It’s Not Just You, I Can’t Get Shit Done Either

Productivity is not just everybody else’s problem, it’s your problem…

…and it’s also my problem.

I live in a world where I have multiple choices of things to do every day, and sometimes the choices are so overwhelming that I do nothing. I admit it.

On the other hand, I wrote this book, and you didn’t.

And then the obvious question is: if you have a list of 10 things to do, what do you actually do first? Answer is always THE MOST IMPORTANT THING (not the most urgent thing).

I tend to focus on the panic deadline. When the panic is completed, I then have a bit of peace. In order to Get Shit Done, there must be intervals of peace.

My fight – your fight – is for time and against time. Twenty-four hours – that’s what you and I have in common. USE of time is how we differ.

In the next pages you will discover the BEST ways to invest your time into productive and profitable actions – have a blast, and feel GREAT about your achievements.

The Get Shit Done (GSD) SUCCESS formula…
Productivity minus Procrastination
DOUBLES PROFIT

The GSD Secret ingredients are…
desire, determination, love of what you do,
and taking “get shit done
success-based actions.”

“Decide” and “Intend” are the unknown forces that create GSD actions – then it’s a matter
of concentration.

I will SHOW you every step,
I will DEFINE every step,
I will CLARIFY every step,
but you must TAKE THE STEP.

CAUTION:
This book is not for entitled people,
it’s for ENLIGHTENED
and DETERMINED people.

Get your GSD head in the game –
the work game, the achievement game,
the success game, the money game.
It’s TOTALLY up to you — Kick your own ass.

Why Me?

The purpose of Get Shit Done^* is to help you understand what’s “in your way” or “in your head” that prevents you from daily achievement and ultimately getting what you want. And this book will also give you ideas and answers that will help you make it happen.

GSD INSIGHT AND GUIDELENES

• The lessons are short, sweet, understandable, and immediately implementable,
• BUT you gotta be willing to WORK.
• No one can kick your ass into gear unless you’re in neutral and willing to shift gears.
• You have gas in the car, and you know how to drive.
• Now you gotta discover what will inspire you to press down on the accelerator.

At some point everyone hits a wall or roadblock or slump that prevents productivity – some temporary, some long-term. There are tons of blockers and barriers: personal, health, relationship, addiction, career, money, job, boss, ad nauseam.

One objective of this book is to get you to identify your time and achievement blockers. Explain it (them), and then make certain you have Achievement Answers to inspire yourself to do something about what’s holding you back. What’s preventing you from a life of happiness, fulfillment, independence, and wealth.

Take a moment and think of yours.

My bet is that there are several, with one or two big ones.

Attitude, mindset, concentration are among the remedies,
BUT there’s not one silver bullet.
There are a bunch of GOLDEN ones – they are also known as GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES.

Where’s your shit?

What’s your shit?

When is it going to get done?

When should it be done? OUCH!

Relax, read, and study.

This book has the
GOLDEN answers.

Why is Marden in this book?

Orison Swett Marden is one of the founding fathers of positive thinking and personal development. He was a mentor and a guiding light to people like Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie. He was also looked upon by corporate leaders of their time as THE go-to person for life enhancing wisdom.

During the time I was writing a book about the sales and business principles of John Patterson, founder of NCR, I was contacted by a bookseller in Dayton, Ohio, asking me if I wanted to buy any books from Patterson’s library. HECK YEA!

One of the books I purchased was, He Can Who Thinks He Can by Orison Swett Marden. It was proof to me that there are no coincidences, only guideposts.

The book I purchased had been read AND underlined by Patterson.

Several of those underlined quotes are placed throughout this book to both give you added inspiration, and to prove that the “putting off “of getting shit done has been around for more than a century.

You will love the quotes and the backstory of the evolution of positive attitude and personal development.

Orison Swett Marden was also a founding father of getting shit done.

Unlocking the Mystery of Productivity, and Locking
in the Secrets of Success

Everyone wants to do more, and as a result, be more and have more.

This book, Get Shit Done, will have a profound effect on anyone looking to understand and implement the elements of greater productivity, get the answers to what causes procrastination, and achieve an understanding of the formula that productivity minus procrastination leads to PROFIT.

The book itself will outline and define a step-by-step process of achievement beginning with attitude, and take you through the success elements of belief, desire, determination, goals, productivity, resilience, achievement, and fulfillment. But the book would not be complete without totally defining and presenting game plans for the elimination of the destructive elements of productivity and achievement: procrastination and reluctance.

The architecture of the book will make reading easy and enjoyable, and the central messages and challenges presented in this information-packed book will be both transferrable to the reader and easy to implement.

The best part of Get Shit Done is that it’s for you in whatever your walk of life. You have a “to do list,” or a project, or an assignment, or a goal, or a plan, or a dream. This book will get you from “do” to “done.”

NOTE TO SALESPEOPLE: There are several pages devoted to you. Ideas and strategies especially meant to WAKE UP YOUR INNER BEST.

NOTE TO NON-SALESPEOPLE: Read all the sales pages and just substitute what you do.

This book is about Shit Shifting

1. Defining what you INTEND to do. Goals don’t matter if intentions are lacking. When you wake up, INTEND to be successful at a level of BEST and you have a chance for getting shit done. Your intentions drive your productivity and accomplishments. If you’re a procrastinator, lazy bastard, or just without personal motivation, THERE’S A REASON. Uncover the real issue behind these symptoms and presto – productivity. Nothing happens without your intention to make it happen.

2. Self-discovering WHY you are intending to do it. Behind every goal or dream, there’s a WHY. Not a “make more money” why, but “what you will do with the money” WHY. The real why, which may be three or four “why’s” deep, will carry you across EVERY finish line.

3. Learning to make an Achievement Plan that works. Start small. Achieve something each day for a week. Once you realize it’s working, make plans with specific targets, a start date and a projected end date.

3.5 Adding “even if your ass falls off” to every goal, idea, and plan. Most “goals” and “plans” lack the emotion they need to create the urgency they need to achieve them. That’s why I created the add-on phrase “even if your ass falls off.” It takes anything you want to get, do, achieve, or become to a new level of awareness and emotion within you. Try it.

Your To-Do list, your project list, your sales follow-up list, your kid list, your “honey-do” list, your Christmas list, your job task list NEVER GOES AWAY – the tasks change or the names change.
This book is about how to deal with them, take action on them, and achieve them.

• Determine your PERSONAL INTENTION.
• Dedicate actions to your REAL WHY.
• Plan for your TOTAL ACHIEVEMENT.
• Apply the DO until you HAVE the BEST.

That’s what gets shit done!

The key to getting shit done revolves around 3.5 prime principles…

1. Identifying the REAL REASON(S) behind avoidance
2. Understanding WHY, and WHAT’S in the GSD process
3. Your desire and determination to “do” vs. your tolerance for risk

3.5 Taking the first action step that’s part of a plan for achievement

Here are some helpful thought and action starters…

Why did you start?...

Why did you procrastinate?...

Why did you get it done?...

Why didn’t you get it done?...

What was the plan?...

What was the goal?...

What was the timeline?...

What was the deadline?...

What was the outcome?...

What went wrong?...

Why was it late?...

What were the excuses?... Reasons?...

What happened?...

What did you learn?...

What was the “feeling”?…

What’s next?... What’s the new plan?...

WHEN will you do the next thing?...

(specific date and time)

Take this quiz to define your level of how you get shit done.

Rate Yourself

(1=always, 2=frequently, 3=sometimes, 4=rarely, 5=never)

	Do you procrastinate?	1 2 3 4 5
	Do you force yourself to work?	1 2 3 4 5
	Are you late for things and meetings?	1 2 3 4 5
	I don’t love what I do.	1 2 3 4 5
	Do you make delay excuses?	1 2 3 4 5
	Do you lie about achievement?	1 2 3 4 5
	Do you procrastinate?	1 2 3 4 5
	Do you waste time?	1 2 3 4 5
	Do you party/drink after work and weekends?	1 2 3 4 5
	Do you watch Netflix and other dumb shit?	1 2 3 4 5

How You Rate as a GET SHIT DONE Person…

Willing to Take Responsibility for YOU and your outcomes

45-50 You’re Excellent. Stay there. Do more.

40-44 You’re Good – push yourself to the top.

35-39 You’re Fair – get more determined.

30-34 You’re in need of a kick in the butt and a plan to win.

10-29 Wake up and smell the opportunity.

Check the Box

If you’re a 1-2-3 in any element, check the box to the left of the distraction or element of postponement or procrastination, and that becomes your PERSONALIZED game plan to improve your focused accomplishment and achievement.

Discovery – The AHA Factor!

There are all kinds of excuses and situations for NOT getting shit done, and sometimes all it takes is recognizing that situation or excuse so that you can do something about it.

The simple questions are: What’s holding you back? What’s keeping you from being your best and producing your best?

I just gave you the answer, but the complexity persists. How do you actually know, how do you actually realize, that something is occurring in your life that pushes back on your ability to think positively and produce positively?

Pay attention here because the next few words might unlock productivity blockage that can actually lead to wealth.

Personally, I suffered for almost three years in a separated relationship that got pretty heated and involved custody for our young child. While the outcome for me was favorable, the fight cost me untold creativity and productivity that I did not realize was happening at the time. Sound familiar?

Sometimes you don’t realize that productivity is completely blocked by negative happenings in your life.

Let me give you a few. Check the ones that apply to you:

• relationship breakup
• lack of money to meet current obligations
• death of a loved one
• failure of a business
• health-related issues
• worry about a situation
• worry about children
• fear of future failure (risk)
• poor personal habits
• pressure at work
• a boss you do not like
• failure to meet a quota

Maybe I named yours, maybe I did not, but the bottom line is any or all of these situations are a challenge to your productivity, a challenge to your attitude, a challenge to your income, and certainly a challenge to your resilience.

GOOD NEWS: The opportunity for you, and it is a HUGE opportunity, is to recognize these situations while they are occurring, rather than after the shit storm is over.

The cool part is you can discover your situation if you’ll just step away from it for one day. Take a personal day and go someplace where you can be relatively alone.

Take a flipchart or some electronic device that will allow you to list your obstacles, or your potential obstacles, and then identify what each one is doing to you at present, and where it used to be. Once you’ve done that, identify where each one of these elements needs to be, and work from there. I like a flipchart because it’s big and gives you freedom to move around. Make CERTAIN you preserve your work. I take a photo – then type it in. This gives me an opportunity to expand my thinking.

Okay, I oversimplified. But my bet is that you have overcomplicated all of your shit. Somewhere in the middle lies your sweet spot. Once you’ve identified what’s holding you back, it’s a hell of a lot easier to make a plan to move forward.

CAUTION: Having a productivity barrier or blockage cannot be overcome in an afternoon of discovery. It’s going to take time. Think time. It’s going to take desire. It’s going to take persistence. It’s going to take a game plan. And it’s probably going to take enlisting the aid of others, or eliminating time with the others that get in your way. You need time to gain clarity.

Christmas in July.
Make your list.
Check it twice.
Discover all the naughty things you are doing, and better stated, also list the good things that you are doing. Do more good, eliminate all bad, and
march to the bank.

You can do this.
And this book is full of gifts.

To Do or Not To Do… That is the INTENTION, the DESIRE, the AVOIDANCE… and maybe the REGRET

I have two life regrets. One, I talked my mother out of my taking piano lessons. My brother didn’t. He still plays daily. I can only listen. The other is that in 1963, I never took the typing (keyboarding) course in high school. You had to memorize where the keys were, and I was intimidated, and somehow “got away with” not taking it.

Avoiding getting shit done. Dumb.
Avoiding doing what’s in your best interest. Dumber.
Avoiding doing what’s BEST for you long term. Dumbest.

Since 1984, when I bought my first Mac, I have stroked way more than a million words into it at less than 30 words a minute. Frustrated, I often dictated to a fast typist. Saved by technology, I now use Dragon Dictate for Mac, and in fact, I created this document using their voice-to-text software. And because I write like I talk, this tool has proven to be the most impactful of my writing career. What do you write with?

Consistency of excellence, desire to improve or achieve, and intention to take action, are three of the keys to getting shit done. It’s not just a formula for writing, it’s a total formula for success.

How I made those discoveries and turned them into actions that led to success, fulfillment, and wealth are the contents of this book.

Why can’t people (YOU) get more shit done?

“THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN URGENCY AND IMPORTANCE.”

Everyone says they have “no time.” That’s baloney – everyone has the same amount of time, it just depends whether they spend it or invest it. If you’re not working on your “A” project or “A” top priority list or preparing something for your “A” customers, you’re pretty much wasting your time.

What most people do with their time is spend it rather than invest it.

They (You) can better understand it with the euphemism “piss on fires.” They do what’s urgent at the moment but not what’s important to their job as a person. When you’re doing something important (an “A” project), and something urgent comes up, it takes away from your important time. It is imperative to understand the difference between urgency and importance.

Someone barges into your office, or calls you on the phone, and says, “Hey, we gotta do this right now!” That’s urgent. A customer calls on the phone and we’ve shipped them the wrong order, or it didn’t arrive on time. It’s lost on a truck someplace. It’s backordered and they weren’t expecting it to be backordered. That’s urgent. Most urgent things are preventable – even heart attacks.

Important things build your self or your career or your family. Actions that achieve your goals. Short-term actions with long-term imperatives and positive results.

Do you have to take care of the urgent things? Of course you do. You also have to deal with SOME of the important things of the day. Meeting deadlines and making quotas often have urgent actions that can be avoided with important planning and self-discipline.

The problem with most people is that they fail to balance their use of time because they think they MUST handle every urgent matter themselves. Big mistake. And big misuse of time.

Jeffrey Gitomer

Rule of The More The More: The more you delegate the little things, the more time you’ll have for the big things.

Jeffrey Gitomer

I try to schedule my time so that it gives me full use of each hour of the day. BUT, I want to write that important proposal during my time when I can have the benefit of clear thought and energized thought, instead of forcing myself to do it in the middle of the heat of all the other crap of the “normal day.”

My main objective during the day is to make sales and sales calls. What’s yours?

Sometimes I’ll leave where I am, and try to get to some place of solitude. As an example, I’ve thrown myself out of my own office. I have a desk there, but I have no office. I work out of my home office because it gives me peace, comfort, and I’m 1000% more productive. My books are there, my laptop is there, only a few people know my phone number there. I am free to produce.

NOTE: If anyone in the world calls, I take the call no matter what. I don’t want to change that, so, out of fairness to me, I’ve decided that I’m just going to be in the office less frequently. I don’t want to lie to somebody and tell them I’m not here if I’m here. That’s not right. But I wanted my time back, so I went home.

How can people become “do it today people”?

“SWITCH FROM NIGHT PERSON TO MORNING PERSON and, assuming you go to bed sober, your productivity will double.”

Jeffrey Gitomer

I found a secret about my life that was huge. If I ask if you’re a “morning” or an “evening” person, most people think they’re an “evening or night person.” And they’re wrong. I thought I was an evening or night person for 43 years. You can accomplish the most in the morning when you’re clear. People who think they’re “night” people are really saying, “I ruin myself in the evening, and I can’t get up in the morning.”

The symptoms are: doing too much non-work in the evening, or drinking too much wine in the evening, or eating too much food in the evening, or staying up too late in the evening, or watching too much television in the evening.

The answer is: prepare for tomorrow tonight, go to bed earlier, and when you wake up in the morning do some kind of exercise either mental or physical. Your entire world of thought and productivity will change. Mine did.

There’s a secret to the secret of getting shit done.

Make certain that before you go to sleep, your head is “clear to solve” by writing down everything that you need to do and everything you’re thinking about. A to-do list for the next day, and a to-do list for the next month. A project list and an idea page. Just write it all down. When you write it down it’s “off your mind,” and your mind is free to solve. It allows you to wake up with solutions instead of waking up thinking about your problems.

YOUR ACHIEVE TEST

Are You an Achiever? Rate Yourself

(1=never, 2=rarely, 3=sometimes, 4=frequently, 5=always)

	I love what I do.	1 2 3 4 5
	I look for solutions, not problems.	1 2 3 4 5
	I don’t blame others.	1 2 3 4 5
	I always follow through.	1 2 3 4 5
	I take pride in my work.	1 2 3 4 5
	I finish what I start.	1 2 3 4 5
	I don’t take shortcuts.	1 2 3 4 5
	I prepare for my day the night before.	1 2 3 4 5
	I take notes to be sure I follow through.	1 2 3 4 5
	I follow up in writing.	1 2 3 4 5
	I always keep my promises and commitments.	1 2 3 4 5
	I always support my fellow workers.	1 2 3 4 5
	I get the job done on schedule.	1 2 3 4 5
	I willingly accept tasks and responsibility.	1 2 3 4 5
	I ask questions to be sure I understand.	1 2 3 4 5
	I am responsible for my actions.	1 2 3 4 5
	I admit when I am wrong.	1 2 3 4 5
	I always do what I say I’m going to do.	1 2 3 4 5
	I take “daily dose” action toward my success.	1 2 3 4 5

How You Rate as a Responsible Person…Willing to Take Ownership

79-95 You’re Excellent. Stay there.

61-78 You’re Good – push yourself

47-60 You’re Fair – get the daily dose

33-46 You’re in need of a kick in the butt

19-32 Call you irresponsible

Check the Box

If you’re a 1-2-3 in any element, check the box to the left of the distraction or element of postponement or procrastination, and that becomes your PERSONALIZED game plan to improve your focused accomplishment and achievement.

“The greatest enemies of achievement are fear, doubt, and vacillation.”

Orison Swett Marden
From the book
He Can Who Thinks He Can, 1908