Agile Results Means…

Outcomes over Activities.
Time as a first-class citizen
1. Rather than try to figure out how long something might take, start by figuring out how much time you want to invest in it
Fresh Start
1. It’s about thinking in terms of delivering value over simply working through the backlog. It’s about asking and answering what’s your next best thing to do
Have a Bias for Action
1. Do it, review it, and improve it.
2. Action creates inspiration
Fix time, flex scope
1. Fix your time as much as possible. Don’t throw more hours at a problem each day. Bite off what you can accomplish
Boundaries
1. Setting boundaries is how you can add balance to life. Spread your time and energy across the important hot spots
Test for Success
Approach over Results
Strengths over Weaknesses
1. Rather than spend all your time improving your weaknesses, spend your time playing to your strengths
Continuous Learning

Key Values in Agile Results

Action over Analysis Paralysis
Approach over Results
Energy over Time
Focus over Quantity
Good Enough over Perfection
Growth Mindset over Fixed Mindset
Outcomes over Activities
Strengths over Weaknesses
System over Ad Hoc
Value Up over Backlog Burndown

Hot Spots

The key areas of life that deserve your attention. As a heat map, they help you answer the questions “what’s on your radar?”

Know your top 3 pain points and opportunities

Life Frame

Mind: investing time in learning thinking techniques and keeping your mind
Body: investing time in keeping your body in shape and learning patters and practices for health. Eating, sleeping, working out.
- Good to set a minimum, such as 3 hours
Emotions: keeping your emotions healthy, learning emotional intelligence, keeping your emotions in check
Career: Activities and projects for your job and other professional endeavors
- Good to set a maximum, such as 50 hours
Financial: investing time to learn patters and practices for building and sustaining wealth
Relationships: relationships at home, work, and life. Create and maintain important healthy relationships that add value
Fun: investing time to play and do whatever you enjoy
- Good to set a minimum, such as 3 hours

Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Reflection

Monday Vision

Each Monday, identify the most important tasks for the week
Take the time to see the forest from the trees
Use the rule of 3 to help you narrow down to the three most important outcomes for the week
“If this were Friday, what are the three most important results I would want to show?”
“What would pain me the most if it weren’t done by Friday?”
Focus on outcomes, not activities or tasks

Daily Outcomes

What three things do I want to accomplish today?
Start by listing out your MUST items. Then any SHOULD or COULD items. Then use the rule of 3 to bubble up what’s most important.
Rather than base your day on things you didn’t get done in the past, base it on what you want to accomplish and on what has the most impact or value for you at this point in time.

Friday Reflection

Evaluate what you accomplished, or didn’t, and why
Identify three things that went well
Identify three things that need improvement
Evaluate your energy levels
Carry your lessons forward to your next Monday Vision

Calendar

It’s not doing less that makes you feel better or stronger. It’s spending more time in your strengths and following your passions, and less time doing things that make you weak.

Make and keep appointments with yourself; schedule time for execution or think time as you need it

Spend more time in your strengths than in your weaknesses: Push activities that make you weak to the first part of your day, and batch them

Balance is your friend

Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly Results

Design Your Day

Start your day
- Start with the rule of 3
- Startup Routine
Design your day
- Scan your hotspots
- Compelling outcomes
- Scenario-driven results
- Carve out time for what’s important
- Set boundaries and limits
Drive your Day
- Worst things first
- Pace yourself
- Power Hours
- Test your Results
End your Workday
- Dump your state
- Hang up your hat
End your day
- 4 questions to cap your day
  - What did I learn?
  - What did I improve?
  - What did I enjoy?
  - What kind act did I do?
- Shutdown routine

Design Your Week

Map out your Week
- Baseline your schedule
  - Key things to include: Sleeping, eating, working out, meetings, work time, free time, activities
- Identify committed time
- Map out your strengths and weaknesses
- Identify free time
Design your week
- Set boundaries and limits
- Fix time for eating, sleeping, and working out
- Carve out time for what’s important
- Consolidate related activities. Task switching and hopping around can eat up a lot of your time and lessen your effectiveness.
- Consolidate weaknesses
- Add strengths, spend 75% of time on things that make you stronger
- Schedule free time
Drive your week
- Scan your hotspots
- Start with the rule of three
- Monday vision, daily outcomes, friday reflection
End your week
- Friday reflection
- Show and tell
Improve your week
- Increase the number of power hours
- Increase your creative hours
- Schedule things you need time for
- Add buffers, have some breathing room
- Avoid all or nothing thinking
- Make time to recharge
- Experiment between morning person and night owl

Design Your Month

Make a list of all your outcomes
- Imagine the month was over, what would you regret most if you didn’t complete?
Prioritize outcomes by MUST SHOULD COULD
- Trim down your musts to 3 items
Assign outcomes to each week

Design Your Year

What if you could look back a year from now and say with confidence that you achieved the three most important changes that you could make in your life right now?

If this were next year, what 3 things would you want to be different.

If you had three wishes to grant yourself, what would you wish for?

Productivity Pitfalls

Analysis Paralysis
1. You never think you have enough knowledge to act on the problem and it always seems like there’s more you can know. It’s true, and it’s a trap.
Do it when you feel like it
1. You don’t always feel like doing things, even when they’re in your best interest. Having routines and schedules can help a lot.
Don’t know the work to be done
1. When you don’t know the work to be done, it’s very easy to get in over your head.
Lack of boundaries
1. Lack of boundaries gets in the way of work-life balance. It can be as simple as missing a meal.
Perfectionism
1. Not starting something because you know you won’t be perfect
2. Never finishing something on time because you’re too busy perfecting it
3. Beating yourself up over your results instead of appreciating your learning and growth

Keys to Results

Results over Productivity
Approach over Results
Value is in the eye of the beholder
The sweet spot between talent, passion, and value
Efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is doing things better, effectiveness is doing the right things
Meaningful work
Motivation + Technique. If you have motivation without technique you’re a motivated idiot. Technique without motivation and you won’t accomplish anything.
Boundaries are your friend
Time, Energy, and Technique
From Unconscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence
1. Unconscious incompetence: you don’t know what you don’t know
2. Conscious incompetence: you know what you don’t know
3. Conscious competence: You can think your way through an exercise and perform it with some conscious effort
4. Unconscious competence: You can perform the task without thinking about it
Have a bias for action
Results build momentum
Actions speak louder than words
You can’t argue with results
Passion is your fuel
You get what you focus on
Leadership is influence

Strategies for Results

Goals are vehicles. Make SMART goals
Know your own rhythms and cycles
Treat time as a valuable resource
Fix time, flex scope. Effective 40-hour workweeks beat inefficient 50,60,70,80 hour workweeks. Energy goes up when time is fixed–there’s always an end in sight.
Ask what’s the next best thing to do
Value delivered is more important than backlog burndown. Backlogs rot with time.
Make it a project, chunk it up