“Why are you not being everything you can be right now?” – Gabrielle Bouliane

Life’s short. I’ve had enough loss in my life to always remind me you never know how much time you have to make the most of what you’ve got.

I follow the advice of one of my mentors, living each day as if it’s my last, but planning to live 100 years. I never let fear or resistance get in the way. It’s a path of giving my best where I have my best to give, living my values, following my growth, and creating the experiences I want in my life.

“Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.” — Kevin Arnold

Dementia means “deprived of mind,” and Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia. If you know the impact that dementia and Alzheimer’s has on somebody’s life, as well as their family, you know it’s a terrible thing. If you’ve seen the movie, The Notebook, you have an idea of what it’s all about.

Aside from feeling more alive, I always feel sharper when I exercise regularly. It turns out that there’s science behind this, and one of the most dramatic ways to get smarter is to exercise.

Dr. John Medina, author of Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and Schoolsays that aerobic exercise is one of the best ways to boost your brain. The minimum you need for an extreme benefit is 20 minutes, twice a week. The data behind his story is amazing.

I’m 25, and over the past decade, I’ve been in school, university, full time work, freelance work and entrepreneurial work. At the moment, I make my living writing (part-time) and I spend the rest of my time taking a creative writing MA and working on a novel.

These are ten lessons I’ve learnt (often the hard way!) over the past decade:

“Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.” — Arnold H. Glasgow

Getting Results is spreading. It’s leading to all sorts of interesting connections for me and it’s making a difference in people’s lives. I’m getting regular emails from people that have adopted the approach and found a new lease on life. I think the most surprising one for me came earlier this week … a raving fan liked the book so much he offered to translate it to Chinese!

“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” — Ovid

One of the most important patterns in Getting Results is the Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, and Friday Reflection pattern. It’s a simple way to get meaningful results each day and each week. It’s how I avoid getting overwhelmed and how I drive results for myself, the teams I lead, and the people I mentor.

When i first joined Microsoft, I felt like I had joined an elite team of smart people that gets results. Microsoft is a big place, and I had joined the Developer Support Team. It was an interesting team and I was surrounded by people who worked smarter, harder, faster, and more effective than anything I had ever seen before. There were people that built robots and people that built rockets. There were former accountants and former professors. The intellectual horsepower was stunning and so was the passion.

I was curious how I too could become a skilled Softie.

There are more books coming out every year than I can read in a lifetime. One of the ways I filter for great books is, I ask the most effective people I know, which books had a significant impact on how they think, feel, or act. I like to find the books that really made a difference, not just in theory, but in practice.

Recently, I reached out to several Microsoft leaders, past and present, and up and down the ranks. The beauty of Microsoft is the extremely high concentration of smart people and I like to leverage the collective brain. In this case, I posed a simple question to find out which business books actually made a difference:

I created a simple view of the Getting Results Knowledge Base for my latest book, Getting Results the Agile Way, which is a personal results system for work and life. The Knowledge Base provides simple job aids including Cheat Sheets, Checklists, How Tos, Guidelines, and Templates.

One of the most helpful frames we’ve found at work for focusing meetings or presentations is:

Know – What do you want them to know?
Believe – What do you want them to believe?
Do – What do you want them to do?

Effective is doing the right things for the right results. Efficient is optimizing. It’s the least waste of time and effort.

Before you try to be more efficient, first try to be more effective. There’s no point in optimizing ineffective things. I think of this as first asking, “What do I want to accomplish?”, then asking, “Where can I optimize?”

My manager pointed out to me a while back that today’s problem isn’t information overload, it’s filter failure. Here’s a quote by Clay Shirky, New York University new-media professor, writer, and consultant …

What do we do when we get overwhelmed? We we’re up to our neck in stuff, or worse, in over our head, we shut down, compartmentalize, or we channelize.

The military knows this and they know it well, because lives are at stake. Hospitals know this well because again, lives are at stake. Yet this simple pattern can affect us at home or on the job.

I’ve been asking people inside and outside Microsoft what their definition is of … the good life. I think it’s important, so you know what it is when you’ve got it, or you know what is is that you’re chasing, so you can make smarter choices.

I’ve long been a fan of writing things down to free myself up. A while back, a friend of mine got me in the habit of carrying a little yellow sticky pad everywhere I go. It lets me jot things down, wherever I go, so I never have to keep things buzzing around in my head.

Curiosity killed the cat, but it helps an old dog learn new tricks. John Medina of Brain Rules says curiosity is the most important thing. It’s what brings you joy and it’s how you achieve mastery.

While I’ve always been curious and a natural seeker, I’ve really improved my curiosity over the last few years using 3 ways …

“If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life.” —Siberian Elder

We’re wired for stories. Stories help us make meaning and they help us remember things. They can also help us simplify and avoid getting overwhelmed in our everyday things. The big idea to keep in mind here is that you’re the most important story teller in your life, and you can use little stories for getting results.

Some things bounce back, and some things don’t … Sometimes the right metaphor helps us see things in a new way, or just right. In his 30 second speech on work-life balance, Brian Dyson (CEO of Coca Cola) gives us a powerful metaphor for thinking about what bounces back, and what does not:

“Slow and steady wins the race.” – Aesop

I like to get in touch with my inner-tortoise whenever I need to remind myself to stop and smell the roses. After all, getting results is not about racing through your moments to the finish line. It’s about making the most of your moments and knowing you’re on your path.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” — Chinese Proverb

I thought it would be good to share the momentum of Getting Results so far. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind and I’m seeing some great trajectory. I didn’t really know what to expect, but folks in the know are telling me the trajectory is strong and contagious.