Articles - Career / Personal Development

 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea

With those lines, Samuel Taylor Coleridge began his famous poem Kubla Khan.  It was completed in 1797 and published in 1816.  But there is more to the story than that.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was famous for his long poems, especially The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel.  Who hasn’t heard the quotations, “water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink” or “a sadder but wiser man”.  Well, those quotations and more came from the creative mind of the same Samuel Taylor Coleridge who started this poem, Kubla Khan, with the five lines above.

The Messenger from Porlock

It seems that Coleridge, the famous English poet, experienced an intense dream one night and awoke with a 300 line plan, composed in his head, for this epic poem.  He immediately set to work penning his masterpiece.  In today’s popular vernacular, he was going to “wing it”.  But then an unfortunate event took place that changed poetic history.  A person from the adjoining town of Porlock interrupted Coleridge and spent an hour with him discussing business.  When Coleridge returned to his ‘work in progress’, he couldn’t remember what had been so vivid just one short hour before.  And so, a potential great work ended on the 54^th line—1/6^thof a masterpiece!

A Lack of Planning

How many of us have great intentions but, because of a lack of planning, and our seemingly innate ability to “wing it”, let interruptions corrupt our days and never give us the chance to follow through as we had originally intended?  Today the computer seems to take on the role of Coleridge’s messenger from Porlock.  And then, when we lose focus, we tend to pass these interruptions off by blaming our short attention spans, the aging process, or the more fashionable ‘attention deficit disorder’.  Now, while I don’t want to belittle real medical maladies, I think that most of our deficiencies can be laid at the feet of a lack of planning and an egotistical reliance on our superior intellect that will allow us to remember where we were when we begin again.

All big billers are great planners, but hate to plan.  They just know that they must do it and so develop those planning skills to the n^thdegree.  And they all use daily planners.  In fact, when I teach my Double Production – Guaranteed plan, I always start with the daily planner.

The Daily Planner

Whether you use a hard copy daily planner like mine, The Executive Edition Daily Planner, or an electronically generated version, you need to use something.  A planner is the map you will follow during your day—your proposed route from point A to point B.  It doesn't mean that you won't deviate some.  We are, after all, in a business that can be very reactive.  But your plan is an attempt by a rational human being to take control of the unknown, as much as that is possible.  The Executive Edition Daily Planner is modularized and multi-task oriented.

Modularization

I break my day into six one-hour units and I have done the same with The Executive Edition Daily Planner.  I then attack the day in those more manageable time blocks.  Industrial Engineers tell us that human beings can best relate to chores in blocks of time of not less than 15 minutes.  My blocks are 60 minutes.  In those 60 minutes I plan for my outgoing calls and allow time for unexpected incoming calls--my slush time.  8-9 am is time to settle in, have morning meetings and prepare for the day.  I make calls from 9-10 am, 10-11 am and 11-12 noon.  12-1 pm is lunch, preferably out of the office to cleanse my mind.  Then, in the afternoon, I am back in the office making calls from 1-2 pm, 2-3 pm and 3-4 pm. At the end of my day, I use the last one-hour block to plan for my next day.

Multi-task Oriented

I learned long ago that sometimes marketing turns into recruiting and recruiting turns into marketing.  The Executive Edition Daily Planner is multi-task oriented which enables me to make the most out of each call.  At least five possibilities exist on each call.  I can direct market, indirect market, direct recruit, indirect recruit and information gather.  This allows me to get something positive out of each call which in turn encourages me to make the next call.  It's all a cascade of successes that further anchors in my subconscious mind that this business is a lot of fun!  Not only does this work, but the top recruiters discovered this a long time ago and that's why they make this business look so easy.  I have sat at the desks of many big billers and let me tell you this; top recruiters are masters of multi-tasking.  And for them, this business is a whole lot of fun!

So, in the morning when you are tempted to open your computer’s homepage instead of making those first ‘money’ calls—calls that you had planned the night before—remember the folly of Coleridge by letting himself be distracted.  Don’t “wing it”!  Don’t settle for 1/6^thof your potential production.  At the end of the day, be single-minded in your focus.  And don’t allow those Messengers from Porlock to interrupt your plans.

--------------------------------------

BIOGRAPHY

Bob Marshall began his recruiting career in 1980 when he joined MR Reno, NV.  In 1986 he founded The Bob Marshall Group, International, training recruiters across the nation as well as in the United Kingdom, Malta and Cyprus.  In 1996, he returned to working a desk full-time, while continuing to train recruiters.  Just recently he began marketing the ‘unplugged’ version of his acclaimed 2009 43-session Classic Teleconference Series.  To learn more about his activities and descriptions of his products (including The Executive Edition Daily Planner) and services (including the ‘Double Production-guaranteed’ program), contact him directly at: 770-898-5550, www.TheMarshallPlan.org,or bob@themarshallplan.org.

Comments: