Tom Ossa

The moment my alarm went off at 5:45 am, I knew something was not quite right.

While I’m not naturally a morning person, my drive to succeed usually makes up for my instinct to stay in bed until noon. For the past 15 years, I’m typically up early, working out, having breakfast, reading, and generally easing into the day. Then, I’m running a web development company, a team of 7 creatives, while promoting a wide swath of Rockland County-based events.

But the day prior, I really pushed myself. I did a 12-mile bicycling routine, went to a morning networking meeting, worked my usual 10 hours, and on top of that – during my workday I squeezed in 2 hours of chest exercises on my trusty Bowflex Xtreme.

Now, as the morning light came through the window – I realized I was going to pay the price.

What’s worse, I had a merciless morning schedule. I needed to be at my usual Thursday networking meeting, and then a very important meeting with the Director of a renowned charitable organization. To make matters worse, I couldn’t find my laptop power cord. And my travel coffee mug was missing. WTF!!!

After getting ready to leave, I stopped at a gas station and realized I forgot my wallet. When I made it back to my house, the glare from the sunlight was so bas that I didn’t see the car driving toward me. Thank God we both stopped short of an accident.

Eventually, I was still able to make it to my networking meeting (late). I know this group for nearly 15 years, and they were very understanding. Further, I made it to my meeting with the charitable organization with 15 minutes to spare. The meeting went well, and I headed back to the home office.

By the time I returned, I knew I needed a reset. Several hours later, I feel better.

If you ever have days like this: I have a set of steps I take to get myself back on track, and I’d like to share them with you. These are not rocket science steps, and they are different for everyone, so of course feel free to add your own steps.

5 Steps to Recovering from a Bad Day

1. Recognize you are not feeling well right now
2. Postpone or cancel appointments
3. Have a stress management routine
4. Slow down and focus on right now
5. Think about how tomorrow will be better

Recognize you are not feeling well right now

I have two beaded wooden bracelets, one brown, one black. When I am feeling at peak performance levels, I have the wooden one on one specific wrist, and the black one on the other. When I’m in a less-than perfect mood, I switch them.

This is merely a symbolic reminder for me, that sometimes the day is not going to be rosy. It also reminds me that from the perspective of other people, the bracelets are reversed. What we see is not always what others see.

Come up with a small physical, personal reminder to wear, to remind you about how you are feeling, so that you can stay down to earth and grounded for the things you may need to do on that day.

Remember that sometimes, you can’t be saving the world. The world simply needs to wait for you, and be there tomorrow to take another shot at being awesome. Just not today.

Clear Your Calendar

I remember several movies where the boss would page his or her receptionist, and say something like “Gladys…clear my schedule.”

Oh, wouldn’t that just be a lovely thing to do?

This is a difficult step, because we have many pressures imposed upon us from many different people, organizations, clients, colleagues, family members, friends and more. But as best as possible, postpone or cancel appointments. Open your calendar and figure out what you can push off to tomorrow. If necessary, call appointment attendees and let them know that you won’t be able to make the appointment. You usually don’t need to go into too much detail. Remember, they are busy, too! They may even appreciate it.

Have a stress management routine

The moment I knew that I was going to have a bad productivity day, I planned to do three things: Eat, rest and listen to music.

All three of these items help. Notably – since I had been working out hard the day before, I figured that my blood sugar was running low. So I made it a point to grab a few protein bars on the way to the morning meeting, and then have a full breakfast when I got to the event.

On the way, I also decided to skip my usual routine of listening to hard rock music, in favor of a meditative type of band called Cosmal. It was certainly helpful. They have a fantastic repetitive track called “Is“. I highly recommend it.

Finally, after I returned from my morning meetings, I decided to take a 20 minute power nap. I can’t overemphasize how helpful this was. For me, it’s the ultimate reset button for getting the day back on track.

If you work in an office, this may be a little more difficult, but it is still doable. As silly as it sounds, you can indeed sleep on the floor underneath your desk. As a last resort, you could even use a closet, empty room or a hallway (lay down plastic if you can!). It’s unorthodox to say the least, but my point is you can get creative with methods to getting in a power nap. Consider them!

One word of advice – keep the nap short. I recommend 20 to 30 minutes maximum. Your goal is to simply get a tiny, tiny bit of REM sleep. Here’s an article for this method.

Slow down and focus on right now

After waking up from the nap, I took it a little slower, eventually getting back to the desk and doing some light work. As mentioned above, since the calendar got somewhat cleared, it was easier to take this time.

It was also good to reflect on how we can often get some semblance of control back in our day to day lives, if we take the steps to embrace the moment, and recognize that the moment is ours.

Think about how tomorrow will be better

As I mentioned above, everyone is different in their productivity, their emotions, their mental and physical acuity, as well as how often they are as such.

For me, I luckily seem to bounce back pretty strongly the very next day after feeling malaise. But for some, the gloom may last longer. If you are experiencing long bouts of difficulty, of course I recommend seeking help from others to get you back on track. But if, based on history you seem to bounce back after a day or two – focus on that. The mere thought of this will help you to feel confident that the important elements of your life will likely stay on course, and continue to move your forward.

Back on Track

We all have rough days. As Steve Eckert from Peak Physique states, “We all get knocked down, but we become more powerful when we get back up.”

Today may be a “down day” for you. It might be an absolute train wreck. But know that with the right perspective on it, you can turn it back toward a day that will set you up for future successes — if you take the time to care for the most important part of the day: you.

Oh, I found my travel mug, and Amazon just delivered a new power cord.

At the beginning of this year, I had some very, very, very aggressive business targets for 2022. Grandiose, to be honest. And not without some supporting data. RocklandNews.com hit 15k viewers in a single month, we were getting tons of website projects done with ease, and profits were up!

I felt like I was able to elevate above all the day to day tasks, trusting my team to get it done, and report back to the clients when done, and me as needed.

Then summer came.

All of a sudden, business started drying up in cascades. Talks of a recession, housing market shifts, war overseas, and other external factors spooked many of our typical clients. To cite an example, one of our clients for the past ten years was looking forward to a multi-million dollar sale of their company to a Texas firm, but they pulled out of the deal.

My wings didn’t get clipped all at once. They were slowly trimmed, which is sometimes worse – because I didn’t even realize it was happening.

July is typically one of our three best months in terms of profits. This year, it was one of the worst. And struggling customers were slow to pay. Plus, they were asking more of mine and my team’s time.

When reality finally hit, I knew I needed to make a change. I decided to re-prioritize what matters to me and to my companies. I would encourage you to do the same, especially if you are struggling in your professional work.

Nearly 2 months later after this re-prioritization, I feel much more confident that we are in a good place to have a highly net-positive final quarter of the year. We’re focused on what will get us to the finish line.

The following steps are going to be different for each person and for each company, but they are overall simple steps to help you prioritize what matters:

Block out time – You can’t figure out what is going wrong, or how to fix it, if you are constantly scrambling to fulfill others’ requests. Block out an entire morning or afternoon. Do not let email, messages, phone calls, appointments, visits or other distractions get in the way. I recommend at least three hours.

Get yourself in a good mood – When you’re feeling bad about yourself, your work, your company, or other aspects of your professional life, it’s tough to be objective about how to fix the problem. That’s why you feel great on day one of your return from vacation. So get a good full 8 hours of sleep the night before, have a great breakfast, get in some moderate exercise, do some prayer/meditation, and perhaps some light reading.

Decide what you want to accomplish – Within a set amount of time (3, 6, 12 months), decide what you want to win at. Lay out 3-5 goals, max. Obviously for your company, organization or cause you need to decide if it’s feasible. But get it all written down first. Preferably on one page or one document. Don’t overthink this. Instinct will matter, as well as reasoning.

List the challenges for each goal – Nothing is a straight path to the finish line. You need to figure out at very least the biggest risk factors for each item

Prioritize your goals – This part is very important. According to the late Stephen Covey, “It’s not about prioritizing your schedule, it’s about scheduling your priorities.” So rank them before you put them in your calendar

Remove the unnecessary goals – You have to say no to some things, in order to get what you need done, accomplished. So be merciless with the other items that don’t fit in your priorities. The more you can delete, the better.

Schedule your priorities – As mentioned above, block out time for each of your priorities each week. If you are in business for a while, this will be more difficult than if you just started, but equally as important. So block out the time to get the work done. I recommend at least one solid hour per day, around the time that you are at your peak energy level. Don’t let anything else get in the way of that magic hour.

Consider this: 1 hour a day during the workweek is approximately 5 hours per week, 20 hours a month, 60 hours per quarter, or 240 hours per year working on your goals. It adds up.

Do the work – This is difficult for many people. I know I struggle with it often. But bottom line, you don’t need to solve the entire riddle of your problem today, to achieve your goal. You just need to get a little bit closer to it.

Look at your results – Don’t forget this step, schedule it in along with your work that you do. Every quarter (at very least), look at how much closer you are to your goal. Like I mentioned, there were several things that I knew I could not accomplish by the time I got to July, so I reassessed for the rest of the year. My focus is much tighter now.

By the end of this year, I can’t say for sure if we will hit all our business targets that I set at the beginning of the year. In hindsight, they may have been quite lofty. But after the methods I described above, I am very confident that we will knock the priorities out of the ballpark, based on the work we’ve been doing. In the meantime, RocklandNews.com hit 20k viewers in one month, and we started five new web projects, ones that are more manageable than those we endured over the summer.

I would strongly urge you to take the time to re-prioritize what matters most, on a consistent basis! If you need some more free advice on how to achieve your goals and dreams, click here for two free books from myself and my colleague, Irene Gutmann!

Do you worry about the shift in the economic winds? We all do, you are not alone! Here are some easy, simple steps to working and planning your way through it!

by Thomas C. Ossa
CEO, RockWeb Systems Inc.
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In my 15 years of running a business, my 20 years of teaching, and my 39 years of working *,
I think this blog will provide you my favorite & most successful organizational technique that I have used the most.

Sounds like a tall order?

Good. Read on.

IT’S NOT EXTERNAL. IT’S INTERNAL.

How we navigate through the world should always, first be an internal process.

Eventually, when we are able to filter out what is unnecessary, what remains becomes to much more valuable.

Such is with email. Or if you’re like me – such is the one thing we wish didn’t coincide with The Abundance Mentality.

Let me rephrase, in case I’m being vague. There’s a lot of f*cking emails.

In my previous book “How to Program Your Life”, I emphasized that email should never be opened until it is organized. But I’ve found now that very little should be from your other roles within your company.

Simply put: You need a solid, foolproof organizational method to manage your time better. I say this as a fellow fool.

This is not only true – what I’m about to explain will be truly beneficial for your time allotment. I don’t know if you notice, but if you’re “on the clock” like I am running a business (in my case, I run several: 1. 2. 3. , time seems to have a way of becoming a container in and of itself, in which we dump all our random things. And you know for a fact as I write this, you don’t organize your email.

Luckily, there’s the FOUR-D method of organization. I basically just came up with that name as a slight adjustment to the original 4-D method, just so I can enjoy teaching it again, now, to you. And I hope you will benefit.

Ok, here we go.

THE FOURD METHOD:

1. Delete
2. Defer
3. Delegate
4. Do

While the order may seem a bit askew to you, the order is absolutely key.

Disclaimer: If you don’t agree with me, honestly, close this blog now and leave. No offense, but I don’t want to explain this to an unreceptive audience. I’m on a mission. You either get it right now, or you don’t. And that’s ok, either way. And for the record, I hope you stay. We have fun doing this stuff! You should, too!

Alright, thanks for reading past that paragraph. Happy to continue forward. Now…the reason why the order of the FOUR-D method is important is because of this:

1. You can’t do everything
2. You still want to respond
3. You can engage others to work
4. You prefer to create your mission

To a manager, it may sound like a different approach to managing your emails, your communications, your workflow, your financial matters, your documentation, and much more.

But really – it’s about a mindset.

Just like the plethorah of emails that you are probably answering ad nauseum all day long while trying to seem like everything is ok to your customers, your employees, and let’s not forget your friends, family and you, it’s important to organize what’s coming at you — in every dimension.

I want you to go back and read that sentence again. I hope you understand the subtext.

Alright, enough theory. Here’s what you do to use the newly termed, legendary FOUR-D method. Let’s apply it to one dimension of your work-life again, just like we did 5 years ago in the first book.

TRY IT OUT! MANAGE YOUR EMAIL NOW!

WITH THE FOURD METHOD

I’m going to now walk you through how to use the FOURD Method.

Make sure you try it out right now. Let’s throw you in the deep end!

1. Open up your email platform. It’s probably Gmail or Outlook.
2. Don’t open any of your emails. You want to. Don’t.
3. Begin FOURD reviews of everything that you haven’t read yet:
   1. Delete any crap emails, spam promotionals, or other unnecessaries
   2. Defer any long-term project emails. Not for long. More on that momentarily.
   3. Delegate Forward an email to someone (employee, client, colleague)
   4. Do Hop on the most important emails NOW

Do you now understand? In basketball terms…it’s the D that matters. As in defense – of your time.

Because you have vital stuff to do. So focus on that. Which is item 4: DO.

But before you can do what you were born to do, you have to get past level 1, and that level is dealing with a plethorah of stuff that takes you off task.

So use the FOURD method to truly take your time back, starting with your email.

BONUS: USE GMAIL TO COLOR-CODE EMAILS

If you made it down this far… I have a bonus for you.

If you’re using Gmail, there’s a nifty way you can flag emails and snooze them in order:

You wanna get next-level? Combine FOURD with flagging each email with color, before organizing:

1. DELETE: Anything you don’t code, gets deleted. No exceptions.
2. DEFER: Snooze emails until next time. But only for 5 minutes. BLUE
3. DELEGATE: Forward emails to those that should act upon them. YELLOW
4. DO: Handle anything that remains, quickly. Within 4 minutes. GREEN or RED

Obviously, depending what’s in the red or green, it might take more that four minutes. But regardless, go with speed and efficiency.

The most beautiful part of this system is that very, very few important communications will slip through the cracks. And you’ll have more time to devote to what matters most.

* Started working when I was 7. Still love what I do. You should, too.

~ Tom

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