Title: Get a Life!

Authors: Keegan, Paul

Source:
Fortune International (Europe); 01/09/2008, Vol. 158 Issue 3, p68-72, 5p, 1 color, 3
bw
Document Type: Article
Subject Terms:
Abstract:
The article reports on personal effectiveness and development coaching programs
taught by Stephen R. Covey, David Allen and Jim Loehr. Covey is well known for his
book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," which focuses on life goals.
Allen's book "Getting Things Done," focuses on getting day to day details organized.
Loehr focuses on managing personal energy more than time-management.
ISSN:
0738-5587
____________________________________________________________________
Title:
Get a Life! By: Keegan, Paul, Fortune International (Europe), 07385587, 9/1/2008,
Vol. 158, Issue 3
Contents
1. Stephen Covey
2. Stephen R. Covey
3. David Allen
4. David Allen
5. Jim Loehr
6. Jim Loehr
7. And the winner is
OUR INTREPID REPORTER LETS THREE COACHES TAKE HIM IN
HAND
The CEO of a megabillion-dollar retail chain is lying next to me in his gym shorts.
We are face-down, arms stretched in front of us like Superman. We lift our legs, hold
the pose, then drop to the floor, lower-back muscles burning. After a minute a whistle
blows, and we get to work on our abs. "Damn, that was hard!" the chief groans.
Welcome to the peculiar, intimate (and sometimes sweaty) world of executive
coaching.
This fiftysomething captain of industry will later take part in a group meditation on
compassion, but he's not really a touchy-feely guy. He's just looking for an edge to
help him cope with the pressures of his job. So are his 28 mostly paunchy direct
reports running around in their shorts at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando.
And so am I.
Such programs cost thousands of dollars and burn up precious days. Which raises the
question, Do they work? To find out, I asked three of the top productivity gurus on the
market to give me a free taste of their work, then spent six months test-driving their
systems. The three-Stephen Covey, David Allen, and Jim Loehr-have each written at
least one successful book; each has spent decades advising Fortune 500 companies.
Covey wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989), a mega-seller, and cofounded Franklin-Covey, the leader of the productivity industry, with $284 million in
sales and 75 retail stores hawking its books and day planners. He argues that the key

to productivity lies in clarifying your life's ultimate purpose. Allen takes the opposite
approach, starting with the details of organization and workflow in his manual Getting
Things Done (2001). Loehr believes the secret lies in managing your energy, not your
time. In The Power of Full Engagement (2003,with Tony Schwartz) he describes how
his experience coaching elite athletes, including tennis player Jim Courier and
basketball star Grant Hill, has given him insights that help him whip executives into
shape at companies like Procter & Gamble and Dell.
My mission: Read the books, attend a seminar, get personal coaching-and then report
back. That's assuming, of course, that I can get off the floor after 60 excruciating
seconds of crunches.
Stephen Covey
Everything that makes life worth living starts with the letter "L." That's the first thing
I learn at a $299 one-day Franklin-Covey Focus seminar in a New York hotel. We are
on page 14 of our workbooks, trying to figure out what values govern our lives, when
our seminar leader, Vicky Gilmore, plays a video of children frolicking to hearttugging music as words dance across the screen: "To Live" "To Love" "To
Learn" "To Leave a Legacy."
We each get a little cardboard pyramid that sums up the Franklin-Covey system:
"Identify values" is at the base, followed by three steps leading heavenward: Set
goals, plan weekly, and plan daily. When we reach the top of the pyramid, we are
living out our life's purpose or, for the executives in the room, their corporate mission.
Sign me up! It's exciting to think that the only thing standing between me and
greatness is a little scheduling. A few days later I am assigned a coach named Wade
Lindstrom, who calls me once a week (cost: $2,795 for eight half-hour sessions, plus
unlimited follow-up coaching for six months). Like a lot of coaches, Lindstrom came
from the business world-he was regional manager of a financial services companybefore going through Franklin-Covey's standard eight- to 12-month training program.
He says he has worked with more than 6,000 people and also performs as a
motivational speaker. I tell Lindstrom that the past 18 months have been the happiest
time of my life-marriage and fatherhood-but life has become a maelstrom. My wife
works at night, I work during the day, and weekends are consumed with errands, child
care, and laundry. My office is a mess, I'm out of shape, and we have fallen into debt.
First of all, Lindstrom tells me, spending time with the family is perfectly in sync with
my core values; so is meeting deadlines. He advises me to create some goals. I come
up with three: (1) Work out regularly and eat right, (2) Organize my office and
finances, and (3) Earn more money.
Good, says Lindstrom. Now break each goal down into a series of projects and each
project into individual tasks. Then create a separate, master to-do list covering
everything else and start planning each week with great specificity. So I do: Buy
diapers Monday at 6 P.M.? Go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday from 6
to 7:30 P.M. Because unexpected things will arise, Wade says, I need to also plan
daily.
For a while, I feel great. I love starting each day with a battle plan. But soon I realize
that I'm not making much progress on my goals. Something always wrecks my plan
for the day-we can't find a babysitter, the computer crashes It's dispiriting to keep
transferring the same long list of uncompleted tasks from one day to the next.
Franklin-Covey, I realize, is great at helping figure out what to do but not how to do
it. That's by design. "My experience," says Covey, "is that it's very dangerous to teach
practices rather than principles because every culture is so different. Instead, we

