Have you ever had to wait too long for somebody to make a point? Their sentences run on but leave you hanging and you have to keep it all in your head to try and follow along. They make you work too hard to follow the information. Surprisingly, it’s not how long the sentences are that make them complex. It’s how long it takes to complete the phrases. We understand concepts phrase by phrase, not word by word. As an author, when you know this, you can write simpler and more effectively to make your points. As a reader, now you know why some writing is harder to follow than others.

This is a follow up post to my previous post, Living Your Process. I’ve had enough folks ask me how to map out their success process that I’ll share some more prescriptive guidance. It’s a work in progress, but it’s enough to share for now. The big idea with living your process is that it helps you make the most of what you’ve got. It’s about living with passion and playing to your strengths. It’s also about living your values whether it’s at work or at play. It’s about knowing what fulfills you and what sparks you each day. It’s about living from the inside out and leading yourself first.

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This post is an index of my book nuggets from the book Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More , by John Eliot, Ph.D .  Book nuggets are simply my key take aways from the book, including key principles, patterns, and practices.  Overachievement is a book focused on exceptional performance in work and life.  It’s based on lessons learned from cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and Dr. Eilot’s real-world coaching of Olympic athletes, surgeons, actors, salespeople, and superstars in other fields. 
My Book Nuggets
Here’s my book …

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Stephen L. Nelson on his top 5 small business formulas.  Stephen is the best-selling author of QuickBooks for Dummies (over 400,000 copies sold), of Quicken for Dummies (over 1,000,000 copies sold), and numerous other books about small business accounting, finance, project management, and technology.  He was once called the Louis L’Amour of computer books by the Wall Street Journal because he’s written more computer books (roughly 160 at last count) than any other author.  What I like about Stephen’s insight is …

I’m a fan of “living your process.” To put it another way, this is about “approach over results.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of results. The problem is you can’t control all the events in your life or what happens to you. In life, you control your attitude and response … and it’s not what happens to you, but how you react.

How do you identify the bull’s-eye among your stakeholders? Nothing’s worse than finishing a project and missing the mark you didn’t know was there. At patterns & practices, one of our most effective project practices is to use “tests for success” to help avoid this scenario. You can use “tests for success” whether it’s a project or even just a personal task. It’s simply about defining what good looks like. Think of it as knowing when you’re done, and knowing what good looks like.

Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning domains is a map of learning levels. Bloom chunked learning into 3 domains: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor (or thinking, feeling, and doing.) If you think of Bloom’s Taxonomy as a map of learning domains and levels, you can use it to evaluate your expertise in a given topic. If you create or deliver training, you can also use Bloom’s Taxonomy as a checklist for helping you structure and organize your training material.

What are the key stages in an innovation life cycle? What is the end-to-end value chain for bringing innovation to market? In “Smart Spenders, the Global Innovation 1000,” an article in strategy+business magazine, Barry Jaruzelski, Kevin Dehoff, and Rakesh Bordia write about the four key stages of innovation that the 94 high-leverage innovators have in common.

Knowledge workers can change the game. Knowledge can be used as an asset to improve the effectiveness of your business. Exponentially. You can use knowledge to improve your process or product. You can gain efficiencies or create differentiates. It’s not about having people just spend time in their jobs during the week. It’s about creating enough space where knowledge workers can think of new ways to do things. It’s about harvesting those ideas and turning them into results.

How do you use your opponent’s argument to your own advantage? You use concession. My dictionary says that concession is “admitting of a point claimed in argument.” You give a little to get a lot. One way to think of it is finding a way to agree. You can then use the agreement as a bridge to make your point. This works because you are letting your opponent score points. This also works because people like to be consistent with themselves. They don’t want to backtrack on what they just agreed to. Concession also works because you seem flexible rather than dogmatic or rigid in your opinion. Most importantly, it indicates that you’re listening. You validate them.

This is the heart of my results system. It’s a pattern I call Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Reflection. It’s probably the single most important thing I teach everyone I mentor. It’s the same approach I use to lead myself and my teams. It’s a way to help set yourself up for success each day. It’s also a way to keep learning and growing. It’s simple, but it’s powerful. In fact, it’s power is its simplicity

Four Dimensional Thinking is a technique to help you figure out who you are and what you want. It’s a way to reflect on your life to help you get from where you are to where you want to be. Reflecting can be structured or unstructured thinking. Thinking is just asking and answering questions. If you want better answers, you need to start by asking better questions. Four Dimensional Thinking is a way to start asking better questions about your life. When you know who you are and what you want, you gain confidence and clarity in how you live your life.

One of the keys to effectiveness is to know and show yourself enough. If you know yourself well enough, you can share relevant information to improve communication and connect with others. One tool to help you with this is the Johari Window. I first learned about the Johari Window in one of my leadership training sessions and it peaked my interest. It’s a simple model for interpersonal awareness. If you’ve ever struggled with TMI (too much information) or self-disclosure, the Johari Window is your friend. The Johari Window was originally created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 as a tool to help people understand their interpersonal communication and relationships.

This is a follow up to my post, Manage Energy, Not Time. A few folks have asked me how I figure out energy drains and catalysts. Some people jazz you. Some people don’t. Some tasks jazz you. Some tasks don’t. Just paying attention to this fact can help you start to get a handle on your energy. Energy is your premium resource in today’s world. You need to know where your passions come from, just as much as you need to know what gets in the way. Simply noticing this will help you start to see patterns of things you do or who you spend your time with.

It’s amazing how much the metaphors we use can be enabling or disabling. For example, I used to think “in life there are no second chances” or “you never get a second chance at first impressions.” Once I adopted, “life’s an experiment”, it was much more enabling. It means, changing from getting everything right up front to boxing my risks, trying more, and learning and adapting as I go.

There’s 3 keys to a successful innovation: work, strengths, and impact. Innovation is work. It’s sustained effort in a focused area. Even if you’re a dream machine and think up a bunch of ideas on a regular basis, you need to test those ideas against reality. Your ideas need to change the game. Part of what makes it possible to think of game changers is playing to your strengths and testing your ideas.