About Agile Methodologies?
Like I said, Getting Results the Agile Way, is not about how to do Agile software development methodologies (though, interestingly, I’ve used Agile Results to get more out of Agile methodologies
But, I have learned Agile methodologies and practices from some of the world’s best practitioners, including Ward Cunningham (father of Wikimedia, which is the platform that Wikipedia runs on.)
While there is a lot of information out there about how to do Agile development, I still see a lot of people struggle when they try to get started. If you haven’t made the journey from early on, it can be tough to figure out how to get started now. Worse, if you aren’t living in software, it’s not always obvious to know how to adapt Agile practices. The other challenge I see is that people are trying to adopt more Agile ways, but they are in environments that don’t have dedicated teams.
It’s the worst-case scenario of v-Teams or ad-hoc teams of limited and chaotic availability.
So, while I always thought there was plenty of great Agile resources for people to use to get started, I still see a gap.
I’m finding myself spending too much time ramping people up on things that I thought were more mainstream than they really are yet.
I suspect I will do my part to try and fill this gap in the near future.
My first and foremost goal was to help people learn how to be “Agile for Life”, and that was the driving goal behind Getting Results the Agile Way.
My next step will be to help professionals learn how to be “Agile at Work.”
… and, in that case, I will be able to draw from my experience over the years, and share even more on what I’ve learned over the past few years, especially as it relates to helping startups and helping businesses undergo major transformation and change … the Agile way.
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