encourage people to come up with their own practices consistent with the universal
principles we teach." For me, that wasn't enough.
Stephen R. Covey
AGE 75
COMPANY NAME Franklin-Covey Co.
YEAR FOUNDED 1997 (through merger with Franklin Quest)
2007 REVENUES $284 million
LOCATION Salt Lake City
E-MAIL/PHONE [email protected]; 801-377-9515
KEY CONCEPT Create a vision, set goals, then plan weekly and daily.
David Allen
So I turned to David Allen, who says his system-Getting Things Done-is as universal
as gravity. In his highly entertaining $995 one-day public seminars, complete with the
occasional karate kick, the guru of GTD asks, What is your purpose in life? What are
your long-term goals? But those questions come at the end. First, Allen tells you what
to do with all that junk on your desk.
Allen uses an airplane metaphor. Your working space is the runway, and you can't
take off to reach "higher altitude" (i.e., longer-term) perspectives on your life until
that space is clear and you have a dependable workflow system. "Process
improvement-that's really all this is," Allen tells his audience.
My runway is a disaster zone. Rescue comes in the form of coach Marian Bateman,
who spends two full days in my office performing a comprehensive Workflow
Coaching session (cost: $6,000 plus travel expenses). It's a deeply uncomfortable,
exhausting, and ultimately exhilarating process to have an expert organizer like
Bateman sit at your desk for 16 hours, pick up one piece of paper after another, and
politely ask, "What is this?"
After she's gone, I'm stunned: My desk is clear, and the piles of junk on the floor have
disappeared. I see carpet! My files have typed labels, and I have two plastic trays on
my desk-one marked "In," the other "Read/Review." The 1,300 e-mails clogging my
in-box are gone, filed away in Outlook. I feel instantly lighter, as though I've just lost
20 pounds. Most important, I have learned Allen's five-step system to keep my
runway clear: Collect, process, organize, review, and do.
Say I'm writing a story when the mail arrives. I immediately toss the mail into my inbox, thus avoiding procrastination (Step 1: Collect). Later I open one of the
envelopes, and if no action is necessary, I throw it away, file it, or put it on a list to do
"Maybe/Someday" (Step 2: Process). If an action is required that takes less than two
minutes, such as paying my cable bill online, I do it. If not, I delegate the task or defer
it in one of two ways: I put a note in my calendar or in one of my various to-do lists
organized by context-"@office," "@calls," "@home," etc. If more than one action is
required, it becomes a project (Step 3: Organize). Throughout the day I review my
lists based on where I am. On a flight I'll look at "@computer"; in the car I check
"@calls" (Step 4: Review)-and finally I decide which task to do based on factors such
as gut feelings, urgency, time available, and energy level (Step 5: Do). All my lists are
on my computer and synced to my Palm Treo.
What I'm learning, Allen says, is a process psychologists call "distributed cognition"getting all my nagging tasks, grand ideas, and unresolved projects out of my head and
into his "trusted system." This will free my mind to think, dream, and focus on a
single task rather than worrying about everything not getting done. "Your mind is for
having ideas," Allen likes to say, "not for holding them."

