I’m participating in a program at my gym. For 6 weeks, every day my goal is to walk 10,000 steps. Different activities translate into a number of steps per minute. My routine varies from day to day. Some days I am dancing. On others, I take yoga, Pilates, a combination of strength and sculpting, and of course, one of my new favorites, salsa.

What You Can Measure, You Can Manage

I work out consistently and frequently. What has changed with the addition of the pedometer is my focus on reaching my goal, 10,000 steps every day. As Buckminster Fuller said “What you can measure, you can manage.” I was surprised to see just how many of my current activities translate into this fitness goal. On several days I have exceeded by more than half the number of steps in my target. What I didn’t expect, I found myself looking for more opportunities to be in motion. All because I am wearing a pedometer.

In school, students are measured: attendance, turning in assignments, completing projects, social skills. In business, our performance is reviewed by our customers, our peers, and are managers. Stating the outcome we want and measuring our actions and results against the desired outcome, gives us the information we need to know to evaluate our actions compared to our intentions.

The very act of stating a goal, measuring progress, and being mindful of your goal, can help put you into action. In another area of my life, writing my book on marketing, I made a comment error. Even though I am working with a coach to help me build out my book, I neglected to write down my goals with dates and I didn’t make appointments to do the writing. I’m driven to take action when I have items in my calendar. This oversight putting back several weeks. When I met with my coach, I realized my error and I have now corrected it by putting time to work on my book in my schedule, a repeating event with alerts is now active on my calendar.

Planning your actions helps you reach your goal. Measuring your activities is a way to remind yourself, and reward yourself, for staying on track. Measuring and documenting your actions can also reveal what is getting in your way and give you a place to take corrective action.

A simple way to track your actions might be to make notes in your calendar. Of course, there’s an app for that too. Here are a few apps that can help you without taking up too much time and they are fun to use.

Evernote

It’s a free tool that I have installed on my computer, my iPhone, and my iPad. It lives in the cloud and syncs between all my smart devices. Tim Ferriss used it to write his most famous work, The 4-hour Work Week, and The 4-hour Body. It’s a great tool for writers, business owners, students, anyone who wants to keep track of information, websites, and organize the data. You can clip URLs, articles, and entire webpages with ease. You can create separate notebooks within Evernote. You can add tags, notes, voice annotations, photos, and you can even e-mail right from the program. There is a paid version of the program, most users will be satisfied with the free version. Check it out at http://www.evernote.com

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is a task management app that works on smart phones and computers (Mac and PC). You can ask it to remind you with alerts, e-mail reminders. You can create multiple lists, and like Evernote, sync your lists to your various devices via the cloud.

Google Docs

You can create a spreadsheet to track your actions and if you have others on your team, you can grant access to your Google Docs easily.

Dropbox

Is another cloud service where you can share documents on file by file basis. If you’re working with a coach, or other team members, putting your documents into dropbox allows sharing and editing with the people you grant access. To sign up for Dropbox, click here.

Tools You Can Use

I invite you to give these tools a try. They are free. Pick a project you want to complete and see how these tools help you succeed. You may be surprised to see how measuring what you do will help you do what you want to measure.

 

You can’t see it if you are not looking for it.

Yesterday, I set down my computer glasses on my dining room table. I rarely have my computer glasses on outside of my office. After setting down my glasses, I rushed off to an appointment. When I got back to my office, I couldn’t remember where I had put my computer glasses. This is a big deal, since I spend a large part of my time in front of a computer screen. It was critical that I find my prescription computer glasses fast so I could get back to work on a project for one of my clients.

I spent several minutes searching from room to room, scouring the likely places where the elusive glasses would be. After multiple trips from my office to the office where my accounting software resides, which was the last place I remembered having them on, I became alarmed, thinking that I had misplaced or lost my expensive, prescription computer glasses. Without them, I would not be able to work for more than a few minutes at my computer. That could be a disaster for meeting the needs of my clients.

I knew I had my glasses on earlier in the day. I remembered that I had  set them down safely. But,here is the rub, because I am a visual thinker, when I remember something, I see a picture. If I can’t picture something (like the exact location of my glasses), I can walk right by it, even look directly at it and not “see” what I am looking for. Has this ever happened to you?

Why We Sometimes Can’t See What is Right in Front of Us

Our brains use a method of recognition called the “reticular activating system.” This part of your brain controls your level of attention. You can deliberately program it to filter information and pass it between you conscious brain (aware) and the subconscious brain (the part that works in the background).

You may be familiar with and an example of how the reticular activating system works. You may have experienced it yourself that last time you were thinking about purchasing a car. Suddenly, everywhere you were, you saw the make and model of the car you planned to buy. Did these cars suddenly materialize or multiply when you started to focus on them? Not at all, but your brain begin to filter them into your awareness. Your high speed processing computer, your brain, suddenly had instructions that made it easy for you to see what was already all around you. It recognized the importance of these cars and allowed you to see them.

Your Automatic Goal Seeking Mechanism

The reticular activating system has been called your automatic goal seeking mechanism. Setting goals using the power of the reticular activating system fires up your awareness of the elements you desire. Our brains can not differentiate between what we imagine and what is real. Using your brain to imagine a reality where you have exactly what you want will help you filter in the resources, people and actions needed to make the imagined real.

Getting back to my misplaced glasses, I knew that I was not seeing them, and rather than spend endless time in a frustrating search, I asked my husband to look for them for me. The result, he found them in plain sight, on my dining room table in less than 60 seconds.

If you don’t know what you are looking for, you can’t see it. If what you want doesn’t line up with what you believe to be true, you can’t see it, even if it is right in front of you. If you want to change your life and business outcome, you must first see the change, believe it possible, and then, your amazing brain will filter in success. It will know how to recognize opportunities. Try it and see what happens for you.

If you are a visual thinker like me, picturing what you want is like giving your brain a new, laser-focused, pair of glasses. Take this a step further. When you are building your marketing messages, you can create a picture of  what life will be like when your clients have what they want by using your products and services.

Just picture it.

 

Set your intentions before each networking event

➢    Make a plan
➢    Put it on paper
➢    How will you know you have succeeded in meeting your goals?
➢    Schedule time for follow up within 48 hours of the event

Susan RoAne, best selling author of How to Work a Room and What Do I Say Next? offers advice on How to be a ConverSation:

➢    Plan
➢    Prepare
➢    Practice
➢    Don’t try to sell yourself
➢    Listen well
➢    Ask good open-ended questions
➢    Smile and be friendly
➢    Focus on your conversation partners
➢    Keep current
➢    Articulate educated opinions

Andrea Nierenberg, author of Savvy Networking suggests you get prepared by making a list of opening lines to use when meeting someone new. Focus on the other person. It will help you relax. Asking open ended questions will help you discover more about them too.

How to Get Moving

Set a kitchen timer for 10 minutes
➢    Spend 10 minutes entering the contact information from a stack of business cards into your preferred contact system (Outlook, Act, an Excel Spreadsheet, aweber). Repeat as needed.
➢    Make phone calls
➢    Write a handwritten note and pop it into the mail
➢    Send an email with a link to your web site

Try out these ideas and you will be on your way to becoming a better networker.