Today I’m announcing an epic series called Getting Things Done [GTD] on the Internet. Every Friday for the foreseeable future I will post on some aspect of applying David Allen’s classic work “Getting Things Done” to the basics of Internet marketing…
I’d like to start by thanking those of you who have not read David Allen’s book — you have given me a competitive advantage for years! Seriously, though, I’m continually surprised at how many people have not read this classic work. For me, it ranks among the three best business books I’ve ever read. It’s right up there with the seven habits of highly effective people and that is saying a lot for me. In fact, I think these two books go together like peanut butter and chocolate; Stephen Covey‘s book provides a strategic framework on David Allen’s book gives great insight on how to implement Covey’s framework…
Allen says:
THE CORE PROCESS I teach for mastering the art of relaxed and controlled knowledge work is a five-stage method for managing workflow. No matter what the setting, there are five discrete stages that we go through as we deal with our work. We (1) collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do. This constitutes the management of the “horizontal” aspect of our lives—incorporating everything that has our attention at any time.
In my practice, my emphasis is on what I call “practical, tactical social media“. Chapter 2 of Allen’s book gave me a tool that I apply in multiple was to the social media process…
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be talking about how to apply this diagram to everything from email to social media management, including…
Getting Things Done with Gmail, Google Apps and Google Tasks…
Getting Things Done with Google Reader for ‘Personal News Aggregation‘…
Getting Things Done with WordPress for Business Blogging…
Getting Things Done with Twitter for social media…
Getting Things Done with social media management…
I’ll also entertain ‘how would I apply Getting Things Done [GTD] to ________’ kind of questions if you have one you’d like to ask. I’ll share theses posts each Friday so you can ponder them and implement the parts you like over the weekend so stop by next Friday for Getting Things Done with Gmail, Google Apps and Google Tasks…
Time to talk about strengths. The capacities that we have to do things.
For example, I find it easy to see the connections between things that no one else sees. Sometimes this gets me in trouble. Sometimes people think I’m merely being silly. But sometimes these connections look like creativity. Sometimes people say “I never thought of it that way.”
That’s a strength of mine. It’s not the best strength or my only strength. It’s not something that other people need to desire. In fact, why do you need it if I have it? What you could say is, “What can Jon and I do together, if he can see odd connections and I can actually implement them?” Because I am a lousy implementer.
You may be able to see a strength of mine better than you can see your own strengths. What we do from our strengths, we don’t think of as a strength, because it is just how we are. So we believe we don’t have any strengths, nothing that we are capable of, nothing that God can use for anything significant. We just have what we do.
It’s worth thinking carefully and seriously to discover what our strengths are.
The first part of that thinking is to decide that it’s possible that God has created us with capacities. Because you know that you are thinking “I have no strengths” or “God’s got nothing I can use.” But didn’t the kid have fish and bread? 15,000 people fed. Didn’t David know how to write little poems? The book of Psalms. Didn’t Barnabas know how to encourage people? Paul. Didn’t Moses know how to lead sheep through the desert? Deliverer.
We know the end of the stories. They just had what they did.
What a great rendition of one of my all time fav U2 songs. Thanks for sharing this, David…
Not only are Bono and The Edge awesome together, the lyrics are sheer poetry…
I’m not afraid of anything in this world
There’s nothing you can throw at me that I haven’t already heard I’m just trying to find a decent melody A song that I can sing in my own company
I never thought you were a fool
But darling, look at you
You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere, baby
You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment and now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better
Now you’re stuck in a moment
And you can’t get out of it
I will not forsake the colours that you bring The nights you filled with fireworks They left you with nothing I am still enchanted by the light you brought to me I listen through your ears, and through your eyes I can see
And you are such a fool
To worry like you do
I know it’s tough, and you can never get enough
Of what you don’t really need now my oh my
You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it
Oh, love, look at you now
You got yourself stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it
I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm till you discover how deep
I wasn’t jumping; for me it was a fall
It’s a long way down to nothing at all
You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment and now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better
Now you’re stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it
And if the night runs over
And if the day won’t last
And if our way should falter
Along this stony pass
And if the night runs over
And if the day won’t last
And if your way should falter
Along this stony pass
It’s just a moment
This time will pass
I’m a fan of Michael Hurley’s blog, “We Move Together.” Urge you to check it out. As Michael says, this is “freaking brilliant.” I completely agree. Check out Michael post and U2’s Bono and The Edge performing “Stuck in a Moment.” Fantastic video clip to kick off your Friday.
