Category: Business

Collective Inspiration, Meet Personal Accountability

What do you get when you combine Collective Inspiration with Personal Accountability? According to Bassam Tarazi, you get Colipera!, In his words,

“Colipera is a free 4-week goal setting & execution methodology that allows *you* to lean on *us*; It’s the social virus for getting things done. Together, be better. Ready to get infected?”

How Colipera Works from Colipera on Vimeo.

Along with many other useful morsels of wisdom baked into this motivational framework, is the concept of synergy. You know, the whole two-brains-are-better-than-one spiel. When human beings are grouped together, wonderful, dare I say magical things happen. One of us will have an idea, and share it with the group. This can spark another idea, which creates a chain reaction of inspiration. David Kelley, founder of the design firm IDEO calls it “Design Thinking,” which he describes here in an interview with Charlie Rose.

My first Colipera group (Sounds like a great title for a family scrapbook, doesn’t it?)

Back in the winter of 2012 I participated in a collaborative, curated, Colipera group led by the one and only Bassam Tarazi. For 5 weeks, all 4 participants shared our goals and kept each other accountable.

By the way, why can’t we seem to finish what we start? Because finishing is a skill dammit! It doesn’t just happening magically on its own, as you can see in Bassam’s blog post: “The one make or break skill you think you have but probably don’t.”

But I digress…

The primary goal I set for myself in the Colipera group was to attain a certain sales goal and income level at a new job I had just started. It was a flexible real estate solution, commission only sales position at a company called Your Office Agent. Something which I knew nothing about, but seemed like a good way to expand my knowledge and skill sets, and potentially make a lot of money in the process. Didn’t quite turn out that way, but more on that in a moment.

In the meantime, here were my original goals for the Colipera group:

  • Earn my first $5,000 from Your Office Agent commissions by February 1st, 2012.
  • Contact at least 60 new prospects (3 per weekday), while following up with all previously contacted prospects.
  • Schedule meetings / show space to at least 5 interested leads.
  • Close at least 1 deal earning me $5,000 in commissions.

And then something interesting happened

Every week my goals kept changing. For a while it actually felt pretty discouraging. Was I not sticking to the program? Was I screwing up somehow?

Thankfully, Bassam and the other participants helped me realize that in fact, I was adapting to the changes in the environment. More importantly, to not adapt would be foolish. After all, it’s not that I wasn’t trying, it’s that my goals were no longer appropriate given my new insights into the company and the industry as a whole. When I set my original goals, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so it only makes sense that they might require some realignment.

Several weeks, and a few half eaten pints of Ben & Jerry’s later, my new goals looked like this:

  • Earn my first $1,000 from Your Office Agent commissions by February 1st, 2012.
  • Get 1-2 inquiries per day from Craig’s List consistently, and close 4-5 deals per month.
  • Train with Bob and learn how to run a networking group for at least 2 hours.
  • Work with Sam for at least 2 hours how to penetrate corporate accounts.

For the record, I didn’t achieve any of those goals either. But before you start picking out decorations to the pity party of the decade, you should know that I did learn a ton from the experience.

Here are some of my “Aha moments” from those 5 week:

  • When I wrote down my goals, it made it much easier for me to keep them at the forefront of my mind during my day to day activities, which invariably helped me stay focused, and keep my “eyes on the prize.”
  • As the week progressed, I was 10x more motivated to stay on track with my goals because I was meeting with other people who were holding me accountable. It’s not like they would have actually shamed or ridiculed me. Rather, it was the prospect of taking the subway all the way down to our meeting spot, and showing up empty handed. No way I would let myself end up in that particularly embarrassing pool of hot water.
  • When I helped other people with their goals I felt fantastic afterwards. The mere act of giving someone else feedback and encouragement motivated me to complete my own goals. I was beginning to see the genius behind the contagious virus analogy that Bassam created for Colipera.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, you only go as far as your five closest friends. Put another way, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

Let me put it to you this way:

The single most effective way to master any skill or accomplish any goal is to surround yourself with people who have already succeeded in that area.

Think about it. One of two things can happen:

1) You stop spending time with those people.
2) You force yourself to adapt and rise to their level.

We simply cannot exist in the disharmony of continuing to spend time with them while NOT rising to their level. It’s like positive daily affirmations. My brain can’t handle me saying that I’m successful, while simultaneously facing the physical, tangible manifestations of me being a failure. Oil and water my friends. Oil and water.

