How frustrating is this?

• You hear some great advice – maybe during a workshop, conference or meeting.
• You think “I’m definitely going to do that from now on”.
• You get back to your desk and forgot to do it.

Or maybe you do change for a while, but then drift back to your old ways?

I guess you’ve done this before? Everyone has.

And it’s a real problem. It stifles your progress. It can be frustrating. And it’s extremely expensive, both for you (lost time and opportunities) and your business (who gets zero return on its expensive investment).

But imagine if you did embed great ideas every time you heard them. That could potentially be life-changing.

This chapter will help you do this. But it – like you – isn’t helped by the Forcefield of Death: an invisible forcefield lurking in the doorway of every room where you hear useful advice.

This forcefield only kills one thing – your good intentions.

Even worse, it strikes in seconds – literally as you leave the room. You know what I mean here, I’m sure:

• You discover a new idea and think “This is going to change my life in so many ways”.
• Then, just as you go through the Forcefield, the phone rings and you have something to deal with right now.
• Then, another issue needs your attention.
• Then you have to answer all the emails you received while you were learning new things.
• And at last, when you finally get time to apply the new advice . . . well, it doesn’t seem quite so urgent now, does it?

The Forcefield will always try and get you – urgent things will always interfere with what you were planning to change. You can’t help that. But you can help embed the great advice you hear, by:

• Giving yourself detailed actions which are easy to act on immediately. For example, “I must get more people to recommend me” isn’t easy to apply. Whereas this is: “I must look through my list of contacts today, identify the three who like me best, call them, and use today’s script to ask them to recommend me”.
• Diarizing these detailed actions before you go through the Forcefield of Death – before you leave the room. If you don’t, you’ll have to remember to do it (you might well not) and/or fit it round your diary (that’s just not going to happen).
• Identifying how you’ll keep remembering to be “the new you” – weekly diary reminders, ask a colleague for support, ask your manager to include it in your appraisals, and so on.
• Pre-empt problems you’ll have in embedding it, and work out now how to overcome them.

All these take a few minutes; and you’ll need to do them before you get to the door, since that’s where the Forcefield of Death is lurking, ready to pounce.

Remember:

A Final Thought

This chapter contains some good tips that will help you. You know it will make a difference. You might even want to do something about it right now.

So your intentions are good.

The problem will be when you go through the door of the room you’re in now. So, beat the Forcefield by doing something now. You know what might happen if you don’t . . .