The hardest part is the weekly review, which requires two to three hours to keep all
the lists up to date, schedule the week ahead, and create new projects with at least one
"next action" task for each. This is also the time to do the "higher altitude" worksetting specific goals for the next one to two years (30,000 feet), creating a vision of
the life I want to achieve during the next three to five years (40,000 feet), and
pondering my life's ultimate purpose (50,000 feet)-or at least scheduling such big
thinking.
The GTD system is a revelation. My life is still as jam-packed as ever, but I feel much
more in control, as though I'm tooling around in a well-engineered car that makes
doing 80 feel like 50. I confess I haven't managed to organize myself enough to do
very much of the kind of high-altitude thinking that Allen says arises naturally the
deeper you dig into GTD (and some of his disciples say it can take years to really get
the hang of it). More worrisome is my health. All this organizing and goal-setting
must be wearing me down. Over the previous three months I've had two colds, the flu,
two allergy attacks, and I feel constantly exhausted. I decide to let the next guru work
on my body.
David Allen
AGE 62
COMPANY NAME David Allen Co.
YEAR FOUNDED 1997
2007 REVENUES $6.5 million
LOCATION Ojai, Calif.
E-MAIL/PHONE [email protected]; 805-646-8432
KEY CONCEPT Think small: Get the details under control.
Jim Loehr
My new friend the retail CEO has showered and dressed after our vigorous workout
and is back in our classroom on day two of our 2 1/2-day seminar at the Human
Performance Institute (cost: $5,500). Jim Loehr is getting tough with us after
reviewing our body-composition tests. Each of us had stepped inside the egg-shaped
"bod-pod," which measures percentage of body fat. The results are not something
many of our paunchy crew want to think about. "You have never connected your body
and your health with the mission of your company," Loehr admonishes us. The chief
executive stares at the floor.
It doesn't matter how well you manage your time, Loehr argues, if you don't have
enough energy to become fully engaged in what you're doing (imagine Buddhism as
taught by a sports coach). That energy comes from doing everything we know we
should do but don't: get enough sleep, exercise, eat right, take breaks, and keep a
healthy balance between work and family.
To achieve full engagement, first we have to "Face the Truth" about our current
condition with the bod-pod test, a blood-chemistry analysis, and the results of a
questionnaire filled out by at least five of our friends, family, and co-workers. My
group treated me kindly-with a score of more than 85%, I was deemed "fully
engaged" spiritually and emotionally, though mentally I am merely "engaged," at
75%. We also rate ourselves physically, and I give myself a woeful 50% ("seriously
disengaged").
Next we face that question all the executive coaches love to ask: "What is your
ultimate mission in life?" Then we come up with a "training mission" that we can
accomplish during the next 90 days. Finally, we pledge to establish a series of
"rituals" to help us achieve that goal.

Loehr's concept of rituals comes from his background as a sports psychologist who
has worked with elite athletes for nearly 30 years. When David Ortiz of the Red Sox
spits into his hands, then claps them together before stepping into the batter's box, Big
Papi is performing a ritual that gets him fully engaged for the pitch. Our rituals may
be less dramatic (and more hygienic), says Loehr, but no less important. They can
range from meditating for five minutes a day to having lunch with a direct report
every Thursday.
Like nearly everybody here, I commit to the physical rituals Loehr strongly
recommends: three cardio and two resistance-training workouts per week, eating three
light meals and two snacks per day, getting seven to eight hours of sleep per night,
and taking a break from work every two hours to move around. I set a "training
mission" goal of getting my body-fat percentage down.
When I get home, the results are immediate and astonishing. My evening workouts
are tough-30 minutes alternating cardio sprints with a recovery jog followed by ten
dumbbell exercises plus crunches and "Superman"-but instead of being exhausted
afterward, I'm energized. I sleep much better and wake up refreshed. Rather than
being a waste of time, my workouts now feel like a smart investment. The nutrition
guidelines are not easy-the amount of food never seems enough-but snacking between
meals keeps my energy up. There are no more late-afternoon slumps.
Even more remarkably, work marathons that used to leave me feeling exhaustedredeye cross-country flights or pulling all-nighters to finish a story-now barely faze
me. After a few normal nights of sleep, I'm good as new. I try inventing other rituals
to increase my productivity-mentally rehearsing the day ahead, for example-but find
myself coming back to David Allen's more comprehensive program to direct my
newfound physical energy toward higher-altitude goals.
Jim Loehr
AGE 65
COMPANY NAME Human Performance Institute
YEAR FOUNDED 1991 (with co-founder Jack Groppel)
2007 REVENUES $13 million
LOCATION Orlando
E-MAIL/PHONE [email protected]; 407-438-9911
KEY CONCEPT Think energy, not time.
And the winner is
All three gurus can offer up prominent executives who sing their praises, even if none
can offer empirical data to prove their programs are worth the time, energy, and cost.
After all, worker productivity is affected by so many factors that, short of wiring
people up to brain scans, it would be extremely difficult to isolate the effects of a
single program. But as any of the three would say, success cannot be measured that
way: It all depends on where you start and how you finish.
My personal bottom line is that David Allen's system was the most useful, Loehr's the
most energizing, and Covey's the most profound. Whether I'll be able to keep up all
these new habits remains to be seen. All I know is that right now my office is
perfectly organized, I'm clear about my life's purpose, and-as much as I'd like to go
on, you'll have to excuse me. I have to walk down 15 flights of stairs to grab an
energy bar.
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