What do you think of when you hear the term “Operating System)?

Computers probably come to mind first. Computers’ operating systems interface with their own software and hardware to make the capabilities of a powerful computing machine available to the average user.

You also may have heard of management operating systems (MOS), a system I see regularly in my profession. Based on the Plan, Do, Check, Act framework of continuous process improvement, the objective of a management operating system is to organize all available resources to monitor and execute on a process to steadily improve that process over time.

Both computers and businesses rely on structured operating systems for peak performance and continuous improvement. If a clearly articulated and developed operating system is so essential for your computer and your company, might not the same apply in your own life?

Developing a Success Operating System

A Success operating system (SOS) is the collection of tools, habits, and processes we implement in our own lives to foster continuous improvement towards peak performance.

Like many companies I interact with, you may feel that creating a SOS might be beyond the scope of your time and resources. We often tell ourselves that we’re too busy to develop a clearly defined(way-we-work) strategy to direct ourselves towards success.

But if a clearly defined set of values, rules, systems, tools and behaviors are important for our best run companies, then shouldn’t we take some time to slow down and develop our own personal operating system?

I know you’re busy and may not want to become too over programmed. But how would you like it if your electronic devices or favorite company lacked a structured way to communicate and execute? You wouldn’t, right?

My recommendation: start where you are. What are the behaviors, tools and systems you currently use to be your very best and achieve maximum levels of happiness and productivity? These are what you currently have to work with. Now here is how you can more formally structure that system.

Structuring Your Success Operating System

Purpose → Goals → Weekly Game Plan → Daily Plan → Learning

1. Purpose

Your personal operating system starts with a clearly defined purpose or mission. All your goals and activities should be derived from your purpose (or mission/calling). I have written other blogs and published YouTube videos on this topic alone, but suffice it to say that to define your own purpose you need to find the intersect between the answer to these three questions:

1. What are your strengths?
2. What activities in the past made you feel in the flow of peak performance?
3. What activities bring you the most joy?

Answering these questions can give you some principles or ideas to make your most important career and life decisions.

2. Goals

Identify your roles so that you make sure and have goals for each role. I encourage you to set life goals, not just work goals. I know too many people who are so purposeful and intentional at work and then just coast at home. Bring that same sense of passion and purpose to your whole life. Passion and purpose in your personal life will bring you true and sustainable joy.

To get a complete walkthrough of my system for setting goals, you can visit my podcast. You can also check out this YouTube video of the 4 points to successful goal achievement.

3. Weekly Game Plan

A weekly game plan is the keystone habit that propels you toward your long-term goal achievement. You can click here to download a worksheet I have developed for conducting a weekly game plan. The worksheet has areas on the left-hand side for the mission/purpose and lifetime goals that we just mentioned. These long-term goals won’t usually change. With this worksheet in hand, each week you can sit down and have a 30-minute planning session to plan the week and make sure you are accomplishing the important but non-urgent activities in your life.

I have also published a YouTube video to help understand the importance of weekly planning.

4. Daily Planning

Most of us work through a to-do list or a task sheet at work and home. Now that you are planning your most important roles and goals, you will find this daily task sheet is filled with more than just the urgent items that have your immediate attention each day. At the beginning of each day, open up your weekly game plan and plan your day from your highest priorities.

5. Learning

The weekly game plan may be the most important tool in your personal operating system, but the habit of learning is the most important behavior and mindset.

Each day and each week take time to evaluate your performance and learn from it. Ask yourself these 3 questions:

1. What went well?
2. What could I have done better?
3. How will I plan differently tomorrow or next week?

What went well? Make sure to celebrate and remember the small victories each day. Happiness lies in the process, not the result. I can’t overemphasize this: The happiest people enjoy the journey, not the result. Be grateful for the little victories each day that life affords you. This is were happiness and progress are nurtured.