How to set up long-term accountability

In next week’s post, I’ll talk about how I set up weekly meetings with my friend Georges Janin, which was the single biggest contributor to my success in the past year. Granted my journey isn’t over yet. I still have a long way to go to realize my dream of owning a condo in NYC with a bar, dance floor, and breathtaking views. (For more information on this and other goals, please refer to my posts on How I Stay Wildly Effective with Wildly Important Goals and The Best 15 Minutes of My Day)

But just to drive this point home, it’s not about how much further I still have to climb. Rather, it’s that I wouldn’t have made it nearly this high had I not met with him every week since 12/2/12.

Sharing is Caring

So tell me…

What groups, clubs, or communities are you a part of? How much more or less successful have you been at the behaviors regularly practiced in that group since you joined?

Think about it.

…And then share it in the comments. You’ll be happy you did :).

NYC Subway + Tunnel Vision = Flow

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describes flow as “…a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate experience in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning.” Thanks Wikipedia!

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

I know it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: New York City is awesome!

Where else do you have access to any cuisine, anytime, anywhere? There are so many different people from all over the world, in such a small geographic area. Want to take a cooking class? Pottery class? Join a Flash Mob? You name it, NYC’s got it!

And how does the city that never sleeps get people from point A to point B? Public transportation, a.k.a. the subway.

I was 12 years old the first time I rode the subway by myself. To put that in context for all you non-native New Yorkers, it was the emotional equivalent of getting my driver’s license.

One huge advantage of the subway, is since I’m not driving the train, I can get work done on the way. This goes back to Tony Robbin’s concept of No Extra Time or (N.E.T.) time, illustrated here with him answering emails while walking on a treadmill. I’m already riding the train anyway, so doing work would take zero extra time away from other things. And until we develop transporter technology, that’s not going to change anytime soon. By the way, any diehard Trekkie fans want to get on that? I’ll be the first on your waiting list!

It’s not all peaches and cream though. Here are some potential drawbacks of working on the subway:

  • No Internet access. This is not actually a problem, since there is always plenty of work that doesn’t require being “plugged in.” Anyone else feel like Neo from The Matrix sometimes? This mostly takes the form of writing (like this blog post!) and brainstorming (like the Mindstorm that generated the idea for this blog post!).
  • Major service changes that affect my usual route. This doesn’t usually happen, but if it does I need to actually pay attention to announcements which invariably distract me from my work. Sad face.
  • Very crowded trains. Fortunately, I rarely travel during rush hour. I make a point not to go anywhere before 2 pm unless absolutely necessary. If I’m downtown, I also make a point to stay out later until the evening rush hour ends at about 7 or 8.
  • The massively annoying and infamously un-entertaining “showtime” guys. I’m not sure who started it, but there are at least a dozen separate groups performing the same exact “show” these days. For those of you who don’t know, they blast loud hip hop music with a very strong bass, clap louder than your audiologist would recommend, and dance in the moving subway car. At least once during the performance they have a signature move of jumping onto the poles and twirling their way down. The only people who are impressed are out-of-towners. Clearly, these showtime guys are majorly disruptive. Fortunately I’ve managed to pinpoint which subway cars to avoid at specific times during the day. For example, they seem to be on a weekday loop during the day, getting on the 2nd or 3rd car from the front on the A train at 125th street. Why 125th? Because it’s the longest time between the next stop of 59th street and allows for maximum disturbance potential. I really want people to stop giving them money so they would learn that it is not a profitable way to spend their time. The fact that they continue to do it leads me to believe otherwise though. Wow, that was quite a rant. I must have been more upset about it than I realized!

