Joe Keppler's Notes

TWENTY YEARS AGO this week, I took off my suit and tie and headed out the corporate door.  And I’ve never looked back.  I’ve never had time to. There has simply been too much to do and too many opportunities to pursue.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved my former job.  It was extremely rewarding in a whole lot of great ways, but I just wanted to do my own thing.  And twenty years later I’m still alive and kickin’.

But I gotta tell you… those first years were awfully difficult.

I was constantly being reminded by friends and family of the statistic that alleged that more than 80% of all start-up businesses fail within the first two years.  When I ventured out on my own in the early 1990’s, I could certainly see the potential for validity in that fact.

Back then, things were a whole heckuva lot like they are today - which is to say that things were very “challenging”.  The economy was tanking.  Jobs were disappearing.  Consumer confidence was in a free fall… Sound familiar?

The prospect of me making it past that ever-present, two-years-to-failure hurdle appeared to be a longshot at best. But I had one very big positive factor going for me… I was persistent!  And I believed in myself.  Thankfully, I quickly found out others did too.  I was determined to make it all work because of these things.

Sometimes you just gotta do what you feel you need to do and let no one stop you from doing it.

I’m a firm believer that persistence is a major factor in both success as well as failure.  Sometimes more often than we realize.  The way I see it, persistence is a skill.  It takes practice to reach greater levels of persistence.  In pretty much the same way an artist must constantly work at their craft to attain greater skill, so to must we all work at being persistent if we want to have any success at it. 

This isn’t to say that persistence alone guarantee’s a successful outcome every time- no one wins at everything all the time.  But based on years of personal experience, I can truly tell you that it can be a difference maker.  When someone puts in the proper effort into something and stays after it, amazing things can occur. I’ve witnessed many.

Persistence is making a conscious decision to NOT allow negative thoughts and actions cause paralysis.  It means keeping your wits about you when things aren’t going your way.  Persistence is about believing in yourself.

I started writing a novel several years ago, but, busy as I was at the time, I could never truly find the space to get it DONE, DONE.  But despite that, I kept chipping away at it in bits and pieces because it was just something I wanted to do – I believed I had an interesting story to share.

Late last year, my persistence paid off.  Stix N’ Brix - my debut novel – got published, and a long held goal of mine was realized.  I’m currently more than halfway through novel #2, Move ‘N Dirt. 

I’m going to make a go at this whole story telling thing because it’s what I really like and want to do.  But the process of finding a literary agent, choosing a solid printer, and finding a publisher to take my book to where I’d like it to go is the brand new hurdle.  And it’s a big one.

However, through the grace of God, a large dose of help from family and friends alike, a huge dose of luck and of course, my dogged persistence, I’m confident that I’ll be able to write and publish a couple books a year.

And who knows, with even more persistence, maybe twenty years from now I’ll be able to continue doing what I want to be doing… and never look back.

It’s not like I needed somebody else to tell me what I already know, but it’s always nice to have some externally verified facts to back up my conspiracy theories every once in awhile… What am I rambling about, you’re wondering? Well it’s just… um, well, what I’m saying is… Hmm, wait, did you ask me something?

Oh right! Loss of Focus! That’s what I was going to say… I think…

There have been some recent studies done on the subject of losing focus; more specifically how it relates to folks as they get older. For the ultimate proof that getting older IS harder, here’s what one doctor had to say about the correlation between focus and your age:

“We see an influx of adults being diagnosed around age 38,” says Timothy Wilens, MD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “That’s right around the time people start multitasking more, juggling jobs, families, a home, and other personal obligations — and problems focusing and staying alert seem to get worse.”

So, there it is. A crutch for older folks. And by, “older,” you read 38. 38 wasn’t that old the last time I checked. And yet more and more studies like the one from the AOL article you just read about are being done to confirm that as you get older, it simply becomes harder and harder to simply remember everything you want to.

