|
The Business Acceleration Free E-Newsletter Series
Volume 1, Issue No. 5
September 1, 2002
By
Dan Coughlin
IT'S YOUR 80,000 HOURS. DO WHAT YOU WANT!
Imagine you're back in college. The professor announces that your entire grade is based on one project. He then gives the following guidelines:
- You can do anything you want for your project.
- You have to invest at least 80,000 hours into the project.
- At the end of the project, you evaluate your performance and assign yourself a grade for the project.
- There are no other rules.
Many students would be depressed. They would say, "But that's not enough information. Where do I start? What do I do? What activity is worth an investment of 80,000 hours? How will I know at the end whether or not I was successful? How will I know if I'm making progress toward what I want to achieve with this project? What if I change my mind halfway through the 80,000 hours and want to focus on something else? Is that a failure or a success? How can I give myself a grade? I mean isn't the point of school that someone else grades my work? This is too hard."
A few minutes later the professor looks up and says, "Oh, by the way, the name of the project is 'Your Career'."
Look, you are going to invest roughly 80,000 hours in your career. (40 years, 50 weeks per year, 40 hours per week.) Why not decide right now what you want your career to look like. Decide on the purpose of your career. Decide what defines success in your career. Decide how you will measure progress. And by all means, don't let your boss or parents or spouse or friends or the media decide what a successful career should mean to you.
It's your 80,000 hours. Be very careful what you do with it because at the end of the project you are the only one who is going to give you a grade. My bias for you is to make it a masterpiece of your own choosing.
Take care and have a great month!
Dan Coughlin
Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month
I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.
My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.
My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.
If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.
Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.
If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.
 Back to Newsletter Page
P.O. Box 1245  Fenton, Missouri 63026
Phone 636.825.6611 Fax 636.825.9831
E-mail info@thecoughlincompany.com
|