What could I have done better? As you ask yourself this question, you don’t need to be critical. Just give yourself an honest appraisal of your day/week. What could you have done differently? How could you have reacted differently to an interruption in your schedule? Maybe you could close the door during peak creativity or enlist help from family members or work colleagues to stay on task.

How will I plan differently tomorrow or next week? As you analyze what went well and what didn’t, your mind will be inspired to figure out ways to plan less or plan differently. Let your creativity work.

If you are constantly being interrupted, try to remember which priority is more important. If your kids or your colleagues interrupt your with an emergency, be flexible enough to recognize the importance of the relationship and re-prioritize on the fly.

Take a learning mindset into your weekly and daily planning. Be curious and observe yourself in the process. This is where the magic happens, where creativity, curiosity and good planning intersect. It’s fun to figure out new ways to get things done given the environment you find yourself in. Enjoy the process!

Starting the Journey

Psychologist David Watson teaches the value of the journey:

“Contemporary researchers emphasize that it is the process of striving for goals—rather than the attainment per se—that is crucial for happiness and positive affectivity.)

David Watson

To get started, download the weekly game plan worksheet and develop your own personal operating system! This will be the most important system you develop to achieve peak performance.

Send me feedback to rickh@ci4life.org

Live a life of sustainable CI!

A few years back, my colleague and good friend James Parnell showed me a video about a weekend cowboy named Ray Hunt.

James is a weekend cowboy himself, but as he showed me this video, I couldn’t help but wonder why in the world was I watching a cowboy video at work. But it was worth it. Thanks, James.

James wanted to share with me what Ray Hunt had learned about behavior modification and reinforcement from spending time training show horses. Ray grew up in the west and was doing OK in his training profession until he learned a better way to train.

Ray started “Turning Loose” the horses, as he called it. Turning the horses loose meant that Ray stopped using force, coercion, and punishment as his main training technique and went to a more engaging, connecting and reinforcing style of training.

In effect, he started making the right things easy and the wrong things difficult.

For example, the old cowboy way to get a young horse into a trailer was to use many chokers, ropes, and whips to force the scared colt into the travel trailer—a brutal process to watch, let alone participate in. Instead, Ray figured out that he could use one rope, one small whip and never hurt or punish the colt but simply make sure the colt knew which direction was the right direction.

By working this new way, and to others’ surprise, Ray was able to train the horses in less time and the horses and trainer enjoyed the process a whole lot more. Ray went on to train several champions in his day. Many of his followers today still use his “turning loose” methods. See a short video below.

So what does this have to do with us if we aren’t horse trainers?

I suggest at least 3 application areas for continuous improvement students:

1. Parenting
2. Leading
3. Personal Habits

Parenting

Kids are like horses: If you force a child to do something, you usually end up getting bucked off or in a fight. But when you apply the principle of making the right things easy, you end up with endless creative ideas and methods.

My wife is the perfect example of making the right things easy with raising kids. Cheryl was the master at giving our children two good choices. She would ask questions like:

• “Do you want your bath with bubbles or no bubbles?” This avoided the dreaded drag-your-kid-up-to-the-tub scene.
• “Do you want peanut butter and honey or peanut butter and jelly on your sandwich?” Two good choices helped make the right answer easy and avoided turning lunch time into a restaurant.

I am sure you parents can think of many other applications of these ideas.

Leadership

As a leader, how can you make the right things easy and the wrong things difficult?

Let’s imagine that a few of your employees have a hard time making it into work on time. One option is to put expensive tracking systems in place. You could levy heavy discipline letters and “3 warnings and your out” letters. But that response is likely going to get you bucked and lose you valuable morale points.

How can you make the right thing easy? Instead of punishment, do a raffle at the end of each week and give out Starbucks certificates for those on-time all week. Have donuts out in the morning and put away after starting time. You get the idea.

How about for a more difficult task, like getting people to do their paperwork?

