1: “Shelley was speechless,” says Mike Oppedahl, the managing partner at GiANT Worldwide.
He had just introduced the 5 Gears tool, which we’ve been exploring this week in RiseWithDrew.
“Shelley is a rock star,” he says in Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram’s book The 5 Gears: How to Be Present and Productive When There is Never Enough Time.
She’s “like a cruise missile as it pertains to her work,” Mike states, “and she has a very high capacity.”
Later that week, Shelley asked Mike to meet so they could discuss the 5 Gears framework.
- 1st Gear involves taking the necessary time to be 100% recharged.
- 2nd Gear involves connecting with family, friends, or colleagues in a meaningful way.
- 3rd Gear is about being social and enjoying the company of others.
- 4th Gear is your task-driven work gear, where you juggle priorities, responsibilities, and to-do lists.
- 5th Gear is pure focus mode that allows you to “get in the zone” without interruption.
“She started off the meeting by stating that she had never had this kind of insight into her personal development in all her 20 years of leadership,” Mike recalls.
“Having been a high performer her entire career, Shelley had never needed to work on increasing her productivity by a significant magnitude.”
Shelley told Mike that she assumed she was always in 5th Gear. She realized that her leadership life was perpetually in 4th Gear, where she was constantly being interrupted by her teams.
“As an extrovert,” Mike reflects, “she had a tendency to want her door open during the entire working day and she had never learned what it was like to truly get to 5th Gear and really focus on moving the needle.”
Shelley took pride in being a high performer. “She put tremendous pressure on herself to succeed at all costs,” he notes. “This led to a consistent 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. workday for her.”
As a result of what she learned, she began making changes in her life and work.
“Shelley began to spend intentional time in 5th Gear every week,” he shares. “The immediate result was that she was able to achieve significantly more in her responsibilities and her team felt even more supported.”
But she made an equally important change in her personal life.
“She started leaving the office by 5:30 P.M. and was able to have dinner with her husband (who had become accustomed to eating alone).”
“Wow! Think about that,” Mike says.
2: His message? “For the 85 percent reading this who are addicted to 4th Gear, it is time to put it in the right order.
“Some of you simply need to shift gears to 5th and block the time out to truly get things done before shifting again into 3rd, 2nd, or 1st at the end of the day.
“Remember, 4th Gear is not bad,” Mike states. “In fact, I encourage you to get as good as you can in that gear so that you are appropriately productive.
“However, I find it amazing that there are gurus who write and speak on maximizing 4th gear and yet don’t understand that it is not as much about 4th Gear as it is about knowing how to shift to the right gear at the right time.”
3: The authors provide the following exercise to help identify your personal gear order.
- Think about your gear order for what it really is, not what you want it to be.
- Start from the top. Which gear are you in the most?
- Move to the bottom. Which gear is the hardest for you to hit?
- Make the list in order from left to right, with the first gear being the one you are in the most and the last being the hardest to get to.
- List your gears in order.
Then, answer some questions as you process your gear order:
- When you see this gear order, what do you think about it?
- How does it make you feel?
- What makes your top gear what it is?
- What causes it to be the highest one?
- Why is your last gear there?
- Why is that difficult to do well?
Lastly, make a list of the three things you want to change regarding the gears.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Which gear do you spend the most time in, and which one do you consistently neglect?
Action: Take five minutes to rank your gears honestly, then choose one practical change that will help you spend more time in the gear you’ve been avoiding.
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