The Franklin Principle: A New Definition of Time Management

In Managing Extreme Personal & Professional Complexity, we discussed how managing complexity requires you to answer three questions:

• How? — How will you organize your goals?

• When? — When will you address your goals?

• What? — What tools will you use to record/represent your goals and the time you’ve committed to addressing them?

We addressed How? in that piece, and now we're going to explore When? by learning about The Franklin Principle.

Let's start at the very beginning: How would you define Time Management?

Traditionally, Time Management refers to performing tasks in a certain way, in a certain order, and at certain times or within certain time frames in order to get more done in a shorter amount of time, or something of that nature. I’ve always loved a quote by author Charles Richards: “Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”

However, this is only a small part of something larger. Something deeper. Something more human. To understand what I mean, first consider the following: Our time on this planet can be broken down into two parts—things we have to do and things we want to do.

Without getting bogged down in details about the fundamental concept of free will, we effectively have to do certain things under normal circumstances in order to live our lives the way we’ve crafted them. For most of us, this means we have to maintain some source of income. We have to remove garbage from our homes. We have to go to the dentist to make sure our teeth don’t rot.

On the other hand, there are things we want to do. Under most normal circumstances, we want to spend time with our loved ones, we want to eat delicious food, and we want to feel emotionally fulfilled. We want to stay healthy and spend time doing things we enjoy.

Additionally, there are a few things that fall into both categories. For most people, sleep falls into this category. We need to sleep — we have a biological requirement for it — but aren't there times when you can't wait to go to sleep? After you’re exhausted from a long day?

What things do you have to do? What things do you want to do? It’s from this distinction that I propose The Franklin Principle.

The Franklin Principle

The Franklin Principle is the idea that meticulously organizing the things you have to do lets you maximize uninterrupted time with which you can guiltlessly do what you want to do. That’s a superior approach to Time Management, as it presents a broad solution to the largest and most ubiquitous challenges you face when pursuing ambitious undertakings: you want to work toward your goals, but life is full of things you have to do.

I named The Franklin Principle after Ben Franklin, who was — to say the least — an interesting guy. In his roughly eighty-four years on this earth, Franklin became an accomplished inventor, founder, and the author of everything from almanacs to autobiographies. He retired comfortably at forty-two with wealth he accumulated from a printing company, furthered our understanding of electricity, participated in the creation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, and served as US ambassador to France. And this is just the tip of the iceberg; in short, the man knew how to execute.

How did he get this all done?

Take a look at an example from Franklin’s own account of his daily schedule from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin:

• 5 to 7 a.m. Rise, wash, and address “Powerful Goodness!” Contrive day’s business and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study; and breakfast

• 8 to 11 a.m. Work

• 12 to 1 p.m. Read or overlook my accounts, and dine

• 2 to 5 p.m. Work

• 6 to 9 p.m. Put things in their places, supper, music, or diversion, or conversation; examination of the day

• 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Sleep

With very few exceptions, Franklin knew what he would be doing during every hour of every day. He organized his time into specific sessions of Blocked Time, each dedicated to the furthering of a specific project or work track. He respected these sessions, and even though they were self-prescribed, he treated them as though they were defined by a ruthless supervisor. Franklin also took fun seriously (no, really — look it up), and actually blocked off time for it (6 to 9 p.m.: music, or diversion, or conversation). He didn't let any Have-to-Dos interrupt his fun, and despite being a notorious partier, he never let his Want-to-Dos get in the way of getting work done. His prodigious track record of execution was seemingly possible partly due to his having learned to say, There’s a time for that, but now is not that time.

The above is admittedly a broad example (for instance, what exactly does “work” entail?), but if you dig deeply into his writings, you’ll see he broke his sessions of Blocked Time down into much more detail. He socialized his behaviors and traditions to those around him, both professionally and personally. He started on time and ended on time.

He wasn’t the only prodigious historical figure to adhere to a detailed, block-based schedule; other noteworthy individuals cited behaviors and traditions like these as vital to their success. Theodore Roosevelt was arguably just as prodigious a character as Franklin. Browsing his impressive résumé, you'd find that he was president of the United States and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. He authored dozens of books on a wide range of subjects. His interests were broad, and he could famously talk into the wee hours on virtually any topic. How did such a unique character organize his time?

Take a look at a breakdown of a day on the campaign trail, excerpted from The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris:

• 7 a.m. Breakfast

• 7:30 a.m. A speech

• 8 a.m. Reading a historical work

• 9 a.m. A speech

• 10 a.m. Dictating letters

• 11 a.m. Discussing Montana mines

• 11:30 a.m. A speech

• 12 p.m. Reading an ornithological work

• 12:30 p.m. A speech

• 1 p.m. Lunch

• 1:30 p.m. A speech

• 2:30 p.m. Reading Sir Walter Scott

• 3 p.m. Answering telegrams

• 3:45 p.m. A speech

• 4 p.m. Meeting the press

• 4:30 p.m. Reading

• 5 p.m. A speech

• 6 p.m. Reading

• 7 p.m. Supper

• 8 p.m. Speaking

• 11 p.m. Reading alone in car

• 12 p.m. To bed

As you can see, Roosevelt’s time was broken into small blocks. This isn’t surprising, given the fact that time spent on the campaign trail implies time-sensitive obligations; however, consider that at noon, Roosevelt was reading about birds. This obviously had nothing to do with his campaign or his political career, but was rather something he wanted to do. How could Roosevelt justify this without feeling pressured or rushed? How did one of the most powerful men in the world—arguably one of the busiest men in the world—have time to read about birds while campaigning to retain the presidency of the United States?

Or history (8 a.m.)? Or the works of Sir Walter Scott (2:30 p.m.)?

If Roosevelt had just tried to fit leisure reading in when he had time, do you think he’d have been able to do it? What you’re seeing Roosevelt do in the above schedule is true Time Management: using meticulous organization to take and protect time for the things that mattered to him.

To quote author Kerry Johnson, “Do we need more time? Or do we need to be more disciplined with the time we have?”

The Franklin Principle in Your Own Life

Remember our new definition of Time Management: to meticulously organize the things you have to do in order to maximize uninterrupted time with which you can guiltlessly do what you want to do.

Uninterrupted. Guiltlessly.

These are important words.Imagine the following example: You wake up on Saturday morning and want to relax. You had a rough week, and before beginning any chores, you want to kick back for an hour or so and watch some mindless television. However, you know the lawn needs to be mowed (or a window frame needs to be caulked, or the bathroom needs to be cleaned, or cupcakes need to be baked for a school event), and it’s your responsibility. While trying to relax, you're invariably going to suffer from some degree of pressure about the impending chore. It may be subtle—a mere shadow in the deepest recesses of your mind — or it may be blatant, haunting your every thought. Either way, the whole time, you know deep down that you really should be getting to that chore.

Feel familiar?

On top of this, internal sources of pressure are met with external sources, as spouses, family members, roommates, and parents all contribute to this weight. Of course, you can say, “I’ll mow the lawn after I watch these cartoons,” and everyone around you can acknowledge your promise and seem to accept it, but is it really that simple? Is the guilt and pressure really gone? Can you truly enjoy your Want-to-Do, or has the Have-to-Do infiltrated the experience? At any given time, you most likely have dozens of responsibilities you need to get around to; while they wait in line, will you truly enjoy what you’re doing or be able to fully engage?

Let’s further explore the psychology behind this. Assume your job functions on a typical office schedule (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.). If that’s the case, barring any extraordinary circumstances, it's unlikely that you'd suddenly find yourself on the couch on Saturday morning saying, “I really feel like I should be at work.”

Why not?

The reason is simple: You’ve established set, defined times you're supposed to be at work, and because of this distinction, you allow yourself to step away from it — guilt-free — when it’s appropriate to do so. This is part of the culture surrounding your relationship with work (behaviors, traditions). Anyone affected by your being at work or not being at work understands why you aren’t there on Saturday morning. This makes perfect sense for your job, but with many of the Have-to-Dos in your personal life (such as the chores mentioned), you don't make these same distinctions; rather, you let them pile up in a shapeless, guilt-inducing backlog, from which you’re expected to pluck the next chore whenever the opportunity presents itself.

This is not conducive to properly separating life’s Have-to-Dos and Want-to-Dos, as your Have-to-Dos will constantly haunt you while engaging in your Want-to-Dos. We're completely used to this feeling, and as such, this anxiety and pressure is an accepted part of modern life—a grim, subtle weight bearing down on us from above, compounding and causing everything from vague irritation to measurable hypertension.

You’re being robbed of your right to the present by your Have-to-Dos. It doesn’t have to be this way.

The solution is simple: If you define a specific time and duration for a specific chore (or type of chore), you’ll be less prone to feel the task looming over you. This is because until the time arrives, it simply isn’t the appropriate time, just as it isn't time for work yet on Saturday morning. If you subscribe to this way of doing things, socialize it, and exhibit behaviors that demonstrate that you take it seriously, you’ll alter your personal culture, slowly build trust among those around you, and find that you’ll shed feelings of pressure about Have-to-Dos — feelings you may not even be aware you’re currently harboring. Commit to mowing the lawn at 11:30 a.m. sharp, and don’t let yourself begin even a minute late. Treat the Blocked Time with respect, and you’ll slowly train those around you to respect it, as well. That’s The Franklin Principle. That’s real Time Management.

Counterintuitively, this type of meticulous organization will simplify your life whether you have two or two thousand responsibilities. I think we can all relate to the experience of focusing on mental to-do lists when we should be engaging with loved ones or enjoying ourselves. If you find yourself struggling with anxiety you can trace back to an inability to mentally detach from your responsibilities, I encourage you to shoo away the thoughts with the mantra, There’s a time for that, but now is not that time.

By organizing the things he had to do — by blocking off specific time for both work and play — Roosevelt let himself have his bird-reading fun without needing to feel any guilt or anxiety about it. He created separation, and you don’t need presidential authority to do the same; you simply need patience as those around you adjust to your new approach and the trust it requires.

The Art of Taking

In order to block off time for Want-to-Dos (like your goals), you have to first understand and accept that you can’t just fit things in. That model rarely works for anyone, and if you’re honest with yourself, I think you’ll agree it’s failed you, as well. If you want to get something done — if it’s truly valuable or important to you — then you need to grant it the dedicated time it deserves. You can’t find time, and you can’t make time, but you can take time.

Say those three statements aloud and really think about each, as well as the distinctions between them: You can’t find time. You can’t make time. But you can take time.These three sentences demonstrate a shift in language — both internally and in communicating with others — that conveys that time is something you have considerable (albeit specific) control over. You can’t find or make time because time is, by definition, a finite resource. When you’re born, you’ve been granted an inheritance. Most of us have been handed a huge amount of wealth in the only truly global currency: time. This is why people talk about how they spend their time. Everything you do costs you a bit of this currency, and — while you can live healthfully and try to elongate the tail end of your life — you can’t truly make time. There are twenty-four hours in the days of the both the laziest and the most productive individuals on Earth. However, you can take time; you can tactically deprioritize or displace other responsibilities — responsibilities with inflated priority due to recency bias, short-term vision, perceived urgency, routine, or others’ wishes.

This shift in language should empower you. Decide that you’ll no longer tolerate passivity in your relationship with time. Resolve to stop speaking in lamentations and commiseration, despite how embedded they are in the language of Western culture. We all have excuses — we’re all tired, we’re all busy — but you can decide what matters to you. That TV show? Drinks with friends after work? An unnecessary extra half-hour of sleep? Playing dumb games on your phone while you’re on the bus to work? Or making progress toward your goals? Your side business? Your novel? Your art? Your relationship with your child? Your career growth or career change? Your studies?

Accept that you have considerable control over the finite time you have, and that — under normal circumstances — your decisions to engage in all but the most necessary acts are indeed decisions.

There isn’t a single person with whom I’ve shared this behavior who hasn’t been able to take a little time each week for something they value. That’s not an exaggeration. No matter how much responsibility they had, everyone I’ve worked with has been able to take useful chunks of time back from the rhythms of their lives — this includes executives, business owners, entertainers, attorneys, and even a mother of young twins. I know how difficult it can be to adopt these behaviors; we each think we’re an exception, and that our days and lives are somehow busier than everyone else’s. That our jobs are stricter. That we can’t build the appropriate trust and that we’re not in a position to influence the culture that surrounds us.

Remind yourself about this approach from time to time when working toward goals, and start using your new language in response to others’ requests for your time: “Yeah, I can take the time to do that.” Once you begin using this terminology, you’ll begin to think about Time Management in an intention-driven manner. It will force you to face and convey to others the fact that you’re either willing or unwilling to spend currency (time) on x instead of y — currency you’ll never get back.

I’m certainly no Franklin or Roosevelt, but I can personally attest to the power of The Franklin Principle. In many ways, it’s responsible for my remaining effective and low-stress while simultaneously writing thousands of pages of content for books and articles, serving as a senior technology leader in demanding corporate environments, tackling ambitious personal and creative projects, speaking at events, and pursuing new skills. It’s responsible for my book about this very topic, Foundations of Execution — not in some abstract way, but directly: I used these behaviors to bring the book to life while juggling a vast number of other responsibilities and still managing to be an attentive husband, father, son, and friend. It’s kept me perfectly sane when my life probably looked unsustainable to an outsider. Had I simply “fit writing in when I had the time,” I can tell you without question that the book never would have never come to be. Only by sectioning off non-negotiable sessions of Blocked Time was I able to dedicate enough time and energy to progress at a reasonable rate. I didn’t find the time. I didn’t make the time. I took the time. I’ve done the same thing for fitness goals, personal goals, creative goals — the list goes on and on. Every valuable Want-to-Do is given the proper time and organization, and every Have-to-Do is isolated, communicated, and executed on. Perhaps most importantly, I promise you I’m not up at night worrying about what I may have forgotten or missed.

And if I can’t take the time to address a desire or project, it forces me to ask the sometimes-difficult question of whether or not it’s truly valuable or important to me. Something may seem important in the moment, and this process forces you to truly assess its value. This is a healthy and natural filtration system for those who — like me — are easily enthused.

It’s deceivingly simple, but I promise you it works:

Take the Blocked Time. Arrive at the Blocked Time. Use your Script. Use your Hot List.

Take the Blocked Time. Arrive at the Blocked Time. Use your Script. Use your Hot List.

If you haven't read about Scripts and Hot Lists yet, take a few minutes to do so; you're going to need to understand these concepts well before continuing.

Most people would agree that there are multiple factors that contribute to success, whatever their definition of success may be. However, I argue that this behavior is the one most universally shared across some of the greatest success stories in history, as well as in the lives and careers of the greatest leaders I’ve worked for and the most interesting people I’ve ever met. I’ll take it a step further and say that I believe this behavior is the one most universally ignored by those who are constantly making excuses and trying to catch up.

Blocked Time

We’ve obviously touched on Blocked Time, but let’s look at it in more detail.

Living The Franklin Principle

Let’s go through an example that marries both professional and personal sessions of Blocked Time into one calendar. In this fictional scenario, this individual—let’s call her “Janet”—works for a print/digital magazine. We’ll explore how she uses Scripts and Hot Lists to make use of the time she dedicates to both her Have-to-Dos and Want-to-Dos.

• 9 a.m. BLOCKED TIME: Work

• 10 a.m. Meeting with Joan C.

• 10:30 a.m. Review committee proposal

• 12 p.m. BLOCKED TIME: Work

• 12:30 p.m. Lunch

• 1 p.m. Meeting with Sean S.

• 2 p.m. Weekly marketing team meeting

• 3 p.m. Interview new journalist prospect

• 4 p.m. Daily wrap-up meeting

• 5:30 p.m. BLOCKED TIME: Study German

• 8:30 p.m. BLOCKED TIME: Irish dance

• 10 p.m. Bed

Janet sections off two sessions of Blocked Time during her workday. In the first, you could imagine that she comes into the office, gets settled, and goes through a Work Daily Script not unlike the one we used as an earlier example—she responds to emails, makes notes for the day’s meetings, etc.:

1. Check work email and voicemail and reply as needed

2. Assess any new items you need to keep track of and add them to your Hot List

3. Check your calendar; review the day's meetings and prepare notes for each

4. Perform daily repeated tasks

5. Address your Work Hot List

Then she spends the rest of the hour working on her Work Hot List once directed there from her Script. She ignores her emails and phone during the Blocked Time, and if someone pops into her workspace and makes a request, she either asks them to come back later or quickly jots a note about it on her Work Hot List. At 10 a.m. sharp, she stops because she has other responsibilities; even if she’s in the middle of a task, she doesn’t let herself go over by even a few seconds. At 12 p.m., she begins another session of Blocked Time and again focuses on Work Hot List tasks until she eats lunch and relaxes at 12:30 p.m.

From what you’ve learned so far, you should recognize the benefits of approaching the day in this structured way. Among them:

• Isolating sessions of Blocked Time and focusing on only the current Script/Hot List item (as well as enforcing a not-now culture for anyone trying to infiltrate) lets Janet focus and either defer incoming tasks or quickly place them in her Work Hot List to be properly prioritized.

• Using a Script and a Hot List to keep her on task reduces context switching and the efficiency lost in context switching (we’ll explore this further shortly).

• Using a Script and a Hot List helps her manage anxiety since nothing will get lost or require her to use her memory alone to track tasks or responsibilities.