But what now? Do you just throw your hands up and say, “Great! I’m vindicated now for my forgetfulness and my sometimes spotty ability to follow through with the things I said I was going to do!” You certainly could, but then, you’re probably not the type of person to be here reading this blog right now anyway, are you?

No, you’re here because you’ve always inherently known that it’s not as easy to juggle multiple tasks in the air like you used to be able to, but you know that you want to do something about it. You know that stress, health issues, a complex work environment, and personal issues can all add onto your inability to think as straight as you once could.

But you don’t want to let that stop you from being successful. It can’t. There’s too much to do to let it.
I’m as affected by loss of focus as you are (my wife will sometimes argue more so), so I don’t have the magic bullet-like solution, but I can share with you my own attack plan for staying sharp that’s worked for me so far:

1. Write things down
   
2. Write things down in one place
   
3. Write things down in the RIGHT place
   
4. Use an Organizer

The Organizer will act as your own personalized external hard drive when you use it correctly, and it’ll go a long, long way towards helping you remember exactly what, where and when you’re supposed to do the things you need to do. I always think of it like this…

Write it down and forget about it. Don’t write it down = forget about it.

I’ll cover that more in depth later, but for the meantime, just remember: everyday is another day where you might lose a step or two to Father Time. It’s up to you whether or not you’re okay with it, or if you’ve got a plan ready to fight back.

There was a recent article in the Washington Post written by Shankar Vedantam titled “Preach What You Plan To Practice” that I can completely relate to.

The article outlines a series of human behavioral assumptions that I have abided by for years. Principally of these is a concept that I live by on a day-to-day basis; If I really want to get something done, I make a statement – a pledge to others – of exactly what I intend to do. That way, I immediately put myself on the hook with others when it comes to getting whatever I pledged to do done, DONE.

I call it the “Put up or Shut up” proposition.

The tougher the objective, the more I try to go out of my way and tell someone exactly what it is I intend to do. It immediately makes me more accountable to not just myself, but perhaps more importantly, to the people I pledge to get something done for.

It’s a lot easier for me to rationalize letting myself down- but I try REALLY hard not to let others down. I feel very strongly about that. It’s part of the reason I’m as passionate as I am about helping folks better organize themselves and their time. Not only does it allow them to achieve greater levels of personal success, but it also makes them more dependable to others as well; a tremendous quality that oftentimes is overshadowed by more easily recognizable goals like generating more profit or shorter work weeks.

Every time I give advice to someone else, I remind myself that I’m essentially saying, “Hey Joe, if you’re gonna tell this person to do this, you’d better take your own advice and do it too.” I’m not exactly sure how I came about this mindset, but I’ve been trying to keep with it for years now.

There’s an old saying that I absolutely love and completely believe in that goes; If you want to master something -truly and completely understand and be good at something- you must be able to effectively teach that subject to someone else. The level of responsibility and strong grasp of the subject matter will DEMAND that you yourself are an expert first. My good friend Eric is an example of this.

Eric has become an expert at personal organization and time management- in large part because he took it upon himself to train others how to become better at their own personal organization and time management skills.

In the Post article, the author does a great job pointing out how scientific research has been conducted to verify that confiding in “gatekeepers” (aka, friends, spouses, or people you typically share things with) can help to make things happen.

“What these techniques have in common is their reliance on the fact that humans care intensely about how they are perceived. When we make public pledges and then are reminded that we are not living up to those pledges, we effectively turn the people around us into our enforcers: We feel that the eyes of our friends and colleagues are on us and that they are disparaging us.”

It’s right around this time of year that most folks’ resolutions begin to lose some traction; faltering and the fading away back into the abyss of the deep couch cushions upon which many good natured claims for change originate. This year however, maybe there is hope for your seemingly lofty goals and resolutions yet… Maybe all you need is a gatekeeper that will keep you on track and make sure that you are, in fact, preaching what you plan to practice.

To read the rest of Vedantam’s great article, click here.