Every busy business I have ever known struggles with getting some of their employees to do timely and accurate paperwork. Whether it’s a policeman filing a report or a sales rep updating their automated lead tracker or a machine operator who has to either track or hit a button to properly code downtime, the struggle is the same.

How do we apply this principle in this situation? How do you make the right thing easy for proper paperwork?

Make it fun. You could have random giveaways at the end of the week for the best employee. Or maybe the employee gets to pick the radio station for the week. Whatever your group thinks is fun, let them win.

Inversely, how do you make the wrong thing difficult but not too painful? When you have regular rule-breakers, talk to them in private without public embarrassment. Take away some simple perks until the paperwork is done properly. Think creatively—the limits are determined by how far your imagination can stretch between the bounds of too light a response and too cruel a punishment. Start with figuring out what is fun or enjoyed by the team and either add more or take some away but don’t force too hard. You don’t want to have your employees mentally buck you off!

Personal Habits

The same principles apply for personal habits: Make the good ones easier and make the bad ones harder!

Suppose you want to improve your exercise habits. The goal might be to work out 4 times per week for 30 minutes and do it in the morning. Currently, you might procrastinate and find reasons to sleep in or do something else that needs to be done.

To fix your problem, we need to make the right thing easy and fun. Put your work-out gear in your bathroom or the place you go immediately when you wake-up. Give yourself a little shopping reward at the end of the week if you accomplish your goal. Find an accountability friend or partner. Make it so you have to meet your partner at 6:30 a.m. so you don’t let them down. Think creatively, and you’ll see how this can apply to other areas of your life as well.

What if you want to start a savings plan? How do you make it easy or fun? Use technology to take out your 10% savings at the beginning of the month automatically.

What about if you are trying to stop a bad habit? How do you make the right thing easier and the wrong thing more difficult? Addiction management is a huge issue in our society, whether it involves over-eating, TV, sex, pornography, drugs, or spending too much money.

How can these principles apply?

Let’s look at over-eating. If you’re trying to cut down on chocolate chip cookies, you probably shouldn’t position them on the kitchen counter to greet you at every passing moment. Turning away from such a temptation is an incredible act of willpower that most of us don’t possess, so don’t have them there. Don’t even have cookies in the house.

If you are struggling with pornography, make the wrong thing difficult. Don’t have the source anywhere near you at your time of weakness. If at home under the cover of night is where you feel most vulnerable, take out the electronics and give them to a loved one.

Get an accountability partner to support you while you create your new habits or stop your bad ones. Make specific plans with that partner. Identify small rewards and punishments if you do or don’t succeed.

Bad habits are very difficult to overcome on your own, so ask for help. Get somebody to give you reinforcement when you win. Them just knowing when you fail might be enough to change.

I know people who have signed contracts with their friends or family members with rewards and fines if they won or lost on their quest to stop a bad behavior. I know many people who text or call their accountability partner daily to account for their behavior. Make the wrong thing more difficult!

I also know somebody who quit drugs—one of the hardest habits to kick. How did he do it? This person had to strip his life of everybody and everything that was making the wrong thing easy and the right thing difficult. He had to make new friends. For a time, he stopped carrying cash or credit cards. Life was tough, but he was able to drop the habit. Today he is a very successful man, husband, father, and provider today.

You don’t have to be a super motivated person with incredible willpower. You just need to want to improve and then know how to make a new habit. And the way you make a new habit or stop a bad one is by making the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult.

Ray Hunt knew what he was talking about. The days of figuratively beating up our employees, children, or even ourselves are over. The best way to help ourselves or others change is by understanding behavior modification and habit-making. Everybody wins when you get out of the way of your ego, stop crucifying yourself, and make the right thing easy and the wrong thing more difficult.

Application:

1. Identify a habit you want to start for yourself, your team, or your children.
2. What would make this habit easier to do?
3. What would make this habit harder to do?
4. Who could be your accountability partner?
5. Go out and try it for 3 weeks and change your life.

Please comment below and let me know how you are doing!