• These organizational behaviors will build trust and the impression of responsibility over time as her ability to keep track of and address multiple ongoing bodies of work improves.

Please note: This example highlights how Blocked Time can help manage complexity for those who have jobs for whom schedules are fluid, but responsibilities tend to collect — such as is the case with managers, knowledge workers, administrative assistants, project managers, realtors, finance professionals, and salespeople. If Janet had a different type of job entirely — one with fundamental consistency (data entry or factory work) or one hinged on customer interaction (retail or food service), for instance — she may find it much more difficult to block off time during her workday, and doing so may not provide as much value.

The next section of the example is applicable to anyone, however. On the personal side of things, imagine that Janet is trying to learn German, since a close family friend moved to Berlin, and she promised to visit him one day. Learning a new language is notoriously difficult for adults, so this is a great example of an endeavor that requires regular practice and would get nowhere if she was simply “fitting it in when she can.” When she’s on the train home at the end of the day, instead of playing games on her phone, chatting with friends, or reading, she studies German. She’s well aware she could spend that time engaged in a leisure activity, but learning German is a Want-to-Do she values enough to ensure she’s giving it the structure it needs.

When she steps on the train and gets settled, her calendar beeps and reminds her it’s time for a German session. First, she takes a look at her German Script:

• Review verb list

• Review the list of phrases I’m having difficulty with

• Consult German Hot List

Once she goes through her Script’s first two steps, she finds herself directed to her German Hot List (which, since it lays out the end-to-end instructions for her goal, we can call a Goal Scaffold). She references it to determine where she left off (in this case, we could imagine that it points her to Chapter 6 of an audio course she’s working through) and continues from there.

Later that night, while her husband gives their kids a bath, she goes into the garage and works on learning Irish dance, another Want-to-Do she’s been interested in since childhood but never had the time to pursue. She now blocks off a little time every Thursday night and Sunday morning for it. Much like German- and job-centric sessions of Blocked Time, she starts promptly, ends promptly, and consults her Script and eventually her Hot List for Irish dance. She even uses a timer to let herself know when she only has five minutes left.

She socializes it; she tells her husband and kids about the Blocked Time. Her parents and friends know not to call (and even if they do, her phone will be in a different room). Janet knows that this can be a big shift in mentality for those around her, so she lets people know why blocking off this time was important to her. With time and rigidity, she builds a culture of trust within her family; they know she’ll be available again at 9 p.m. sharp and can therefore work around the Blocked Time. In doing so, she can focus on these goals without guilt, pressure, or anxiety. She also lets her family know that, in return for their leaving her alone, she’ll be respectful of their Blocked Time if they choose to pursue their own Want-to-Dos.

Janet’s schedule may seem obnoxiously strict, but without building this structure and adhering to it, she’s probably going to fail at learning German and Irish dance. She faces the same choice you’ll have to face whenever you consider a goal’s value: you can live a completely flexible, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants life, or you can embrace serious organization, properly manage complexity, and accomplish the things you want to accomplish. You can’t have both.

Let’s discuss some best practices in detail.

You May Be Many Yous

Notice that in the above example, Janet didn’t create Blocked Time for Personal Interests, but rather specifically for German and Irish dance. While some goals may be simple and warrant generic Blocked Time, defining specific sessions may be vital in other cases.

I once spoke with an agent/manager who represented extreme athletes, and while he employed an assistant, he was stressed out to a degree I couldn’t exaggerate if I tried. He was already blocking off parts of his day for work, family, self-care, etc. — a rare-but-crucial practice for the self-employed — but when he faced work time, he found himself addressing tasks that fell into a wide range of themes. During the brief time I was speaking with him, he received questions about payments via email, took a call about work visas for a Canadian BMX athlete entering Singapore, and handled something else work-related via text (he didn’t share details, but he shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and sighed audibly).

As I explained to him, while he existed in a single body, he was functionally performing the jobs of over a dozen separate individuals: a business owner, a project manager, an artist relations professional, an accountant, an IT consultant, a sponsorship coordinator, a branding and marketing manager, a mentor (and occasional therapist), a career coach, an operations professional, and a travel agent, among others. Instead of dedicating sessions of Blocked Time to work (generically), I asked him to dedicate specific sessions and resources to each individual work track on which he needed to focus — to create Scripts, Hot Lists, and Blocked Time for the business owner version of himself, other Scripts, Hot Lists, and Blocked Time for the sponsorship coordinator, and so on. In doing so — and in being diligent about ensuring that each resource and session of Blocked Time remained untouched by the other work tracks or versions of himself — he could work efficiently, reduce stress, and improve his rate of progress. Perhaps most importantly, each work track’s priorities would remain independent and would never need to compete. For instance, instead of having to compare the urgency of securing a website domain name for a motocross athlete’s upcoming memoir against determining which hotels are closest to an arena in Arizona, the former could exist at the top of the IT consultant’s Hot List and the latter at the top of the travel agent’s Hot List—to be addressed during each work track’s respective Blocked Time. Never the two tasks shall meet.

Starting on Time and Ending on Time

When you dedicate a session of Blocked Time to a Want-to-Do or Have-to-Do, start on time, and just as importantly, end on time.

Starting on time makes perfect sense — doing so is a fundamental function of discipline ingrained in us since childhood—but many people overlook the importance of ending on time.

Even if you’re on a roll and everything is going really well, stop your sessions of Blocked Time when your allotted time is up — not a second later. Over time, this will train you to work efficiently. Parkinson’s Law states that the amount of time required to perform a task is directly related to the amount of time allotted to perform the task; that’s why it took you two weeks to write a report in school when it was due in two weeks but only took you two hours when it was due the next day. If you acknowledge that sessions of Blocked Time — like all time, in the larger sense — are finite, then when you realize time is running out for a specific session, you’ll focus on what’s important and work effectively.

Treating Blocked Time with Respect

Once you have sessions of Blocked Time allocated and have committed to starting and ending on time, you need to treat the time with respect.

Let’s illustrate this with an example to which most people can relate. Imagine that your boss blocked off a half-hour to meet with you, and then a peer tried to book you for that same time slot. You’d feel justified in saying, “I can’t meet then. I have something,” because you see your meeting with the boss as something you really shouldn’t move. You respect it.

This makes sense — your boss is your boss. However, this proves that you can defer or reasonably refuse others’ requests for your time without the world ending. If you block off your own personal or professional time, you likely treat it with much less respect. Your own time is always the first to be compromised when you encounter a conflict; it’s human nature. Unfortunately, your Want-to-Dos and Have-to-Dos need Blocked Time, so you have to shift your mentality.

While Blocked Time can be used in both your private and professional endeavors, it’s especially important to build a culture of respect around it during private time, as this is when you’re most likely to work on tasks that relate to personal goals. There’s an art to saying, “I can’t do that at that time,” when reasonable, without the conversation being uncomfortable. In many cases, the right delivery can ease any impressions of rudeness or disrespect, especially if you share context/justification and proactively work with the requester to find a different time that works for you both. Consider the long-term gain that could come with making progress toward your goal and weigh that against the perceived urgency of any task or time being asked of you by others. Weigh that gain against your anxieties about the impression you think you’re creating by saying no. We often default to saying “yes” instead of truly considering the value of what’s being requested and deciding whether it’s something worth spending Time Currency on. Ask yourself what Ben Franklin would do. If you’re still having trouble creating and defending Blocked Time after communicating your goals and justifications to those who may try to claim your time, you may have larger issues to address in the Cultures that surround you.

Blocking your own time at your job — as our fictional friend Janet did — can seem even more uncomfortable, but this is one of the first things I ask of emerging or developing leaders I work with. If one of my employees ever came to me and said, “Listen, I’ve been having a hard time getting things done and leaving at a reasonable time with all of these meetings—I want to block off my first hour of each day to catch up, prepare, and work on valuable projects,” I would absolutely encourage them to do so. In fact, I would challenge them to take even more time, and if their proposed “first hour” timing posed problems for any reason, I would collaborate with them to identify times that work better. That’s how important I believe Blocked Time is. If socialized properly and used to its fullest by responsible individuals, professional Blocked Time almost always adds value.

As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, managing complexity requires you to answer three questions:

• How? — How will you organize your goals?

• When? — When will you address your goals?

• What? — What tools will you use to record/represent your goals and the time you’ve committed to addressing them?

We addressed How? in Managing Extreme Personal & Professional Complexity, and When? here in The Franklin Principle. Lastly, we'll explore the What? by digging deep into some of the tactics through which you'll give these principles life.

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The Franklin Principle is just one of the fundamental concepts I explore in my book, Foundations of Execution.

• About the Book

  You’re ambitious. You’re driven. You’re creative, believe in your vision, and know what you’re capable of. But like most, you often find it difficult to make progress toward the things you value.

