10x10 Sleep Challenge

Today begins the 10x10 Sleep Challenge. For the month of October, we’re going to bed at 10 PM. Join us in this relaxing journey to improve our nights and supercharge our days. The easiest and most effective way to have enough energy all day is to sleep properly at night. This challenge doesn’t require fancy equipment or special trackers. You don’t have to buy anything. Instead of asking you for more, this challenge invites you to do less. Accepting this challenge gives you permission at 9 PM to say, “I’m shutting down, switching my phone to airplane mode, dimming the lights and preparing for bed.” For many of us this is a real challenge. We have so many obligations during the day that it’s easy to stay up late at night squeezing in just a little more. See how the simplest act of going to bed on time positively impacts everything you do. Every day in October, we’re going to bed at 10. Do you accept this challenge to do nothing

…after 10

…except sleep?

This is your chance to apply the Pareto Principle to your life in a meaningful and practical way. Sleep is the ultimate recharge and powers everything we do. Go to bed at 10:00, recharge, and power through every day of October. Make the 10th month of the year your most consistent month of sleep by hitting your pillow at 10 PM. 10x your sleep tonight!

sleep

It's unavoidable. It's part of life. Some people need less of it. Some need more. But everyone needs sleep. If you want to live, you must sleep. If you want to live well, sleeping well is critical. While many studies and science can provide support for this, the goal here isn't to give a scientific analysis of the benefits of sleep. Sleep is a quick hack for improved performance. Many people in modern society are running on too little sleep. We stay up too late, get up too early, and don't sleep well in between. Sleep will have more immediate and dramatic positive impacts on your abilities than any supplement, stimulant, or exercise. Arguably, sleep can provide more immediate and greater benefits than food. Don’t misinterpret that as a claim that sleep can save a starving person. The point is simply that the average person in modern societies can get a big return on investment in their personal performance by improving their sleep. Even better, it’s free. You don’t have to pay for a subscription or drive to a gym each day. Walk in your room, get in bed, and sleep. Make sure you go to bed early enough to get the sleep you need for the next day. Take it one night at a time. You don’t need big goals or a complex plan. Start tonight. Go to bed on time to make tomorrow successful. Start reaping the benefits of your best self by getting the proper sleep.

New book report: Influence

Follow a Pareto Guide through Influence by Robert Cialdini. Get a quick introduction to concepts that impact you every day. The psychology of persuasion will teach you about automatic compliance and the triggers that cause it.

Book report: Influence

Terry Pratchett’s Death by Small Caps

Terry Pratchett was a successful author and best known for his Discworld novels. He sold tens of millions of novels in his lifetime. While many factors contributed to his success, one innovation sticks out for its effectiveness. Pratchett developed Death as a character. Instead of speaking as most characters do within quotation marks, Death speaks in all capital letters. Pratchett didn’t invent this, it’s called small caps. In Microsoft Word it’s a font setting you can check that will make all the lowercase letters smaller yet capitalized. This technique is so perfectly employed that Pratchett deftly introduces Death in one novel with a single word.

Death prompts another character with this word providing grammatical help while announcing his arrival. Because I’ve read a few of the other Discworld novels, I received more from this word than one word should normally give. I was reading at a brisk pace and almost missed the small caps. My brain registered what I’d seen a millisecond later, and I laughed aloud. A small joke exists in this part of the text; however, I was laughing because I knew the arrival of Death promised much more.

This technique was so well-known to his readers that when Pratchett died his Twitter account announced the following.

AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

Notice that death isn’t mentioned or implied by any of the words. But everyone with basic knowledge of the character Death in Pratchett’s novels knew the significance of this statement.

The small caps provide the 20% of the input that gives at least 80% of the effect. As an example, let’s borrow this technique to see the effect.

Suddenly Death is writing this piece for me and displaying his odd appreciation of food. Now I don’t recommend typing in small caps even a percentage of the time. Instead, take a moment to appreciate the outsized impact of a finely executed technique. For greater appreciation, you could read a Discworld novel showcasing this technique. Mort is a good place to start.

New book report: The Automatic Millionaire

Follow a Pareto Guide through The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. Implementing these ideas will change your life forever. This book epitomizes 80/20 thinking and gives you the map to financial freedom.

Book report: The Automatic Millionaire

keep a budget, keep your freedom

I know someone who recently discovered they were broke. To the shock of everyone around them things were not as they seemed. The abundant lifestyle that was being kept up had not been met with equal income the last couple years. As a result debts stood in the place where savings were expected. The sad thing is this is a situation more common than many want to admit. I don't say that to diminish the seriousness of the issue. If you're in this position, you need to put your house in order. Keep a budget. Any budget is better than no budget. Whether you use cash in envelopes, a spreadsheet, or a fancy app keep a budget and keep yourself fiscally responsible. You open yourself to significant risk and lifelong impacts by spending more than you make. In it's most basic form a budget is simply this. Make sure the money coming to you is more than what you are spending.

if you question what you see, get a second opinion

The macro buttons I normally used in an Excel add-in disappeared one day. I tried a number of fixes before reaching out to a colleague. Through investigation the mystery was solved. It appears the UI was changed from one release to the next. Confirming the change with someone else provided the critical insight to move forward with the process. An external sanity check was the critical help to move my work forward.

