• September 13, 2014
  • Mark LaCour
  • 0

Learn how to stay productive even when your day does not go as planned. Our productivity system of choice mentioned is: http://www.thesecretweapon.org
Please take a few minutes to subscribe to our blog and/or events newsletter.

 

Hey, folks. Let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry.

[Music]

Okay. I’m sitting here with my Philips Energy Partners official coffee cup, I have my NAPE official water bottle, and I have the ModalPoint press pass for NAPE, but I’m not at NAPE. You want to know why? My day got hosed.

This happens sometimes you got hung up in the airport, sometimes things fell out of place. In my case, my 9-year old boy got strep throat unexpectedly so I couldn’t attend all three days at NAPE. But, I thought this would be a good chance for us to talk about how to stay productive when your day gets hosed. So let’s just jump right into it.

Number one. Keep a list of thing to do to brainstorm about, right? So when your day gets hosed, you can sit down with something as simple as a pen and a piece of paper and brainstorm. Usually getting the ideas out of your head in the paper starts an avalanche and then all of the extra items the to-do’s and the whatevers just kind of flow like rain. So that’s a good thing to do when your day gets hosed.

Number two. Do a data dump. You have a lot of information in your head that really should be written down somewhere. This is a perfect time to do it. If you’ve been watching the show for any length of time, you know we’re real keen to a productive productivity tool called Getting Things Done and we actually use a methodology called The Secret Weapon. We’ll put some links up in the show. But get the – the idea is out of your head, get it written down in some type of format so that you can access it later. It makes your life much easier a lot of ways because you don’t have to worry about forgetting stuff.

Number three. Have a call list ready. Have a list of people that you want to reach out to. You know sometimes it’s a lot better than sending e-mails, you get more stuff done, you actually get some personality involvement, but keep a running list of people that you need to call.

Then, number four. Inventory your bigger projects. You know whether you’re in sales or marketing or operations that you have big projects with a bunch of moving parts. This is classic at getting things done. Get down and map these things out.

All right. Number five. Prep for a recap of recent trip. So, if you’re headed out when your day gets hosed, sit down and write down the things you want to accomplish on your trip. Who do you want to meet to, what are the outcomes? If you’re coming in from a trip, take care of all the stuff you need to take care of that always get you in the bind later, expense reports, follow up e-mails, that sort of stuff. Okay.

Number six. Network. Take this time, sit down, plugged into LinkedIn and write some recommendations to some people that are important to you, you know. Reach out to some new people that are important in your industry and invite them to connect. Same thing on Facebook or Twitter, but take this time to do some networking.

Then, number seven. Catch up on e-mail. Now, listen to me, you need to be very specific about this. I suggest you catch up on e-mail offline so you’re not constantly tempted to look at the new stuff coming and keep your connectivity off and catch up on everything in your inbox. Your goal should be – have everything out of your inbox and it just feels really good. All right.

Next, find some good podcasts. A little podcast is a bit of ancient technology or it’s at least aging technology, but there’s a lot of really good stuff out there still being produced. We actually follow several podcasts here and I kind of think of it like a blog which you’ll have to read, right? You can listen to it in opportune time; in the car, in the gym, whatever.

And then finally, call your mom or your dad or your uncle or your son or your daughter. Take this time to do a personal reach out and let somebody know that you’re thinking about them. This world doesn’t have enough of that and this type of things means a lot to people.

So, there you go, nine ways to stay productive when your day gets hosed. I hope this helped. We will see you next time.

[Music]