  When it comes to accomplishing personal, professional, entrepreneurial, and creative goals, the world is bombarding you with bullshit guidance — coddling mantras of positivity and motivation devoid of practical action. Bullshit sounds good. Bullshit feels good. But bullshit will fail you in the long run nearly 100% of the time.

  No more bullshit.

  Let’s change tactics. Foundations of Execution won’t motivate you; it will give you the tools you need to execute despite the lack of motivation that will inevitably befall you. It won’t train you to abstain from excuses; it will give you the tools to strip all power from the excuses that will inevitably bubble to the forefront of your consciousness. It won’t argue the same tired case for self-discipline and convince you to work against your nature; it will show you how to circumvent your nature when it undermines your interests.

  As shockingly simple as it may seem, three behaviors tend to separate those who struggle from those who consistently execute on their goals; and by the time you’ve finished reading this book, you’ll have mastered all three. You’ll come away with repeatable habits that address not just how you tackle complex undertakings, but also how you think, behave, and approach problems in all aspects of your life. It’s an irreverent, philosophy-first, whole-self approach to execution that will change you forever.

  Paperback & Kindle

  181 Pages

---

The Three-Tool Execution Ecosystem

Managing complexity requires you to answer three questions:

• How? — How will you organize your goals?

• When? — When will you address your goals?

• What? — What tools will you use to record/represent your goals and the time you’ve committed to addressing them?

I talk about How? in Managing Extreme Personal & Professional Complexity and When? in The Franklin Principle. Here, we’ll explore the How? by digging deep into some of the tactics through which you’ll give these principles life.

A few years ago, over dinner, a friend told me about a problem he was having: Aspects of his personal life were spinning out of control. First, he missed a few appointments—a dentist’s visit, a family event, and so on—but over time, he found himself losing track of more and more. He began to wake in the middle of the night with the sinking feeling he was forgetting things.

As we dug into his issue, the cause became obvious: as it turned out, my friend—a husband, father of four, manager at a major insurance company, and youth sports coach in his late thirties—had no personal calendar. None. Not on his desk, not on his wall, not in his phone. He simply tried to remember an extraordinary volume of personal and professional responsibilities in his head, and, as an unsurprising result, began losing track of things.

And it didn’t end with events. He had no to-do list, sticky notes, notebook, or scribbles on the back of his hand. No collection of crumpled napkins with scrawled reminders stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.

I sat there, slack-jawed, as I came to comprehend the depth of his stress. His kids’ social security numbers weren’t written down. His blood type wasn’t written down. The date of his last oil change, his bank account numbers, and bands his friends suggested he might enjoy were all just swirling around in his head, devoid of hierarchy or priority. He had no calendar reminder letting him know he needed to be in work early for mandatory training the following Thursday, or that his wedding anniversary was approaching, or that he had to take his Irish Wolfhound for her annual checkup.

It’s not the year 1410, and—without even considering goals—you most likely have more to keep track of than you can reasonably expect to keep in your head. I gave my friend (who was admittedly an extreme case) this advice: act as though you’re a project manager hired to keep track of the affairs of a small business—and imagine that small business is your life. Treat that job as though your performance was being tracked and measured. Strive to do a great job. Once you get used to this shift in mentality, its value will become evident, and the behaviors you’re learning will naturally carry over from your personal life into whatever ambitious projects or goals you take on.

This means your Scripts, Hot Lists, and Blocked Time need to exist somewhere outside your skull. There’s a clinical precedent for this advice: doctors will often suggest that adults suffering from ADHD adopt the use of tools to manage their lives. While the complexities of everyday life may be enough to overwhelm someone suffering from ADHD, there’s no reason the rest of us can’t take advantage of the same constructs; and in a hyperconnected world, we all suffer from some degree of attention deficit brought on by external forces. Especially if you plan to launch into an ambitious undertaking or have a wide range of disparate professional responsibilities, the use of tools will be vital not only to your success, but also your sanity.

You’re not an exception.

The Three Execution Tools

In order to implement the strategies discussed in Managing Extreme Personal & Professional Complexity and The Franklin Principle, you’re going to need three Execution Tools:

• A Note-Taking Tool

• A Listing Tool

• A Calendar

You’re going to learn about each tool and discover how they collectively create a perfect ecosystem that represents the mental organizational model you’ve come to know and love. When we’re done here, you’ll live and die by these three tools, and they’ll become core to your personal culture.

A Note-Taking Tool

There’s no twist here: a Note-Taking Tool is a utility you use to capture, store, and reference notes. I define notes as detailed, medium-to-large bodies of information, which are typically comprised of sentences and paragraphs.

If I go to a class, seminar, conference, or talk, I’m likely taking a few pages of notes. I collect notes for books, articles, and presentations I’m writing or projects and programs I’m developing.

Your notes should be quickly available, easily searchable, and accessible from a number of devices. Given these criteria, I wholeheartedly endorse Evernote. This suggestion is the result of a good deal of trial and error on my part and the parts of individuals with whom I’ve shared these tactics. Evernote is a robust tool that lets you make notes out of anything; you can use your voice, clips from websites, emails, photographs, and more. However, I argue that its real power is plain text; I essentially treat Evernote like a series of digital marble notebooks.

I should probably point out that I’m not endorsed in any way by the tools I suggest in this piece or my book—they’re simply the ones that seem to work best at the time of this writing.

Evernote is accessible through a desktop app, mobile apps, and web browsers. It’s cloud-based, which means information is stored remotely and securely, and syncs between multiple devices; if you create, edit, or delete a note, the changes will propagate across all the devices you’re using. Furthermore, you can sort notes into notebooks and add tags to notes for easy searching, which lets you intuitively organize and quickly locate notes relating to individual undertakings—something useful given your new mental organizational model.

If you don’t already have an account, sign up for Evernote Basic now. As of the time of this writing, you can use the service on two devices at once without a paid plan unless you’re storing a high volume of notes and syncing a lot of data. Ultimately, you may prefer to use something else, which is fine as long as it fits all of the criteria discussed here; however, in order to follow along with the book, go with Evernote for now (trust me and avoid the headache of painstaking research). Add it to the devices you most often use—I prefer to have it on my laptop and my phone.

If you’re already using Evernote, clean it up; get rid of any notes or notebooks you no longer need, group notes logically, and add tags wherever appropriate.

A Listing Tool

While Evernote can be used for lists and smaller bits of information, tools exist specifically to accommodate this need. Workflowy is a tool I’ve used for years with great success and have shared with countless others. Like Evernote, it’s accessible via a desktop app, mobile apps, and web browser, and it lets you structure information the way your mind works, whatever that may be. It lets you create and easily navigate through lists, with smaller lists nested infinitely within larger ones—exactly like the Hierarchical Thought model we discussed in Managing Extreme Personal & Professional Complexity. When items are completed, you simply click a button that either hides or removes them. Some people prefer more polished tools like Google Keep, but as of the time of this writing, I strongly recommend Workflowy, due not only to its direct applicability to the suggested mental model, but also due to its ease of use and beautiful simplicity. Other than a few optional keyboard shortcuts, there’s almost nothing to learn.

Nearly everyone I’ve convinced to try Workflowy ended up a long-term user. If you pay for the professional subscription, you can create unlimited lists and take advantage of features such as automated daily backups, custom themes, and more; however, you can perform most basic functionality with a free plan.

Remember our fictitious friend, Jackie, from Managing Extreme Personal & Professional Complexity? The whole-person hierarchy we developed for her can be represented perfectly in Workflowy. If you recall, at the highest level, her life was divided into two lists that represented the broadest practical way of splitting her focus:

• + Personal

• + Professional

By clicking the little + symbol next to each item, Workflowy lets you expand these top-level lists to see her life as a whole (we’ll add a few more items now that you’re familiar with Scripts and Hot Lists):

• - Personal

  • + General Hot List

  • + Parenting

  • + School

  • + DJ/Music

  • + Health and fitness

• - Professional

  • + General work Script

  • + Work Hot List

  • + Work meeting notes

  • + Vacation/absence prep Script

By clicking on any item, you can see a distraction-free zoomed-in view of it. For example, clicking on the dot next to Health and fitness in the above list would show you deeper lists nested within it and hide everything else from view:

• - Health and fitness

  • + Soccer

  • + Gym

Then, clicking on Soccer would show you even further nested lists:

• - Soccer

  • + Soccer solo practice Script

  • + Soccer Hot List

  • + Stretches

  • + Ball control drills to work on

Then, you can expand these lists to navigate, as needed:

• - Soccer

  • - Soccer solo practice Script

    • Stretches (30 seconds each)

    • Practice each ball control drill (5 minutes each)

    • Address Soccer Hot List

  • - Soccer Hot List

    • Research a more challenging stretching routine

    • Inflate back-up ball (in the garage)

  • - Stretches

    • Shoulder extension

    • Rear hand clasp

    • Full squat

    • Standing pike

    • Kneeling lunge

    • Lying twist

  • - Ball control drills to work on

    • Happy feet

    • Toe touches

    • V-rolls

    • Pull-and-cuts

In this example, Jackie is looking at her Soccer lists and none of her other personal or professional lists, which lets her focus only on what she wants to focus on at the time. You can imagine that she’s come upon a session of Soccer Blocked Time and finds herself out in her yard with the above series of lists pulled up on her mobile phone. She uses her Script to guide her and her other lists to provide the context needed to progress toward her goal.

