IS IT A JOB OR A CAREER?

Webster defines a JOB as ‘Providing a product or service for pay’.
Webster defines a CAREER as ‘A way of measuring one’s progress through life’.
So, do you have a ‘job’ or a ‘career’?

Just imagine getting ready to leave for work in the morning and your mate asks you what you have on tap for the day. You respond with “I’m off to provide a product or service for pay.” Hmmm, not very exciting is it?

On the other hand, with the same scenario, (and as silly as the verbiage sounds), you respond with “I am going to, once more, measure my progress in life.”

We spend a majority of our waking life in our work. With this being the case, it is sad to recognize that for most of humankind, it’s a ‘job’. It is no coincidence that the restaurant chain, ‘T.G.I.F.’ has its popularity not just from the food it serves. The acronym stands for ‘Thank Goodness It’s Friday’. And the new term for Wednesdays is ‘Hump Day’, created to recognize that our work week is half over!

A person could fall madly in love on a Sunday evening, however they would still be depressed and stressed because, after all, work was the next day. On the other hand, we could find that our house had burned down, yet this would not be so bad if the news came on a Friday afternoon!

How many people realize that, with this mentality, 5/7’s of their life is living for the remaining 2/7’s? And, by the way, how many weekends end in exhaustion over the errands, chauffeuring, repairs and chores.

Please note that I am not painting work with the ‘White Hat’ and weekends with the ‘Black Hat’. Balance is essential (although most folks do not have a clue as to how true balance could be a reality in their lives).

In our LIVING CHAOS FREE E-Learning Platform, the Introduction asks the participant to partake in our ‘Envision Statement’. Two of these visions that our program is capable of achieving are the following:

· I envision enjoying all of my Sunday afternoons and evenings, no longer having a panic attack about all of the work I know is awaiting me on Monday morning.

· I envision awakening EVERY weekday morning, actually looking forward to going to work.

So…if you now see yourself in a ‘job’, see how there is now close to 100,000 graduates from our training experiencing, what they do a majority of their waking life, now being…A way of measuring their progress through life.

“READY-FIRE-AIM” versus SELF-DELEGATION

So you find yourself sitting up at night writing out your infamous ‘To Do’ list. You jotted down twelve items that you want to knock out at work tomorrow. Now tell me, if this new day is a somewhat typical day, how many on your trusty ‘To Do’ list were actually accomplished…two, three, maybe four?

Not only does this lead to stress and frustration, it can be quite demoralizing. The truth be told, after a number of such experiences, it is not surprising that a person just stops making the lists altogether.

In its place we just go to work each day reciting the following mantra: “Dear Lord, please just get me through the day.” Not a very pro-active stance, is it?

The unproductive approach of “Ready-Fire-Aim” is demonstrated by sitting down at your desk and jumping into which brushfire or crisis is seeking you. This is akin to being awakened in the morning with an air raid siren blasted into your ear!

In the CHAOSOVER and LIVING CHAOS FREE programs we train you to begin each workday by employing the ‘First Five Morning Tasks’:

1. Check my calendar for today’s Pending’s (Follow-ups)
2. Invert my Turtle (Stack of prioritized work)
3. Clear my Virtual In-Tray (In-box)
4. Process all of my Voice-mails (Logging return calls)
5. Process all of my E-mails (Responding easily as there was ZERO when you left yesterday)

By completing steps 1 through 4, you have taken what I promise is no more than six minutes before responding to your e-mail.

You have taken a macro look of your new day. You estimate the time of the meetings set (in and out of the office), the phone appointments and follow-up calls scheduled. What this has accomplished is a “reality check” on how much time remaining that you have to work on your stack of prioritized work (Turtle).

NOTE-When you had initially placed each item of work in your Turtle stack, you had taken the sixty seconds (literally) to fill in three spaces:

Estimated Time to Complete ___
Completion Date ___
Start Date ___

By knowing how much time you had remaining in your day, after the meetings, phone calls and e-mails awaiting you, you are able to REALISTICALLY determine the amount of items in your Turtle stack which can, and cannot, be completed today.

This process of “Self-Delegation” truly supports you transforming your life from reactive to pro-active. It removes from your life that “Ready-Fire-Aim” approach that had caused you such frustration and stress.

Lastly, because my programs have, since 1973, been dedicated to the FAMILY, this will have you far more often sitting down at the dinner table, at dinner time, with your family.