Since I always like to end on a more positive note, here are some of the benefits of working on the subway:

  • Increased focus. I am able to concentrate remarkably well, with the help of in-ear headphones and the playing of music without lyrics. I make sure never to have it on so loud that I’m oblivious to my surroundings, but it’s enough to make everything else fade to background noise.
  • Movement & people. Sitting at home all day makes me feel physically restless and socially isolated. Riding the subway requires some physical movement and also surrounds me with people. #winwin
  • Fewer choices = less time deciding what to do. I’m either reading, listening to an audiobook (something I usually reserve for long walks in the city), or most of the time I’m reading or brainstorming. This takes some of the mental burden off of not knowing what to work on. It’s Barry Schwartz’s concept of the Paradox of Choice, we have so many options that we feel overwhelmed and end up doing nothing. Sound familiar?
  • Less pressure due to limited timeframe. When I arrive at my destination, the work must stop. That takes the perceived burden off of my shoulders in spending an indefinite amount of time on a particular task. I like that. It has the same impact as the 5 minute timer when I Mindstorm.
  • Helpful distractions. It allows for the option of momentary distractions and people watching. Again, it’s background noise so it doesn’t actually interfere with my focus if I’m in the zone, experiencing flow. However, if I hit a small road block or dead end of some kind, I can pause for a moment. I look up and people watch, and somehow it seems to help me come up with new ideas. I must have done that at least 4 or 5 times while writing the first draft of this post.

One last thing to point out is that on the subway ride home at the end of the day, it’s no longer my prime time for cognitive work. That’s why I do most of my self-tracking during that time. Diet Log, CANI Log, Life Balance Log, 1 Second Everyday, and of course the Subway Schedule Log.

The cool thing is that everyone works differently. It took me a while to become intimately familiar with my ideal working habits. Where do you work best? In an office? At home? At a coffee shop? On the train? Discuss!

The Universe is Whispering, Are You Listening?

If you’ve spent any time with me at all (yes, reading this blog counts…sort of) you’d know that Oprah Winfrey is one of my biggest role models. I aspire to achieve her level of success and share it with the rest of the world. My friends have even nicknamed me “Shoprah” as a result. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? 🙂

During an episode of one her early Lifeclasses, she talked about the concept of whispers of the universe. Sounds pretty fluffy, pie in the sky, new agey right?

Hear me out…

She simply means that the universe, god, or whatever you believe in that is greater than yourself, gives us subtle hints in the form of “whispers.” These are little clues or omens that make us raise an eyebrow and go “hmm, that’s interesting.” A little more than a coincidence, but not a full blown miracle or spiritual awakening. Make sense so far?

An interesting quality of these whispers is that the longer you ignore them, the louder they get. The clues become less subtle, until eventually they turn into shouts. If you ignore them for too long it hits you like the infamous belly-flop. Seriously, don’t try it at home.

To illustrate further, here is an example of a recent whisper in my life:

Last spring I had been teaching on Skillshare for almost a year, and everything was going incredibly well. I had a regular stream of new students signing up for my classes, I was making good money, received overwhelmingly positive feedback, and overall I was doing what I loved and knew that I was genuinely helping people in the process.

Then came the whispers.

  • Skillshare changed the interface on their site which forced me to update my an Excel web query that I used as part of a demo of one of my classes. Annoying, but manageable.
  • The website become more confusing to use in general. I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
  • Skillshare began diverting resources away from in-person classes and focusing on promoting hybrid classes (part online, part in-person).
  • When hybrid classes didn’t work, Skillshare promoted their new project-based, purely online class format.
  • The option to search for local classes got pushed so far down on their website home page that my students had a hard time finding it. Serious problem.
  • Significantly less students were signing up for my classes.

Finally, the brick wall came crashing down on me.

  • I received an email announcing the resignation of their community manager who was an integral part of their team and personally helped me develop my classes. They also announced the end of the Master Teacher program, which I was a proud member of for many months.

I felt as though the entire universe was coming together to tell me to stop teaching on Skillshare. That is precisely what I did. I taught my last class on May 1st, 2013, and have since shifted my focus to online classes.

Here’s another more subtle example, which led me to sign up for a free meditation program

My first whisper was hearing my friend tell me about the Deepak Chopra and Oprah 21 Day Meditation Challenge. I thought that was cool, but didn’t take any further action.

Then I got an email that my mother forwarded to me of the announcement of that program. Finally, I was watching OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network for those of you who don’t know) and saw a commercial for the same free meditation program.

Hmm, how interesting.

By this point I was already quite adept at listening to the whispers, and taking immediate action. After all, if I ignored it, it would keep coming back anyway, so I might as well save myself the time and the hassle and get on with it already, right?