The scale of perspective is completely up to her and easy to navigate, as it lets her zoom in and focus just like she does in her mind. I’m sure you can relate: you sometimes want to take inventory of entire undertakings, while at other times you surely want to focus only on the tasks at hand.

Listing Tools aren’t just for lists, Scripts, and Hot Lists; I also suggest using a Listing Tool to record anything small. For example, I live just outside Philadelphia and spend a lot of time in the city, so the odds of my car being stolen at some point are pretty high.

I mean, I love Philly, but let’s be honest about it.

Should my car be stolen, I’ll need to provide information to the police. Unlike my chronically stressed-out friend, I don’t have my VIN or license plate memorized; however, I can simply pull out my phone, go into Workflowy, go to my Cars/automotive list within my Personal list (which is actually a shared list with my wife’s Workflowy account—another useful feature), click on the item for that specific car, and find the information there. I can also do that in a much easier way: I can search for the actual text included in the items themselves, like “car,” “VIN,” “license,” or “license plate.” My wife and I also share grocery lists, items to talk to our pediatrician about at our next visit, lists of healthy dinner ideas, etc.

Imagine that you’re an employee at a mid-sized company. Take a look at a smallish bit of professional information that could be useful for you to keep in a Listing Tool.

• - Benefits Information

  • - Annual Bonus

    • 5% of annual salary

    • Split into two payments

    • 75% of bonus in first January paycheck; 25% of bonus in first July paycheck

  • - 401(k)

    • 3% is automatically deducted from every paycheck, matched by employer

  • - Health Benefits

    • Call advisor at 800-555-5555 or ask a question via online form on the company website

  • - Tuition Reimbursement

    • Up to $1,800/year

    • Must retain GPA above 3.0

    • See company website for details

This departs from the lists we’ve explored so far in several ways: items don’t exist in a particular order, and they’re informational as opposed to actionable. This list simply contains knowledge you would need to access from time to time, and it isn’t lengthy or narrative enough to require a note.

Here’s a simple Script example you might find in your Listing Tool within your Work heading:

• - Work Processes

  • - How to make a call to an outside line using the new phone system at work

    • Pick up the phone, press 99

    • Wait until the dial tone goes away

    • Press the squiggly arrow

    • Dial the number you want to call

Pause here and sign up for Workflowy if you haven’t already. Again, you may ultimately prefer something else that meets all of the criteria I mentioned, represents Hierarchical Thought in a simple, navigable manner, and allows for the same ability to dynamically shift your view and focus. However, for now, sign up for Workflowy so you can follow along with the book. If you already use Workflowy, take some time to organize it and clean it up. You’ll be utilizing a Listing Tool quite a bit throughout this book as you work through examples and begin to organize your goals. Once you’re signed up, try to create a structure that reflects your life. Spend some time playing around with it and create some sample lists and sub-lists—Hot Lists for organizing tasks by theme and Goal Scaffolds to reflect some simple goals. Grab the mobile app and sign in there, too.

An interface like Workflowy’s may be hard to get used to at first just because it gives you so much freedom, but after spending some time with it and curating it in a way that reflects your own mind and your own life, you’ll find this to be an invaluable tool.

Some people like to keep their notes and lists in a single tool; I don’t suggest doing so because each tool has its own strengths. Evernote allows for much more formatting flexibility (text markup, image insertion, tables, etc.), which can be handy for note-taking. On the other hand, Workflowy’s (intentional) limitations force you to create pure, simple text content, and the flatter organizational structure (no notebooks, notes, etc.) make for more efficient searching and more direct parity to a whole-life hierarchy mental model. Beyond the tools’ respective strengths, creating a firm distinction between lists and notes will help you keep both clean and well-organized, which will reinforce trust in the tools and encourage you to curate them properly.

A Calendar

Lastly, you need a Calendar. As of the time of this writing, Google Calendar is free and has every feature you should ever need. It's accessible through web browsers and easily integrated into the native Calendar apps on most phones and tablets. You can sync multiple Google Calendars, so you can see other peoples' changes in real time, as well as create, edit, and delete events within each Calendar from a single interface. For example, you may have a personal Calendar, your spouse may have a personal Calendar, your kids may have personal Calendars, and you may all share a “family” Calendar, which includes events you’ll all have to attend. You may share yet other Calendars with friends or keep a separate professional Calendar.

Aside from keeping track of your commitments, Calendars also let you know when to begin and end sessions of Blocked Time relating to your Have-to-Dos and Want-to-Dos.

If you don’t already use Google Calendar, stop now and sign up; all you need is a Google account, and you’ll already have a Calendar available to you. Once you have an account, set it up to sync with your mobile device (instructions for your specific device are only a quick Internet search away). As with Note-Taking and Listing Tools, if you ultimately prefer a different Calendar tool, that’s fine, as long as it fits the criteria mentioned and can sync across devices.

By this point, I’m going to assume you’re willing to give these new behaviors and traditions a chance; now it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. Open Google Calendar. Regardless of how you used your Calendar in the past, we’re going to set it up so it directs virtually all of your waking time.

First, make sure your Calendar reflects your responsibilities as accurately as possible so you can fully trust it; this will let you confidently navigate around existing commitments when identifying opportunities for Blocked Time. This also reduces stress as it absolves you of the need to keep any obligations in your head. Don’t be like my friend; get organized. Outsource your memory onto third-party tools.

Let’s begin with your personal commitments. Add to your Calendar any gym time, dentist and doctor’s appointments, events, parties, parent-teacher conferences, happy hours, sports practices, band practices, networking events, school concerts, sporting events, awkward first dates, amateur wrestling conventions, roller derby championships, pet massages, frat reunions, psychic readings, and cult mixers. If you already use a Calendar—and I sincerely hope you do—you probably have a good deal of these types of things in there already. Take the time now to add anything that may have been missed, tighten it up, and turn it into something you can truly trust to guide you.

Next, think about which events may be important to share with anyone with whom your life is intertwined. If possible, set up joint Calendars with these people. As an example: My wife doesn’t use her personal Calendar quite the way I do, but we share two joint Calendars to which she contributes events and obligations. Even if she didn’t reference them herself—which she does—she would keep them up to date because she knows and respects the fact that I rely on my Calendar as my source of truth.

Many professionals have their own work Calendar, often based in other tools like Microsoft Exchange or Google’s G Suite. If you have a work Calendar that can be seen in your personal or combined Calendar view, feel free to make it visible, but make sure it still remains a separate Calendar. Don’t start adding your personal events and obligations to your work Calendar, as many companies have policies restricting the use of work-provided resources for personal needs. More importantly, if you end up leaving the company unexpectedly, you’ll lose all your personal events.

Notice that the specific tools suggested—for Note-Taking Tools, Listing Tools, and Calendars—all fulfill a set of simple criteria. They’re all:

• Quickly accessible — They’re all available on your mobile device, which you can pull out and access in a matter of seconds. If you're in a developed nation, there’s a good chance your phone is on your person at almost all times, so it’s by far the best place for Execution Tools. Even the most basic modern phones let you do much more than text and send memes to your friends.

• Cross-device in real-time — This is a way of saying that any update made on one device will be almost immediately available on another. For instance, if you make a change to Workflowy, Evernote, or Google Calendar on your computer, walk down the hall, and check your smartphone, you should see your change reflected there.

• Redundant — Redundancy is a technical term for data existing in more than one place, so if you lose or accidentally delete something, you can still recover it, either from backups, the cloud-based service itself, or from another device. Redundancy is one of the primary reasons I’m vehement about using digital technology for these tools. I’ve worked with people who carry around a single flash card for each day or who use sticky notes or small notebooks; while these behaviors may work well for certain individuals, they’re not redundant, and if you lose your physical notes/lists, they’ll be lost forever. It’s not 1989, so please don’t do this. I can lose (or destroy) every device I own, buy new ones, sign into these services, and not a single note, list, or calendar event will have been lost.

• Simple — Each tool must be simple enough that you can master most major functionality after only a little use. If you use more complex tools with a whole suite of options, it will take you longer to feel like a power user, and you’ll be less prone to use them or customize them in a way that suits your personal style. You want to quickly cultivate a sense of familiarity with your Execution Tools, and using simple ones makes this easier.