Readers of the Joe Keppler blog probably don’t need to be reminded about how seriously we take our Organizational skills around here. We know you know that Organizing, Planning, and Attacking Your Day in the right way is one of the most singuarly important aspects you can use to simplify your life…

But did you know that being better organized can literally save your life?

I came across this article by way of last week’s USA Today paper. The article comes from The New England Journal of Medicine, and it leads with the headline “A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population.” From October 2007 to September 2008, 8 different hospitals agreed to use a simple 19-item checklist to keep track of more than 3500 different surgery cases and procedures.

This was the background and goal for the study:

“Surgery has become an integral part of global health care, with an estimated 234 million operations performed yearly. Surgical complications are common and often preventable. We hypothesized that a program to implement a 19-item surgical safety checklist designed to improve team communication and consistency of care would reduce complications and deaths associated with surgery.”

More than a year later, here are the results of that study:

“The rate of death was 1.5% before the checklist was introduced and declined to 0.8% afterward (P=0.003). Inpatient complications occurred in 11.0% of patients at baseline and in 7.0% after introduction of the checklist (P<0.001).”

What it all means: By using a simple checklist designed to keep better track of patients records, histories, procedures, and needs, hospitals were able to mitigate the complicated surgical risks many patients face, thereby saving more lives than they ever could have before.

So, in essence, a simple sheet of paper – filled with items that were written down in the right place, and the right way, of course – meant that almost double the average amount of folks undergoing surgery would live through their surgeries. Think about that for a second. Let that sink in. A checklist that can save lives!

As we’ve prefaced before with our own Organizational system, OPA, you don’t have to be a production oriented professional to see the real benefits of organization. And though the checklist referenced in this article was built for highly specialized doctors and surgeons, it’s important to understand that such a checklist is not exclusive to the field of medicine either.

When you take the time to put your thoughts and to-do list items down in the right place and the right way, you may not be saving lives, per se, but you’re saving yourself something almost as important; your time. And that’s the point we’re making with this article: A simple checklist – when properly set up and maintained – can save you much more than you’d have ever thought possible without one.

A recent Rolling Stone article coupled legendary rock pioneer Elvis Costello with the up-and-coming pop star Nick Jonas (of Jonas Brothers fame; your kids will know) and had the two conduct their own back-and-forth interview.

At one point during their informal interview, Jonas and the 58-year old Costello were discussing their inspirations when crafting lyrics and melodies for songs. Costello asked the young Jonas brother, “do you ever, like, wake up in the night and think of a song?” When Jonas said that he did, Costello was quick to share one of his biggest secrets to success for capturing so many of his timeless classics:

 Costello: “Do you ever think, “I’m really tired. I should get up and write that down, but I’ll remember it in the morning”? Always write it down — there’s nothing more torturing than when you don’t write it down and you go, “I know I thought of a line, but I have no idea what it was.” I keep a notepad by the bed, and I learned how to write in the dark, so if a line comes in my head I don’t even need to turn the light on and write it.”

Elvis Costello – a man with a very different job than most of us – knows firsthand the importance of writing things down. By his own admission, if it weren’t for his own dilligence in making sure that all his ideas and thoughts were written down in one place for him to come back to and use later, he might not be where he is today. And for thousands of Elvis Costello fans across the country, that would be a very unfortunate thing indeed.

To read the rest of the Rollingstone article, click here. Or, if you’ve decided that you’re ready to better your own Personal Organization and Time Management skills but aren’t sure where to start, we recommend our own Organization-friendly book OPA as your gateway. Let us know what you think.

This area of Joekeppler.com will act as our way to to speak to you on a more personal, timely basis. If you’re new to the world of “blogging,” don’t worry, though this might all look like technical stuff, it’s really quite simple:

Think of this blog as a constantly updating newspaper where Joe can share his thoughts, ideas, new products, and a whole myriad of other useful information with you. To further the idea of an “electronic newspaper,” think of the “Categories” section that you see on the right-hand side of this page as different sections of a real newspaper (i.e. “Business,” “Style,” or “Sports.”) Each specific category you see will correspond to a blog topic that you see here.

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