Or, is it hot?   I have a side project running with a web designer and an IT consultant.  It’s an online design site called Website Idol.  It’s designed for Australian business owners (big and little) to find real, Australian online designers who can make hot web designs.   You can look at their work and decide if you reckon they’re good enough to build a site or redesign a site for you.   Also, online designers can upload their work and get feedback from the online community.

Anyway, I just wrote an article on that site about 10 Terrible Online Design Techniques.  It’s based on our expertise (which did help Nick Dube and I win “Best Law firm website in Australia” award).

Happy reading!

Well, expose yourself to this:

On Saturday 17 April 2010 (that’s in 2 days from the time of writing), Peter Daniels will be speaking at the Clarion Hotel on:

How to Go Into Business and Win Every Time

Over a hot breakfast, he’ll be talking about:

• Negotiating business deals
• Handling banks
• Buying and selling a business
• How to run a business

He’s worth listening to.  Why?

• He’s consulted to a range of world leaders: Country leaders, Nelson Mandella, Oral Roberts, Archbishop Desmont Tutue, and more.
• He’s on a few global company boards (like Amway and the Combined Insurance Company of America).
• He’s written 17 books (so he has a lot to say).
• He’s amassed an large empire (and fortune) and has given a lot of it away.
• He’s toured for many years with Dr Billy Graham and also the Father of positive thinking, Dr Norman Vincent Peale (Author of arguably the first ever self-help book “The Power of Positive  Thinking”).
• He’s in his 70′s so he’s learned a thing or two along the way.

Online credit card registration and event details are here.  We only have a couple of seats left, so register yourself and a colleague now!

And, it’s going to be more useful to you than ever before.  Blogs won’t be as regular, but they’ll be better.

This blog will help you think beyond your daily routine by exposing you to top-class people and stories.  We’ll also give you some opportunities to engage with organisations that are truly making a difference somewhere on the globe, via Saturday-morning events (if you live in Melbourne).  We’ll try to stream them for everyone else on this blog.     You’ll get a a combination of blogs and events that will take you beyond business.

Here’s a starter.  This should be compulsory viewing for leaders or people who want to create change – it’s Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) talking to Stanford graduates for 15 minutes.

“Buying a bottle of wine for your date is strategy.  Getting her to drink it is tactics,” says Robert Muir.

One of the biggest problems with meetings is that some people want to talk strategy, and others want to talk tactics.

I say: “We’ve got to send our brochure to the printers by 4pm today!!!” (that’s tactics).  You say “Wait! Is the brochure in line with our branding?  Is it going to achieve our objectives?  We should check that first – I haven’t seen it.” (that’s strategy).

Most people don’t realise that blending tactics and strategy in the same meeting is a problem.  What you do know, though, is that after the meeting, there’s always lots of actions to be done, and not everything got sorted out.  This problem largely goes away if you separate tactics from strategy.

Here’s a simple take on getting something done:

Step 1: Set your Goal (eg. to have washboard abs before Christmas)

Step 2: Decide on a strategy (Use a nifty ab-machine that folds up nicely under the bed)

Step 3: Execute the strategy with tactics (Buy the ab-cruncher, use it before work, 5 times a week and cut down your daily diet of deep fried oreos from 3 to 1 per day)

Interestingly, that’s how you achieve something.  This applies to:

1. A 30-year old flabby-bellied dad wanting to trim up for Christmas;
2. A 90-year old global corporation; or
3. A 3-person business selling ab-crunchers.

They all use this process.  They may not articulate it like this, but they do.

Here’s the secret: If you can distinguish in meetings between when you’re talking tactics vs. when you’re talking strategy, you can get a lot more done in monstrously less time.   Imagine this: your strategy is effective and inspiring.  Your tactics (which always follow strategy) are seamlessly decided upon then executed, because there’s already a clear strategy in place.

Strategy meeting example: Get big picture, strategic thinkers into a room for a few hours, with a clear goal in front of them.  Park any great “to do” ideas that you come up with during the meeting on a board for discussion later (because they’re just tactics).  The focus here is solely on creating the most awesome roadmap to achieve the goal as humanly possible.

Tactics meeting example: Get your doers together.  Show them the strategy.  Get them to contribute and discuss how they can execute that strategy, for exactly one hour.

(To know more about this, read Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni.  It’s a winner of a book, and will transform how you do meetings, and how you plan your life – by separating strategy from tactics).

*Orchestral music builds slowly, then reaches crescendo*

Background noise.

So, how do you snatch your productivity back?

Simple.  Just get an MP3 player, put on some headphones and listen to soothing music or sound effects that don’t include words or lyrics.  There’s heaps of apps for your iphone or ipod that can do this, like White Noise Lite, Soothing Sounds Pro, iYuleLong, etc.

Here’s a 5-minute video by Julian Treasure.  He studies sound and advises businesses on how to use it in their workplace.  It’s fascinating.

I’ll tell you my discovery in a second. But first, let’s agree on what’s the most important starting point in the world of getting things done.  It’s:

• Not using lists.
• Not prioritizing.
• Not getting the right killer-app or productivity hack.

No, it’s more subtle, and it starts with the quality of your sleep.

Better sleep = more energy.  More energy = explosive productivity.