• Free — While paid premium versions of Evernote and Workflowy exist, you can use most functionality with a free account. Free doesn’t mean you should use it for years without putting money into the pockets of these tools’ creators. It means there’s no reason not to at least give them a try—there’s no harm and no risk.

Recurring Tasks

You may encounter tasks you need to perform on a regular basis that are simple and don’t necessarily fit into the Hot List model.

As an example, consider taking your car in for an oil change every few months. For most people, that’s pretty isolated; such a task wouldn’t be paired up with other, related ones, and since it’s a Recurring Task, it wouldn’t make sense in a Hot List. Since your car’s health relies on this being done every few months, you can’t let it lobby for priority against other tasks and risk being pushed down or chronically deferred. The best method for handling such a Recurring Task is to decide on Blocked Time during which you’ll perform it, and create a recurring Calendar event for it. If a task is unavoidable, you may as well organize it to avoid losing track of it. Shed the stress of having to remember it—along with dozens of similar Recurring Tasks—in your head.

For instance, you could create an oil change Calendar event for 9 a.m. on the first Saturday of January, April, July, and October. You can also set reminders for one week before each so you can check your Calendar for any conflicts, adjust the times if necessary, call for appointments, etc.

Other examples of daily/weekly/semi-monthly Recurring Tasks:

• Take garbage and plastic/glass recycling to the curb every Wednesday night

• Mow the lawn every (or every other) weekend

• Refill your pill case or charge your hearing aid every Sunday

• Pick up your monthly public transit pass near the end of the month

• Meet a workout partner at the gym three times each week at a predetermined time

Sure, you’d probably remember to take the garbage to the curb without the Calendar event, but creating one eliminates the risk of losing track of the task on busy nights and then realizing once you’re already comfy in bed. It eliminates the vague sense of responsibility that can—in conjunction with other undocumented obligations—add up to an amorphous undercurrent of stress. And what does it cost you? You perform the task and erase the reminder with the simple swipe of a thumb.

Do you take birth control or heart medicine at 8 a.m. each day? Put a recurring event in the Calendar. For things like this—when consistency matters—you can consider the event an insurance policy. Do you visit grandma and help her clean her house every Wednesday at 6PM? Calendar. Change the filter in the fish tank every Sunday? Calendar. Place your daughter’s library book and Girl Scout uniform in her book bag every Wednesday? Calendar. Personally, on the first of each month, I change my contact lenses, organize my home office, swap out my toothbrush, and perform about ten other small tasks.

Then, there are yearly Recurring Tasks. On November 15th of each year, I bring patio furniture into my garage, drain the hoses outside my house so they don’t freeze during the winter, adjust my heater settings, and schedule time to have my gutters cleaned. I use a recurring Calendar event to remind myself that it’s time to perform my winter prep Script, refer to it when the time comes, and work my way through it from top to bottom. I don’t want to have to remember that stuff; I want tools to do it for me. I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and realize I never drained the hoses.

Other examples of yearly or semi-yearly Recurring Tasks:

• Replace heater filters, clean the chimney, purge the water heater, etc.

• Organize tax and financial records and either file them with the IRS or send them to an accountant

• Update your résumé/CV just to keep it current and list recent accomplishments while they’re still fresh in your mind, regardless of your employment situation

• Schedule doctor checkups, optometrist and dental appointments, etc.

• Perform spring cleaning

Unique Tasks

Unique Tasks are tasks that only occur once, and these too should be reflected in your Calendar when they’re time-specific or time-sensitive. By nature, time-specific tasks are related to a time and, therefore, require very little thought. Consider 3 p.m. on June 4th: Doctor's appointment—bring referral; this is a textbook commitment and aligns with how most people use Calendars.

However, if you find yourself with a time-sensitive task with no specific time assignment, you should assign it a time and put it in the Calendar, as well. Let’s illustrate this with two examples.

Consider Pick up football game tickets from Uncle Fred. With something like this, you wouldn’t just want to “try to remember to get to it before the game;” not only is it time-sensitive, but remember—you’re trying to eliminate stress. Pick a time to do it and throw it in the Calendar. Even if you have to move it a little when the time comes, the task (and stress) of remembering is still outsourced.

By contrast, something like Look into alternate Internet service providers wouldn’t be a good candidate for this practice since it isn’t necessarily time-sensitive; instead, this one makes more sense as an item on a General Hot List and worked on when its Priority is appropriate during sessions of Blocked Time dedicated to that particular Hot List. Other priorities may bump it down, but unlike the Pick up football game tickets from Uncle Fred example, there isn’t a specific time by which you need to perform this task before it’s too late.

This all becomes natural with practice, and common sense will get you pretty far in assessing the best way to record, organize, and prioritize a given task. Either way, you’re getting it; I can see it in your eyes. Get obnoxiously organized. Become your own personal assistant. Your own best employee. Your own overbearing, micromanaging project manager.

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Managing personal and professional complexity is just one of the fundamental concepts I explore in my book, Foundations of Execution.

• About the Book

  You’re ambitious. You’re driven. You’re creative, believe in your vision, and know what you’re capable of. But like most, you often find it difficult to make progress toward the things you value.

  When it comes to accomplishing personal, professional, entrepreneurial, and creative goals, the world is bombarding you with bullshit guidance — coddling mantras of positivity and motivation devoid of practical action. Bullshit sounds good. Bullshit feels good. But bullshit will fail you in the long run nearly 100% of the time.

  No more bullshit.

  Let’s change tactics. Foundations of Execution won’t motivate you; it will give you the tools you need to execute despite the lack of motivation that will inevitably befall you. It won’t train you to abstain from excuses; it will give you the tools to strip all power from the excuses that will inevitably bubble to the forefront of your consciousness. It won’t argue the same tired case for self-discipline and convince you to work against your nature; it will show you how to circumvent your nature when it undermines your interests.

  As shockingly simple as it may seem, three behaviors tend to separate those who struggle from those who consistently execute on their goals; and by the time you’ve finished reading this book, you’ll have mastered all three. You’ll come away with repeatable habits that address not just how you tackle complex undertakings, but also how you think, behave, and approach problems in all aspects of your life. It’s an irreverent, philosophy-first, whole-self approach to execution that will change you forever.

  Paperback & Kindle

  181 Pages

---

Tactical Consequences: Accountability's Secret Weapon

If you've read some of my other Perspectives pieces or books, you may be familiar with the first two Foundations of Execution — defining and refining your goals and managing complexity. The final foundation is removing failure from the equation. We'll explore this concept here.

At its most basic, removing failure from the equation requires Accountability. For many, Accountability points inward — holding oneself accountable for your decisions. When you apply this concept to goals, you're talking about self-discipline.

Bluntly, self-discipline doesn’t work. Traditionally, people believe the self-discipline required to execute on a goal should come from within; however, that model has a horrible track record. No matter how much you care about what you’re doing, you’re only human. Once you admit to yourself that you probably won’t be able to will your goal into existence—and that you’re not an exception—it’s time to discuss practical tactics for keeping your eyes on the prize.

Accountability means expanding the scope of failure. It broadens the distress associated with inaction or failure because they cease to be private events; it exposes your desires and progress to others and subjects you to judgment. If you want to learn more about Accountability, I explore it at length in my book, Foundations of Execution, but let’s assume you get the idea. How do we take it to the next level? What tactics can you use to not just make failure more public, but rather truly takes failure out of the equation?

Tactical Consequences

Imagine for a moment that you’d like to lose some body fat (a pretty relatable desire, I imagine). You may decide to eat healthfully and head to the gym each morning. You employ all the right behaviors, create detailed goals and milestones, do a ton or research, organize yourself properly in readily accessible tools, leverage Accountability by telling some friends about your plans and urging them to check in on your progress, and so on.

Good work!

However, when you resolve to do something, you’re at one point in your life (let’s call it Point A). The next morning at 6 a.m., when it’s cold and rainy and your alarm wakes you and reminds you to go to the gym, you’re at a different point (let’s call that Point B). Then, when you’re at work and someone brings donuts in, you’re at yet another point (Point C). Finally, when you’re in a rush and hungry and pass a fast food restaurant with an empty drive-through lane, you’re at another point (Point D).

These are four different people.

Who you are—your consciousness—is what many philosophers and neuroscientists refer to as integrated. You change as you receive and process new information, go through new experiences, and undergo fluctuations in hormone and chemical levels throughout the day. Since your consciousness—which is dynamic—is your sole connection to reality, you’re dynamic. And while core aspects of your personality and memory forge a convincing semblance of continuity, you’re constantly changing into what one could argue are fundamentally different individuals. Due to this, the you that makes a decision is a different person from the you who’s tasked with enforcing it. More importantly, the you who’s tasked with enforcing it is different from the you that will see the benefits (or lack thereof) down the road. When it comes time to do the hard work—to step on the treadmill at 6 a.m. or refrain from indulging in the donut—it’s hard to imagine being the you down the road who would have benefitted from current you’s sacrifice. This isn’t nearly as much of an exaggeration as you may think it is, as science directly supports this perspective’s functional validity. When we think of our future selves, our brains respond as though we’re thinking of an entirely different person[1].

You at Point A had the easiest job of all. Making a decision doesn’t hurt; it’s not work. However, in order to ensure you execute on Point A you’s intentions, Point A you—honorable and idealistic, driven and clear-headed—needs to inflict your will on Points B, C, and D you. This is precisely what Tactical Consequences achieve.

Incidentally, a close friend actually did decide he wanted to lose weight a while ago and had failed at dieting and exercising for years. We were talking about it one night when I suggested a plan. The next time we were hanging out, he handed money over to a mutual friend and made sure I witnessed the exchange. We told our mutual friend that she was to return the money to him only if he had lost a predetermined amount of weight by a certain date. If not, she could keep the money.

Right there, we moved beyond simple accountability and implemented Tactical Consequences. The goal was weight loss; the method was handing over the money and agreeing to the terms; and the Tactical Consequence was losing the money. To be sure it would work, though, we made some additions that would cause additional distress:

• To his wallet — My friend was gainfully employed, so if the consequence was only five dollars, the risk of losing it most likely wouldn’t generate proper incentive. It was important that he handed over enough money that it would be worth his while to follow through.

• To his sense of ethics — If he failed to lose the weight, he could take solace in the fact that the money was going to a close friend. I suggested that instead of keeping the money, our mutual friend should instead send it to a group or charity that supported a cause the dieter disagreed with. We settled on a group that it’s pretty safe to say very few decent people would likely want to support (this is sometimes referred to as an anti-charity). Everyone agreed to the change, and my friend followed through on his goal for the first time since his first Point A years ago.

My friend was tired of Point B sabotaging him and making him look bad; it was time to wage war. He put his future self at risk of embarrassment and damage to his sense of integrity by sharing the goal with more people. He put his future self at risk of monetary penalty by putting money on the line. He put his future self at risk of indirectly supporting a cause with which both his current and future selves disagreed. He tactically subjected his future self to consequences.

We were certainly not innovators here. However implemented, the core concept is simple: replace self-discipline and motivation with consequences. Earlier, I mentioned that self-discipline and motivation fail to deliver consistent results, and now you understand why: they’re fleeting because you’re constantly transforming into different individuals. Tactical Consequences work because they transcend time: inaction or failure become less likely options if they would introduce a problem to your life. Set up your future self to fail at the cost of money, pride, possessions, integrity, or combinations thereof.

In some cases, due to the nature of your goal, you can put into place your own Tactical Consequences with little or no outside assistance. For example—and continuing with the ongoing weight-loss theme—during periods of my life in which I participated in martial arts competitions, whenever I wanted to lose a few pounds after the Thanksgiving/year-end holiday eating gauntlet (the goal), I would enter myself in a tournament a few weeks into the new year, but would do so in the weight class that contained my goal weight (the method); I would leverage Accountability by letting family and teammates know I entered, and then if I didn’t make the weight, I’d face much stronger and larger opponents (Tactical Consequences).

As another example of self-inflicted Tactical Consequences, one of my closest friends maintained a day job for years while building his small business. Once it grew to the point that he could just about sustain his bills without working elsewhere, he pulled the trigger and quit (the method); if he didn’t work hard to network and drum up new business, he would find himself in dire financial straits or have to again seek employment (the Tactical Consequences).

Let’s discuss some implementation details and explore why it’s important that you only use this behavior sparingly.

Setting Mile Markers and Understanding Your Domain of Control

If your goal is long-term and large-scale, you shouldn’t tie Tactical Consequences to the overall goal, but rather to Mile Markers—checkpoints of achievement that signify progress pertaining to your overall goal. Not only is this model practical because large goals are collections of smaller goals, but there are also psychological factors at play. Hitting smaller goals and spreading your sense of achievement out over time will inspire you to continue more effectively than relying on a single, distant, long-term goal.

Goals that have been properly broken down into collections of smaller sub-goals should provide a nearly perfect collection of Mile Markers.

Imagine that your goal was to become an accomplished glass artist. As mentioned, you wouldn’t want to tie Tactical Consequences to the overall goal, but rather Mile Markers that comprise it. You may think that winning a competition by a certain date would be a good candidate, but it wouldn’t be because such events are qualitatively judged by third parties; you’d be relying, in part, on the whims and biases of judges. Instead, tie the Tactical Consequences to things that reflect your own dedication to the goal, such as entering a certain number of competitions before a certain date. Doing so lies squarely within your Domain of Control, and the preparation required to compete will force you to adopt behaviors that will ensure progress toward both winning competitions and your ultimate goal.

External factors can pose challenges and threaten your ability to execute on even a well-constructed goal’s ultimate success criterion; while you can (and should) adjust for such challenges as they arise, you should tie Tactical Consequences to Mile Markers that rely entirely on your action or inaction. The simpler Mile Markers are, and the more they rely only on your own behaviors, they more effective they’ll generally be.

As another example, imagine that you wanted to publish a comic book. There are quite a few Mile Markers you could tie Tactical Consequences to surrounding writing, storyboarding, illustrating, coloring, etc., but when it comes to publishing, you’re reliant on the willingness of a publisher to work with you. While you can influence that, you can’t control it. Because of this, rather than setting a Mile Marker called have comic book published, pick something like research and send well-constructed pitch letters to at least fifteen different agents or publishers. When no one and nothing else can be blamed for your inability to execute on a Mile Marker, you’ll find yourself robbed of excuses—that’s an incredibly freeing feeling and lets you define Tactical Consequences with impunity.

Which brings us to the next topic…

Taking It to the Limit

Approach the following first as a philosophical exercise before worrying about implementation:

The Tactical Consequences tied to Mile Markers for your goal that lie within your Domain of Control should be extreme if the goal is incredibly important to you. Remember: inaction or failure become less likely options if they would introduce a problem to your life. Let’s amend that to say a catastrophic problem because the more extreme the consequences, the less likely you are to tolerate failure as an option.

As consequences approach intolerable, inaction or failure becomes almost impossible. You at Point A—the enthusiastic, driven version of you—has the potential to become an asshole. A sadistic, devious villain. In such cases, Point B you may hate the Point A version, but too bad—Point A you is in charge because they came first and have the intel needed to leverage Point B you’s weaknesses, fears, desires, and anxieties. In accessing such intimate forces, you can all but guarantee a degree of success otherwise virtually unattainable.

It’s difficult to come up with extreme Tactical Consequence examples because the aforementioned weaknesses, fears, desires, and anxieties are different for everyone. For some, social consequences are far more painful than monetary ones. For some, denial of creature comforts may be a big driver. Be honest with yourself and push the boundaries. If you love television, banning yourself from watching it for a month may seem like a good Tactical Consequence, but does it guarantee you’ll follow through on your Mile Markers? What about if you banned all television and films for a year, and would have to destroy your television?

This illustrates a point: every goal comes with the opportunity to ask yourself if you value success/execution relating to your goal—and all it will bring you—more than you value the things you choose put on the line. Think of your motivations and know that if you want to guarantee success, you always have the option of taking it far, digging deep, and making it hurt.

Before you dismiss me as a lunatic, consider that me at Point B can be pretty lazy. Me at Point C can be afraid of failure. Me at Point D can be overwhelmed by life’s responsibilities, and—worst of all—me at Point E can decide my goal simply didn’t matter in the first place. I know I’m as weak-willed, fickle, and easily distracted as anyone else, so for the goals I’ve valued the most, I’ve devised quite a few extreme Tactical Consequences over the years.

When you began reading this, I promised you the ability to take failure out of the equation—to entirely remove inaction and failure as options. This is it—this is how. It’s not complex, but it’s something very few have the guts to discuss honestly because we secretly like the failure option; it comforts us. We like being able to lay blame on external forces, or to be able to shrug off a previous goal as a phase or bad idea. We like the eject button the failure option provides. I also believe—deep down in our hearts—we all know it’s possible to remove failure. You would hit that first fitness Mile Marker if failing to do so meant using up your vacation time jogging across your entire state in the winter. You would hit your first side-business Mile Marker if doing so prevented your grandmother from opening a sealed envelope containing a detailed list of embarrassing secrets. You would finish the first draft of that screenplay if you would have to donate your car if you missed your deadline. You would launch that online store in time if failing to do so meant burning every existing photo of your beloved childhood pet and deleting any digital copies. It’s a weird and ugly concept, but you should keep it in mind as a viable option because it works when nothing else will. When you’ve failed, procrastinated, and made excuses for years. And when the goal truly matters, I urge you to push the boundaries because if you can tolerate the consequence, inaction and failure will always be options.