“…You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment
And now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better…”
Two years ago, I wrote an epic post called ‘From Thinker to Thought Leader in one easy workflow’. The original title was ‘By Jove, I think I’ve got it‘ [shows how little I knew about writing effective post titles, eh?]. Well, it took me a couple of years, but I’ve finally found it. It? That elusive personal niche that everyone keeps talking about. I call it ‘content management and marketing for thought leadership‘ and it is my passion and my purpose in life.
What is content management and marketing for thought leadership you might say? First some terms…
Content management?
“Content management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. In recent times this information is typically referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content. Digital content may take the form of text, such as documents, multimedia files, such as audio or video files, or any other file type which follows a content lifecycle which requires management.” Source: Content management – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to engage current and potential consumer bases. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty.” Source: Content marketing – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I like the perspective Mindy Gibbins-Klein’s shares in her book 24 Carat Bold:
“What does a real thought leader look like? How would you go about finding one, or becoming one, if that is of interest? Well, let’s start with the Wikipedia definition stated earlier: ‘A futurist or person who is recognized among their peers and mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights.’ Not bad, but there is one important word missing here: market. It’s not just about being recognized by your peers and mentors. To effect real change, you need a market, or followers, or fans or constituents or a congregation… you get the idea.
Gibbins-Klein, Mindy (2009-09-01). 24 Carat BOLD: The Standard for REAL Thought Leaders (Kindle Locations 309-313). Ecademy Press. Kindle Edition.
So to me, a thought leader is a person who…
Is an expert in their field
Has innovative ideas or perspectives
Promotes and shares those things using the “good, fast, and cheap” tools available on the internet
Becomes recognized
So then what is ‘content management and marketing for thought leadership‘? My simple definition goes like this: It is “becoming and being known as the expert“.
Here’s a little riff that I did last summer on the difference between thinking and thought leadership…
When I first rebooted e1evation, llc 3 years ago and shifted the focus from lead management to lead generation using inbound marketing tools, my tagline was ‘marketing, sales and technology for small business, non-profits and academic institutions’. I laugh now because that focus is so broad that not even Mashable! with their massive staff can cover it comprehensively. As time has gone on, I’ve continued to sharpen my focus so that I can increase my expertise in this emerging area. This is who I am and what e1evation, llc and this blog is about; content management and marketing for thought leadership.
When Michelangelo was asked how he created his classic work ‘David’, he said “”Ho iniziato con un blocco di marmo e scheggiato via tutto ciò che non aveva l’aspetto di David” [loosely translated: “I started with a block of marble and chipped away anything that did not look like David”]. I was inspired last week by Chris Brogan‘s comment “My blog is a piece of crap. Time to work harder.” If his blog is crap, what is mine? Why am I settling for less than sharp focus and clarified outcomes? In the month of February, my goal is to chip away from this blog everything that does not look like ‘content management and marketing for thought leadership‘.
Henceforth, this blog will be about the following topics:
Social Media [including blogging, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter]
and the strategies, tools and tactics that make them available for every thinker who aspires to thought leadership
…and I will parse out my thinking in the following categories…
Thoughts
Tactics
Tools and technologies
Trends
I’m going to continue to perfect the ‘e1evation workflow’ — my ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ cycle for ‘thought leadership’ marketing — while applying the zenlike simplicity of ‘getting things done’ principles to content management and marketing for thought leadership.
If that’s what you’re looking for, stick around. Watch me. Interact with me. Let me know how I’m doing now that I’ve found my niche. If you want If you’re looking for something else let me recommend http://google.com…
The story has it that when Michelangelo was commissioned to do the sculpture of King David he looked at hundreds of blocks of marble before he decided on the “right” one. To most of us all those blocks shown to him would have looked more or less the same but for Michelangelo it needed to be a certain piece of marble – nothing else would do. Why was that? It was because he knew exactly what he wanted his David to look like. He could see the end result in front of his eyes.
When asked how he was going to create such a fine figure as King David out of such an enormous chunk of marble his answer was: “That’s easy. All I have to do is chip away everything that is not David.” Isn’t that incredible? And so easy…
But why am I telling you this story? Do you know what your David (end result) looks like? Do you know where you are going with the actions you take every day?
Did you know that about 90 % of us do not have a clear goal; do not have a clear vision of what we want?
But if we don’t have a very clear picture of what we aim at how can we reach it? How can we chip away at the rock to create our David if we don’t know what David is supposed to look like? That doesn’t make sense, does it?
Let me take a minute to illustrate a point. Because I use Google well, I was able to find a story to illustrate a point I’m trying to make for a meeting this afternoon. If I curate the content and post it to my blog, it lives on as part of MY site. Who knows how many times Google will bring people to my site to hear this story?
Bright, shiny objects! 
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