By the way, this concept reminds me of affirmations, in the sense that it made me aware of certain things, and helped me seize opportunities that I would have otherwise ignored. *Sad face*

So I signed up for the 21 day challenge on Perfect Health! More details on that in the next post…

Parting thoughts

I believe the answers are out there, and it is up to us to quiet our minds (something meditation has helped me with significantly), pay attention to them, and then act on them.

Do me a favor, and take a look at your own life for a few minutes.

Was there a time in your past in which you were ignoring all the signs? Looking back, could you have saved yourself a lot of struggle had you merely paid attention to, and acted on those signs early in the process?

Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments! 🙂

How I Reach Inbox Zero in Under 5 Minutes Every Day

Now that you know that I do not check email from 12 pm – 9 pm every day, we can get to the specifics of how I actually process my email.

A few months ago I started using the Mailbox App for my iPhone and iPad. I’m such a big fan that it has actually replaced the prime real estate on my iPhone and iPad also known as the “dock.” Having said that, I must point out that there’s nothing actually revolutionary about it. It’s main benefit lies in the swiping gestures, which perform 1 of 4 actions:

  1. Swipe all the way to the right – delete message
  2. Swipe a little to the right – archive message
  3. Swipe a little to the left – reschedule message to appear in inbox at a later date & time (a feature I never use)
  4. Swipe all the way to the left – move message to a specific folder.

Speaking of folders… here are the exact folders I use:

  • Requires Action
  • To Watch
  • To Read
  • Udemy Sign Ups
  • Udemy Reviews
  • Unsubscribe

It took me a little while to realize that the “Archive” folder on the Mailbox app actually goes to the “All Mail” folder within gmail.

Before going any further, I should mention that at the time of this post the Mailbox app only works with gmail accounts. If you have a non-gmail account you can technically set up email forwarding from your non-gmail account to your gmail account, but as you might guess, that can get a little messy.

Why this is important

If you’ve done any sort of research on email hacking, you’d know that the goal here is to get to the promised land known as “Inbox Zero“. Merlin Mann (awesome name right?) the creator of 43folders.com coined the term back in 2007. In a nutshell, it involves taking all incoming emails and immediately doing something with them. That way we don’t have to look at everything when checking email, only the new messages. This significantly lightens the cognitive load on our otherwise overworked and under-appreciated brains. Sorry about that, brain.

Email processing across all my devices

When I check email on my MacBook Pro I use the built-in Mail application (currently running version 5.3). I also take advantage of the “Smart Mailboxes” feature. For those of you who don’t know, these are mailboxes that match any or all of the dynamic criteria which you set. Very similar to iTunes’ “Smart Playlist” feature.

Since there is no swipe functionality on my laptop, I created a few custom keyboard shortcuts to help with email processing. They are not all inclusive, but they do speed things up a bit. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • CMD + SHIFT + U: Mark selected message(s) as read/unread
  • CTRL + CMD + A: Archive selected message(s)
  • SHIFT + CMD + J: Move selected message(s) to junk folder
  • CTRL + CMD + (2-7): Move selected message(s) to Requires Action folder

The range of 2-7 here means that to move to the Requires action folder of my first email account, I use CTRL + CMD + 2, to my 2nd gmail account, I use CTRL + CMD + 3, and so on.

The only reason I have an Unsubscribe folder is because sometimes when I process mail on my device I don’t have time to click on the unsubscribe link in the email (or I’m in the subway and don’t have Internet access). I used to put these in the Requires Action folder, but that didn’t sit well with me. Much like the street food I ate last weekend. Damn you halal cart!

Not to toot my own horn but…

I’ve gotten so good at processing email, that I’m usually done in less than 2 minutes. Mind you, I only get a dozen or 2 new messages every time I check in the morning or evening. By the way, a big part of that is simply unsubscribing to all mailing lists or newsletters that I am no longer interested in (all of them except Ramit Sethi, Ash Ambirge, and a few other lucky ducks).

Then, I spend my time in the morning going through my Requires Action folder. These are the emails that usually require an intelligent and well thought out response. I originally thought I could do these at night, but quickly discovered that’s not such a good idea. Let’s not talk about that….

The verdict

Since my goal here was to spend less time with email, get more done, and at a higher quality, I’d say mission accomplished!

The best part? I sleep like a baby because I don’t have to worry about emails slipping through the cracks or the daunting task of manually organizing them all into folders. More on the results of my sleep hacking challenge in a later post. In the meantime check out Scott Britton’s sleep hacking course on Udemy.