make the phone call, you'll be forced to speak from there

I called a political representative to let my voice be heard. I wrote down the number and it took maybe five minutes to leave a message for my representative. The hardest part was getting the phone number. Once I had the phone number I was mostly out of excuses. If you want to be heard, pick up the phone.

yesterday's final draft is your template for today's task

My organization has a quarterly performance/bonus review. Previously I was making unorganized notes for myself when I received praise or did something extra at work. I had the idea to use the review form as a template. Today I helped someone senior to me and felt the effort and results were worth capturing. After reviewing the categories, one of them jumped out as the place where I could record this. Because the event was so fresh in my mind I was able to tailor my accomplishment for the category and the record will be there when performance reviews roll around. Plus, I won't have to try to remember how or why something was important to put it in context later. As a broader lesson, when you have a recurring task, consider using the final version as a template for gathering future information. It cuts out much of the formatting and processing and reduces the total effort required. People will think you are super productive when you can produce such polished reports at a moment’s notice.

check you have the right template before applying it

I was trying to use a spreadsheet template for a process and kept failing. Finally I started the process from scratch and succeeded. Templates are great. But before you use a template, make sure it fits the intended task. Sometimes you will spend more time in total by applying the wrong template first instead of creating something from scratch. Do a quick check first to ensure your template fits your task. This reminds me of the saying - think before you act.

recycle content to accelerate production

I reused content from a product user guide to write four reports today. It would have taken me days or weeks to come up with the content and summaries without the user guide. I focused on the objective of the exercise which was to answer some customer questions with general information about the product. Because the expectations were set, there was no need to craft perfect answers. I gave the minimum necessary responses to address the questions. As a result I knocked out four polished reports with minor additions from my own knowledge. Those who have reviewed the reports have already been impressed.

prepared notes give powerful impression of more work done than actual

I filled in a spreadsheet right after it was given to me regarding what it would take to deliver on some customer requirements. During a later team call I gave my brief analysis based on the spreadsheet. I also asked several questions to give me the understanding I needed to fulfill my duties. After the call my boss and two other senior people reached out to tell me what a great job I did. The funny thing is I probably only spent 30 minutes preparing the spreadsheet for the call. Yet my results were clearly perceived as an outsized contribution to the team.

Do you really need to attend that meeting?

I received an invite to a meeting that was completely unexpected and unfamiliar. So I called and asked the organizer. She told me a different person was the intended invitee. No meeting necessary for me. Time and energy saved! The default in corporate life is to accept and attend meetings. You should always ask whether you need to attend a meeting, even your own.

crucial conversations are valuable

During a project I received a bunch of customer questions. During my review I had a general but important impression. A single conversation between the sales rep and the customer would go a long way toward removing a significant amount of work from my entire team. One conversation could eliminate days or even weeks of work and save thousands of dollars. Communication is one of our most valuable tools. Use it well.

start with the basics to accelerate learning

I had never made a real effort to solve a Rubik’s Cube. As a result the puzzle held an elevated status in my mind as a measure of intelligence. This year I decided to not only solve it, but to understand the puzzle. I found and tried to follow three different cube solutions simultaneously. It helped me understand the cube a bit, but was too much information for my novice attempt. How did I solve it the first time? I identified the instructions that were most clear to me and followed them through to the end. I understood the total process better and quicker by completing it once rather than trying to understand all the intricacies from the start.

let work work for you

I subscribed to a daily newsletter through work which provides me with regular content that is sometimes prepped for social media. I schedule these articles through an app to post on a regular basis to LinkedIn and build my positioning as an expert on the topics I care about. It takes little time and I don't have to search for the content. It's served to me ready-made.

lunch and learn to level up

I invited two colleagues to lunch with me to share some work resources and information. The resulting conversation was better and I gleaned more knowledge from the two more experienced individuals. I didn't have to carry the conversation as they were eager to share their experiences. Being able to listen in on the conversation was far more beneficial than listening to myself talk. I got customer questions answered and eliminated one from my to-do list. As a bonus work paid for lunch. If lunch with a colleague is intimidating or you don’t have the requisite knowledge to drive the conversation, invite a third person to carry the conversation for you. If you have one or two questions you would like answered the two professionals will pour the knowledge on you as they converse.

if you need more space, choose a different seat

Most of us don’t get to fly business or first class. It’s a statistical fact. Most of the seats on a plane are in coach class. While business class allocates more room per seat, it’s not the only place on the plane with extra space. Choose the exit row or first row behind business class to get more space to work on a flight. Exit rows provide more leg room, a better flight experience, and more space to work or read on the flight.

see what you can do first with the resources you have now

Work with what you have. I didn't spend $200 to change my flight and attended the part of the meeting I could. I saved money and obtained all the value I was going to get from the first part of the meeting. It turned out the meeting only went to noon and I obtained most of the info I needed from a fraction of the time.

communicate clearly to move faster

While working on a project I had many things to do. I told a colleague about a meeting I was invited to and she took my place on it. I saved 45 minutes on a call by delegating to someone else. Good communication will accelerate answers and remove obstacles.