Len Merson,
Founder, C.E.O.
Chaos Over, Inc.
1-88-VERY CALM (Toll Free line)
619.980.7372 (Direct line)
Lmerson@chaosover.com

THE 'ELECTRONIC' ASSUMPTION

I’m sure that you have heard the symbolic definition of the word ‘assumption’. This being-'Ass-u-me’ (deeper explanation hopefully not needed). Be that as it may, we have now moved into the era of the ‘Electronic’ assumption.

It seems that the world has taken on the belief that everyone now utilizes devices such as the “Crackberry”, oops, I mean “Blackberry". Well, that is not the case. I, for one, still use my trusty Franklin book organizer. The last time I checked, it does not have plug-in, synching or battery features.

Case in point: I recently drove out to see a client (not a short distance, I might add), only to find that my client was quite startled to see me. I asked him why he was surprised as we had set the date of this meeting a week ago. He indicated that he had an emergency come up and that he had sent me an e-mail an hour prior asking for a re-schedule. As I was not anywhere near my computer prior to my departure, the message never reached me.

He thought that for sure I should have seen his e-mail on my PDA. (WHAT PDA!!!) I simply pointed to my aged organizer book. He was incredulous that I was still using “such an ancient system”.

First of all, I do believe that I am not the last person on this Earth to use this form of organization (which does, believe it or not, have a calendaring section). Should anyone bother to note the volume of such systems sold at places like Franklin-Covey stores, Staples, Office Depot, etcetera, it would be revealed to them that while I seem to be a member of a decreasing population, there are still millions of us around the world still utilizing such a medium.

Second of all, I see that more and more people have grown a certain disdain for that instrument invented by one, Alexander Graham Bell. This is especially prevalent in the Generation ‘X’ or Generation ‘Y’ (or whatever alphabetical moniker is assigned to those “younger folks”), who text, instant message or, in only the remotest of circumstances use e-mail. But NEVER seem to think of using a tele-phone!

God forbid someone should pick up a phone and actually have a voice-to-voice conversation with another of the same species. NOTE-yes, I have a cell phone, however it is just a cell phone. I did not opt for the features that would have me find my car in a parking lot or know where the closest Proctologist is located in my geographical area.

The world needs to be a bit more respectful to those of us who have elected to not have a ’24-7’ device grafted to our hip. Isn’t a cell phone’s accessibility pervasive enough?

Len Merson,
Founder, C.E.O.
Chaos Over, Inc.
1-88-VERY CALM (Toll Free line)
619.980.7372 (Direct line)
Lmerson@chaosover.com

WHAT DO I DO WITH ALL OF MY FOLLOW-UPS THAT SEEM TO BE FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS?

Calendaring your Pendings*
*Waiting for someone to get back to me; Awaiting a deadline to occur; Awaiting an event to take place

Picture this – you have just sent me an e-mail requesting something of me that you require. Now this is work for me to do (what we refer to as a ‘Turtle’), and what is it for you? If you said “Pending”, you got it.

Your having hit the ‘Send’ button (and being a diligent follower of the CHAOSOVER system), you immediately went to your ‘Sent’ file and, lo and behold, there at the top of your ‘Sent’ file (actually, according to our program, this should be the ONLY item in your ‘Sent’ file), is the e-mail requesting information from me.

Now for those of you using Outlook (this will also work with many other systems), you now drag this e-mail down to your ‘Calendar’ bar, let go, and voila, the body of your e-mail appears in your calendar for the day.

Why is this so terrific? Because…ALL PENDINGS HAVE TO BE CALENDARED. Now all that you need to do is the following:
-Change the date from today’s date (unless today is actually the day you intend to follow-up with me).
-Log the of time of day you wish to contact me.
-On ‘Subject’ you log: (PE) Len re: Acme Freight proposal (The symbol ‘PE’ denotes the location being in your
E-mail’s ‘Pending’ file.)
-Lastly, now drag the e-mail sitting in your ‘Sent’ file into your ‘PENDING’ (PE) file.

CONGRATULATIONS, AS YOU NOW HAVE…
"THE PLEASURE TO FORGET"

Len Merson,
Founder, C.E.O.
Chaos Over, Inc.
1-88-VERY CALM (Toll Free line)
619.980.7372 (Direct line)
619.291.1709 (Facsimile line)
Lmerson@chaosover.com