Have some cool email hacks you’d like to share? I think I speak for everyone when I say “please share them in the comments!”

The Hidden Costs of Email Addiction and How I Finally Kicked the Habit

“Hi my name is Shir, and I’m an email-aholic.”

At least, that’s what I would have said 3 months ago.

Does any of this sound familiar?

  • Just got out of the subway? Let me check my phone.
  • Waiting in line at the grocery store? Maybe I’ve got a new message.
  • Walking down the street in the most exciting city in the world? I thought I felt a vibration, it must be a new email!

Let’s be honest for a moment (after which we can immediately return to our natural state of deception?), 85% of the emails we receive are either unimportant or completely useless.

I’m not even talking about spam. I’m talking about social media alerts, Groupon deals, newsletters we’re no longer interested in, replied-all email threads, and the list goes on. Yet, our default settings on our phone still behave in a “oh oh oh! Pay attention to me!” fashion.

Louis C. K. talked about the downside of smartphones during his appearance on Conan O’brien. Take a few minutes to watch it.

Have we really become so desperate to avoid feeling lonely that we’ll check our phones 100+ times per day?

Speaking from personal experience

I remember how strong the desire to check my phone was. After all, receiving email meant “someone is thinking of me!” right?

It got so bad that I felt like Pavlov’s dog whenever the email alert came in. Whether it was a *bing*, vibration, or email counter increasing in number, I immediately began salivating (metaphorically of course).

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I was talking about it with my friend Georges Janin, and I decided to make a serious change. Part of the impetus for it was the disappointment that came from checking my phone every 5 minutes, only to find that I still had “no new messages.” I felt more and more pathetic each time.

I knew that if I didn’t create some kind of system, my will power would cave in under the weight of temptation. And why waste all that energy anyway?

It was official! No email during the hours of 12 pm and 9 pm

Why 12-9 you ask?

Well, I already know that I’m most productive between the hours of about 12 pm – 2 pm and then again from about 3 pm – 5 pm. So, in order to optimize my day, I needed to make sure those times were off limits. Nighttime on the other hand was perfect because I could still check email even when tired.

Some of the benefits of this arrangement

  • Wake up in the morning to a batch of emails, which serves as a nice way for me to start the day.
  • Eliminates the biggest distraction during my most productive hours during the day.
  • Helps me achieve my Wildly Important Goals (a.k.a. WIGs) faster.
  • After a day of being productive, I get to reward myself at 9 pm with checking email, which have accumulated to a much larger number than they would have otherwise.
  • No more disappointment of checking my inbox to find “no new messages.”

I really look forward to 9 pm because I’ll have more emails accumulated to process at once. It’s a much better use of my time to batch email in this way. There are many people talking about the benefits of batching, but Tim Ferris was the first that really illustrated that point for me.

Here are 2 of his blog posts on the topic:

I know what you might be thinking

“But Shir, that’s crazy, I can’t have a 9 hour email blackout during the day!”

Pull yourself together and stop making excuses! (I yell because I care) You don’t need to do it as long as that. You can find 1 or 2 times during the day that make the most sense for you to check your mail. Right after lunch perhaps?

The exact steps to follow if you have an iPhone (before iOS 7)

  • Turn off sound alerts
    • Settings –> Sounds –> New Mail –> None
  • Turn off vibration alerts
    • Settings –> Sounds –> New Mail –> Vibration –> None
  • Remove counters from the app buttons
    • Settings –> Notifications –> Mail –> [Individual Email Account Name] –> Notification Center = Off, Alert Style = None, Badge App Icon = Off, New Mail Sound = None, Show Preview = Off, View in Lock Screen = Off.

By the way, I recommend going to the Notification center and turning off all Badge App Icons for all your apps.

The Key Takeaway

I always respond to emails that are actually important in less than 24 hours. Nothing truly important slips through the cracks. And in the meantime, I have gained so much freedom. I am no longer a slave to my inbox!

Your Turn

Don’t forget, you could start small with a 2 hour email blackout period. You don’t have to go for 9 hours at a time like I do. The cool thing is you can use it as a reward for yourself once you finish what you need to (For more on how to use rewards, check out my post: Don’t Underestimate the Power of Rewards). Either way, be sure to share your experience in the comments.