So, what’s my discovery relating to a better sleep?   Let me explain:

I wear a SleepTracker watch.  It measures when my sleep is really deep (Rapid Eye Movement or REM sleep) and when it’s so light that you could sniff and I’d wake up.  The deeper the sleep, the better.  Here’s a typical night’s sleep for me, as mapped by my SleepTracker wrist watch:

Here's a map of my average sleep cycle

In the above diagram, the fluctuations between light sleep and deep sleep are about 20 minutes apart, on average.  The longer the time is between “light” sleep, the better.

In the next diagram, here’s a graph of my sleeping patterns during a night when my 7-month old daughter woke me up 10 times because she was teething:

Being woken up by a crying infant results in this sleep pattern.

The final diagram shows my sleeping patterns after I had a huge Indian takeaway meal at 9.30-10.30pm, just before going to bed:

A late Indian curry affects my sleep as shown here.

That morning I was a zombie.

As you can see, eating a large meal just before going to bed gave me an even lower quality sleep than if I’d been woken 10 times throughout the night.

So.  Wanna be more productive?  Don’t eat (or at least keep it light and healthy) for 2 hours before bed.  It will seriously impact your day. You might have heard this before – but this time it’s backed up with hard data from my sleep tracking wrist watch (never argue with the wrist watch).

PS.  Your chance to get  a seat for Saturday 17 October is disappearing fast!  Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision Australia is speaking on “The Art of Influence” with a Q & A at the end.  We’re limiting seats to 60, so register online NOW.  Tickets are only $40.

They study sleep patterns, alertness, procrastination, positive psychology, and self management.

I love those things, and I do those things, because yes, I’m a productivity geek.  (I even have an expensive, ugly wrist watch that measures my sleep biorhythms).

And here’s my confession:

Despite knowing in my head how to be massively uber-productive, there are times when I deliberately ignore that knowledge.

• There are full work days when I don’t complete even one single item on my perfectly-prioritised to-do list – other seemingly critical stuff just springs up.

• There are times when I don’t look at my calendar, and then suddenly rush off late to an appointment (or cancel it because I’ve missed it).

• I’ve written about “not having favourites” in a to-do list, and yet I sometimes sacrifice important tasks for favourites.

• My sleep biorhythm watch tells me that I’ll sleep better if I don’t eat too much food late at night, but I still do it.

• My calendar tells me to go to the gym, and instead I go and order a meat-ball Subway with 2 macadamia nut and white choc-chip cookies (I did that today – admittedly I had a few other tasks to do in that time, too).

So, why the disconnect?  I can recognise a few reasons:

1. Energy levels are variable.  Being productive requires a minimum level of energy or things start to fall apart – even if you have a supposedly bulletproof, simple system that even a dummy can use.
2. Productivity techniques sometimes don’t match a person’s wiring.  (No matter how hard I try, my extroverted, creative tendencies make it hard for me to plug my way through a boring list – I need to consider this when preparing my tasks).
3. Human interaction is messy.  Things don’t always go according to plan.

For a change, I’m not going to suggest a list of solutions to this problem.  Other than constantly evolving and reassessing what works and what doesn’t, I believe that the solutions to the problem are limited because it is a natural part of the human condition.

Do you agree?

PS: Have you registered yet for our next event on 17 October – “The Art of Influence” with Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision Australia? Seats are running out.

You can post your questions in the comments section below.

Few people are more influential in the realm of social justice than Tim Costello.  As CEO of World Vision Australia (the largest NGO in Australia), Tim Costello has been at the forefront of creating social awareness and public engagement on issues such as poverty, climate change, homelessness and community development.

If you want to develop your ability to influence, then you need to come to this.

Register your seats online for AUD $40 before they run out (we’ve sold a few seats before we even advertised the event)!

Big Dan washes the dishes about 25% of the time, according to him.

Then, go and ask his wife the same question: “What percentage of the time do you wash the dishes?”  She’d probably roll her eyes and say “That’s easy – about 90%.

Hey! (you’re probably thinking)  That totals 115%.

So, who’s lying?

The answer is interesting: Neither.  Although both are probably missing the mark by a few percentage points, a number of studies have shown that in a team environment, team members over-estimate the extent of their contribution.

Think about the projects that you’ve been involved in.  Have you ever felt like you contributed more than others?

Chances are, you have.  But there’s one thing you now need to factor in: the I’m-giving-more-than-I-really-am bias.  It’s sobering.

It’s also useful to keep in mind when you’re setting expectations before a team project, and when you’re giving feedback to your team after it.

(Think this is useful?  Email it to a friend or subscribe to get this in your inbox.)

It’s true – even Oprah Winfrey confessed that she hates confrontation, in her video podcast with Marcus Buckingham.

The same goes for friendship – you don’t have to love confrontation to be a good friend.

Joe just told me that you called me a monkey face. Is that true? (Photo by Dan Taylor)

But if you avoid confrontation, and just vent about someone to everyone but that person, you won’t be their friend for long.  As a leader, you probably won’t have very happy followers, either.

Confrontation is the only way forward. Deal with it head-on.

There’s a gazillion articles on how to get better at it, but here are 2:

1. Confrontation for Sissies (3 pretty decent steps to confront someone well).
2. How to handle confrontation (6 “essential” steps plus a confrontations quiz).