Setting Mile Markers well within your Domain of Control gives you the freedom to craft Tactical Consequences that are as ruthless, life-altering, reputation-damaging, and police-report-filing as you’d like. Remember, this is you at Point A; the Accountability and Tactical Consequences you bring to this goal will force you to push through when (not if) you lose steam at Point B, C, or beyond.

Now that you understand that this option is available to you, you need to understand how to wield it responsibly.

Extreme Tactical Consequences as a Filtration Tool

At this point, you may be under the impression that I’m constantly setting up booby traps for myself, living a high-stakes life wrought with minute-by-minute drama and self-abusive consequences. This is certainly not the case, and if I don’t make it to the gym on time today, I can assure you I won’t have to burn my house to the ground. Quite the opposite; Tactical Consequences are an incredibly powerful tool that should be used with caution, and not every goal warrants them. In fact, the exercise of applying Tactical Consequences can often transform into an exercise in filtration.

By implementing Tactical Consequences, you demonstrate that inaction or failure relating to goals you value isn’t tolerated, and if you aren’t willing to commit distressing Tactical Consequences to a goal, then you have to ask yourself if you really want to achieve it as badly as you claim. That’s vital and healthy; if you’re an excitable, enthusiastic dreamer who is interested in taking on the world and chronically spreading yourself thin, the threat of an extreme Tactical Consequence forces you to reconsider, reduce scope, prioritize, and focus your energy. In many cases, the internal discussion about whether or not a goal is truly important enough to decorate with extreme Tactical Consequences frees you; it forces you to ask if the goal was an empowering fantasy you’ve always held onto for comfort but never truly wanted. It isolates and assigns value to your true goals while weeding out the whims. It encourages you to weigh a goal against its ability to bring you more of what you value on the most fundamental level.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue goals that you value but to which you can’t justify applying Tactical Consequences. Personally, I dedicate blocked sessions of time to a number of personal, professional, and fitness goals I value; I meticulously organize them using the tactics I share in Foundations of Execution. I’ve even expanded the scope of failure by sharing some such goals with my family, colleagues, and others. Without employing these behaviors, I know I’m never going to progress as I’d like. While certainly important, these goals are far from my most vital; they don’t have the potential to drastically change my life. For that reason, I choose not to tie Tactical Consequences to their Mile Markers. If I did so for every single such goal—especially if I made the Tactical Consequences extreme—I’d be a stressed-out lunatic. Not every goal is important enough to justify subjecting myself to this practice; and when one is, it’s clear. I’m willing to bet you know which of your goals are worth subjecting yourself to risk and frustration, as well.

Think of Tactical Consequences as a potentially lethal weapon; respect them, use them sparingly and with careful consideration, and when you do actually deploy them, do so without mercy.

Defining an Executor of Consequences and Auditor

If I’ve convinced you that Tactical Consequences are an important tool, at this point, you may be asking how you’re expected to make sure you go through with them. That’s a great question; if Point D you can’t be trusted to follow through on Point A you’s goal, they certainly can’t be trusted to follow through on distressing Tactical Consequences.

Earlier, I cited examples that illustrate how you can often enforce your own Tactical Consequences—such as when I would enter martial arts tournaments in a different weight class, or when my friend quit his job in order to force himself to commit to his side gig. However, not every goal presents such an easy setup for Tactical Consequences, and this is where you may need to leverage Accountability in more unique ways. Online Accountability services like those mentioned earlier can often provide this for you, but may fall short when you want to venture into more extreme or unorthodox consequences. When it comes to such cases—depending on your situation, the nature of your goal, and interpersonal dynamics—you may be able to explore building a support team. Minimally, this means coordinating your goal/consequences with two individuals—an Executor of Consequences and an Auditor.

An Executor of Consequences is an individual who will remain actively engaged in your journey and up to date on your progress, and who will be willing to do the work to ensure that all Tactical Consequences are carried out. This is where you call upon your closest personal relationships.

This is also where things can become a bit uncomfortable.

However, true friendship isn’t most evident in the currency of sympathy, but rather in respect for your best interests; love isn’t demonstrated in leniency and concessions, but rather in helping you pursue the things that matter to you. A true friend will force you to carry out Tactical Consequences—will refuse to come pick you up when it’s cold, and your feet hurt, and you don’t think you can run any farther. A true friend will deliver the envelope of embarrassing secrets to your grandmother. They’ll come take your television off the wall and list it for sale online for you. And if the threat of a Tactical Consequence isn’t enough to force you to execute on your Mile Markers when enthusiasm wanes, laziness kicks in, and interests shift, your desire to spare a friend from the uncomfortable position of having to enforce them may be.

The Auditor is a second individual—essentially a back-up or insurance policy—tasked with ensuring that the Executor of Consequences follows through on their duties. With this second team member in place, in order for a Tactical Consequence not to be carried out, three people have to fail to see the value in your success; three people have to make the decision to spare you the discomfort brought about by your inaction. At the risk of sounding callous, if you truly value your goal and openly share your motivations, yet you and your entire support system are unwilling to step up when the moment comes, you may want to reassess your character as well as the character of those whose company you keep.

If you have no family, friends, or network you can rely on, leverage online communities relating to your interest or goal domain. It may involve a good deal of work, but if you really want to do this, you can find a way to make it work.

Asking someone to be your Executor of Consequences or Auditor can be awkward; however, there are a few tactics you can use to make it less so:

• Increase buy-in by collaborating on Tactical Consequences — You should be the primary author of your Tactical Consequences since you’re the only individual intimately familiar with the fears, anxieties, and desires from which they should be derived. However, if your Executor is somehow involved in crafting the Tactical Consequences and the details surrounding them, they’ll most likely feel more of a sense of ownership surrounding enforcement.

• Make it fun — Don’t approach the request from a place of seriousness, and don’t make the task of enforcing Tactical Consequences seem dark and thankless. Embrace the unorthodox nature of the request, encourage absurd, funny, or embarrassing consequences, and—while your Tactical Consequences should cause you true distress when they relate to important goals—don’t take yourself or this process too seriously. Don’t be afraid to have fun with this.

• Don’t withhold context — If you open up to someone and share your motivations and details surrounding struggles or pain you may have endured due to past failures relating to a particular goal, your Executor and Auditor will most likely feel a greater sense of responsibility to enforce the Tactical Consequences. They’ll believe their enforcement will be in your best interests.

It’s Not Crazy If It Works

When you started reading this, I realize it may not have been exactly what you were expecting, but it’s the truth: in order to follow through and execute, you don’t need to be exceptionally intelligent, motivated, or self-disciplined. You simply need to create situations that force future versions of yourself to make decisions that align with your current values and goals.

I urge you to take some time to identify and write down ten or so Tactical Consequences that would cause you true distress—things you couldn’t even fathom having to deal with. Be creative, and don’t be afraid to get weird. Once you’ve done so, you’ll have them available should you decide to employ them.

[1] UCLA psychologist Hal Hershfield has done groundbreaking work on this topic.

Worksheets

Get your hands dirty! Check out a comprehensive (and free) worksheet to help you make the most of this specific Foundations of Execution strategy.

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Tactical Consequences are just one of the fundamental concepts I explore in my book, Foundations of Execution.

• About the Book

  You’re ambitious. You’re driven. You’re creative, believe in your vision, and know what you’re capable of. But like most, you often find it difficult to make progress toward the things you value.

  When it comes to accomplishing personal, professional, entrepreneurial, and creative goals, the world is bombarding you with bullshit guidance — coddling mantras of positivity and motivation devoid of practical action. Bullshit sounds good. Bullshit feels good. But bullshit will fail you in the long run nearly 100% of the time.

  No more bullshit.

  Let’s change tactics. Foundations of Execution won’t motivate you; it will give you the tools you need to execute despite the lack of motivation that will inevitably befall you. It won’t train you to abstain from excuses; it will give you the tools to strip all power from the excuses that will inevitably bubble to the forefront of your consciousness. It won’t argue the same tired case for self-discipline and convince you to work against your nature; it will show you how to circumvent your nature when it undermines your interests.

  As shockingly simple as it may seem, three behaviors tend to separate those who struggle from those who consistently execute on their goals; and by the time you’ve finished reading this book, you’ll have mastered all three. You’ll come away with repeatable habits that address not just how you tackle complex undertakings, but also how you think, behave, and approach problems in all aspects of your life. It’s an irreverent, philosophy-first, whole-self approach to execution that will change you forever.

  Paperback & Kindle

  181 Pages

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