The Power to Get Things Done: (Whether You Feel Like It or Not) - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Steve Levinson, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in helping people follow through on their own good intentions.

Chris Cooper is an executive mentor and coach, facilitator/trainer, consultant, and keynote speaker who has personally used and benefited from the principles and strategies revealed in this book. Cooper, who's based in the United Kingdom, created and hosts what may well be the world's most listened-to internet radio show for entrepreneurs and business leaders. Be More. Achieve More. Inspiration for the Entrepreneurial Mind is accessed up to 100,000 times a month from more than fifty countries.

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FOREWORD

Whether you’re in business for yourself or you work for a company, the better able you are to do what you intend to do, whether you feel like it or not, the more successful you’re likely to be. Without a doubt, the ability to turn good intentions into action is one of the most valuable assets that anyone who is serious about success can have.

Clearly, however, some of us are naturally better at this than others, and a rare few are even blessed with built-in unstoppable determination; they are veritable productivity machines. For them, there’s no space at all between a good intention and the action it calls for. If they decide something should be done, they just do it—whether they feel like it or not.

But what if, like most of us, your determination is anything but unstoppable? What if you’re not naturally driven to instantly turn every good intention into action? What if, like most people who want to be successful, you sometimes—maybe even often—know exactly what you should do but still put off doing it, or do it without the enthusiasm and energy it takes to do it well, or never even get around to doing it at all?

What can we do about this? How do we make ourselves do the things we know we should do but don’t feel like doing? Are you simply doomed to settle for less success?

With this book, Levinson and Cooper provide the answers to these questions and more. They explain that just because you may not be a natural-born success machine with built-in, unstoppable determination, it most certainly does not mean you have to settle. You can improve your ability to turn your good intentions into success-producing action, and no, you don’t need a brain transplant, a personality transfusion, or years of therapy. All it takes is knowing how to improve by learning and applying a few simple, clever principles, concepts, insights, and strategies.

The premise of The Power to Get Things Done is quite exciting when you really think about it. Just imagine what a difference it would make to be able to do the success-producing things you know you should do even when you dread doing them. Whether procrastination is built into your nature or it simply gets the best of you from time to time, no longer will you fall victim to it. No longer will you think yourself into inaction on a project or fall into the rut of doing nothing for fear that what you do won’t be perfect.

If you’re serious about being successful, you can make your own unstoppable determination whenever you need it! If you ask me, there couldn’t be a more priceless investment in your own future.

—IVAN MISNER, PHD,

New York Times bestselling author and founder of BNI

INTRODUCTION

Whether you run your own business or work for someone else, you’ve probably got a lot on your plate. Unfortunately, much of it may not be all that appetizing. Along with the portion of your work that you truly feel like doing comes a generous helping of things you’d rather not do. Yet to be successful, you obviously can’t just do the things you’re eager to do. You also have to do the things that you don’t feel like doing.

You probably truly intend to do most of the unpleasant things that you decide you should do. But do you actually do them? In other words, do you follow through?

Really, do you?

You see, how well you follow through matters. It matters a lot. If you’re not consistently doing the things you know you should be doing, you’re simply working against yourself. Yes, you’re in your own way. You’re preventing yourself from being as successful as you could be.

How do we know? Steve is a clinical psychologist, inventor, entrepreneur, and CEO who specializes in helping people follow through on their own good intentions. Chris, who describes himself as a “business elevationist,” is a business consultant, executive mentor, and coach who draws on extensive executive-level experience in corporations to elevate performance. First as employees and later as business owners, we’ve walked in your shoes. We learned the hard way just how much it matters to be able to do whatever we intend to do. Until we actually learned how to follow through, we had our share of follow-through failures. And trust us, they were not pretty.

But that’s not all. As consultants, we’ve seen client after client struggle—and often fail—to do the many success-producing things they know they should do but don’t feel like doing. And we’ve seen the amazing things that clients can accomplish once they actually learn how to consistently turn their good intentions into action.

We wrote this book because we’re passionate about calling attention to the vital—but, amazingly, largely overlooked—role that follow-through plays in success. And we’re frustrated by society’s failure to fully recognize just how important and just how teachable follow-through skills are.

The purpose of this book is simple: to teach you how to consistently turn your good intentions into action so you can be as successful as possible in the work you do.

The book is based on these two premises:

1. The better able you are to do what you know you should do, whether you feel like it or not, the more success you can achieve in your business, job, or career.

2. By learning and applying a few simple but powerful follow-through concepts and strategies, you can dramatically improve your ability to follow through.

WHAT TO EXPECT

We’re convinced that reading this book will contribute generously to your future success. But be prepared: We might make you a little uncomfortable along the way. That’s because we won’t be whispering sweet nothings in your ear. We’ll challenge some assumptions you may not even be aware of making. We won’t hesitate to tell you the truth about how poor follow-through is robbing you of success. And we won’t let you pretend that you can do a better job of following through just by trying harder. Instead we’ll tell you why you have to stop pretending and start pushing, pulling, prodding, tricking, and forcing yourself into doing—and keeping on doing—the unappealing things you know you must do to be successful.

And, yes, we’ll show you how.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

We realize that you’re busy, which is why we tried to write this book in a way that would allow you to benefit from it regardless of how much time and effort you’re willing and able to invest in reading it.

If you have the time and interest, by all means, please read the entire book. The first section, which explains why it’s so hard to follow through and why it’s so important, will provide you with an important foundation for the practical advice we’ll give you later on. The questions at the end of each chapter are designed to further stimulate your thinking about how to turn your own good intentions into action.

If you just can’t wait to get down to the nuts and bolts of how to follow through better, you can skip the foundation and start reading at Part Two. You can always come back later and read Part One.

Regardless of how you read this book initially, we hope that you’ll revisit it from time to time. We’re confident that once you start paying more attention to how you go about turning your good intentions into action, you’ll get something new and valuable each time you visit.

PART ONE

Why It’s So Hard to Follow Through

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing...