Eric Herdman

CEO, employment, hire, leadership, management

How to Handle Star Employees With Bad Attitudes

December 3, 2019December 3, 2019 Eric Herdman

Click here to discover 6 ways to handle them.

Productivity

This week in travel… How do you do IT?

November 26, 2019 Eric Herdman

My day started at 2:05am Mountain time today.

To hell with the 5am club.
I’ve done hours of meaningful things by the time that club gets up!
3am is my normal wakeup time.

I talk of the morning routine in my talks and seminars. All of my coaching clients have them. I gave a talk yesterday and mentioned the power of a morning routine and the benefits you will receive. After the seminar while waiting for an Uber to the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport I was talking with someone who attended my talk yesterday. He was very intrigued and interested about how I have been a super early riser for so long and on top of that excited to be up so early. I told him that yes that has always been the case except for a few dark months about 7 years ago.

Sometime in 2013 I hit a rough patch.

I went through a dank, dark time and one day I hesitated when I naturally woke up at 3am. The fire wasn’t there that day. There wasn’t that always present excitement of what that day would offer me. That was the first time I ever remember a hesitation in getting up and out of bed like I was going to a fire. It was a strange unnatural feeling.

I mentioned this to my best friend Cliff and he said… “That is no good!” “That is the kiss of death.” As soon as he said that I knew exactly what he was suggesting. If you do it tomorrow you could do it the next day and the next thing you know that ability to get up has gone. I have never missed a day of running or working out (I have been known to take Tylenol to break a fever so I could get out and get my run in. On another occasion, I took zofran to stop vomiting long enough to run a 20 miler. Yet another time, I made sure to schedule my colonoscopy at 6am so I could get my scheduled 13 mile run in later that same day. I had a skin cancer removed that required 11 stitches and by 4pm I was doing my second run of the day.) I would not let myself miss a workout because I always though if I broke the habit even just once that one day missed would turn into two days and then three and so on. I’ve never allowed myself to have a doughnut because that seems like the slippery slope of destructive food. A doughnut seems to me that perfect storm of sugar, flour and fat all in one bite. I figured, if I even tasted one then it would be the whole dozen. The next thing you know I’d own a Krispy or Dunkin and eating all the profits.

All or none. Flip the switch and go…

I explained to him I am just that way. That’s how it goes with me I said… all or none. Flip the switch. I’m all in 100% or all the way out. No try. Only do. No 50%, Fuck 75% only 100% counts. I move with only dogged determination or I don’t!

This was the same thing only about getting up and getting going. We discussed this further and Cliff told me think of this during the rough patch. Get up! Get ready! Show up! and go at it!

Just start

He said I’d like to do that. I said then it’s done. Start!

Just start it tomorrow. I told him as I waited for my Uber. That’s it he said? No, just start and don’t stop. Have the resolve to never stop. Don’t even delay it one day for 2 minutes. Time is an absolute! 3am is 3am. Everyday is everyday. Weekends… fuck that get up. Holidays… screw them get up. I was up late… stop that shit and get to bed earlier- but now get up. It’s cold… really! Come on man get the hell up. I expect a text from you every day for two weeks at 3am. If not, I’m calling you and I’m going to give you hell. However, that should be noting compared to the hell you are giving yourself, I offered!

I received a text message at 2:05am (that’s 3:05am in Phoenix) today. Saying… I got up, got dressed, showed up and I’m going at it! I replied back… me too.

Eric Herdman Is a Professional Speaker and Author. When companies need orchestrated human optimization solutions for their productivity & leadership problems they contact me for proven, reliable, pragmatic techniques.

This article was written and fueled by: priming my brain with 61 article before writing. Time restricted feeding. Lions mane added to my cold brew coffee. The right environment for this work Starbucks. Binaural Beats playing in my headphones. It’s the right TIME for this work. The right ENERGY cycle and my FOCUS was optimized to be awesome. My new book is all about getting the right things done at the right time. For more info on how to do this to yourself click here.

Productivity

Doing Micro-tasks in Your Social Media Feed Might Be the Future of White-Collar Work

November 20, 2019 Eric Herdman

Last year, the nerds at Microsoft Research tried something different: They put bits of office work into the your Facebook news feed.

The researchers created an AI app that looked through documents you were writing in Microsoft Word. It extracted simple editing tasks, like making a sentence less wordy. Then, using a Chrome plug-in, the software would slot these jobs into an item in your feed, one every 2,000 pixels.

The researchers gave the tool to a test group, who began duly doing the little work tasks, a few each day, when they saw them while scrolling through Facebook. Every time they finished one, the AI would automatically insert it back into the proper Word file.

It might seem kind of nuts to work that way, yes? But the subjects said they oddly enjoyed these microtasks. They said it made them feel more productive: “It’s like chipping away at the document,” one noted. “It was normally time I would be wasting.”

Click here to read more.

Productivity