As an associate publisher, I had a sense that something was off with our division, but I was not prepared for what I discovered when I took over. Our area, apparently, was a disaster. Thomas Nelson had fourteen different divisions at the time, and I discovered the one I led was the least profitable. Dead last. “Least profitable,” in fact, is a generous way to put it. The truth is, we had actually lost money the previous year. People in other parts of the organization were grumbling about how we were pulling the entire company down. Something had to change fast.
Many leaders facing that moment of crisis would have immediately jumped into action and tried any and everything to bring in some additional revenue and turn things around. I had that temptation, of course, but I didn’t go that route. What’s the point in filling a leaky bucket without first plugging the holes? Instead, the first thing I did was go on a private retreat. I knew I needed some quiet time to fully evaluate where we were, how we got there, and what we should do next.
I had two goals. First, I wanted to get crystal clear on where we were, no matter how grim it was. Second, I wanted to come up with a compelling vision for what I wanted to achieve instead. I was confident that once the start and end points were clear, my team and I would be able to chart a course for getting from where we were to where we wanted to be. And believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened.
I thought it would take three years to accomplish my initial vision. Instead, we pulled off a complete turnaround in just eighteen months. Along the way, we exceeded in almost every aspect of our vision, and our once-struggling Nelson Books division became the fastest-growing, most profitable division of Thomas Nelson over the next six years. We went from dead last to leading the pack, and it didn’t happen because we had a great business strategy; it happened because we had a clear vision of where we wanted to go, and we were honest about where we were starting from.
Now it’s your turn.
The Intersection of Passion and Proficiency
In chapter 1, you began to chart where you want to go. If you completed the Productivity Vision exercise, you have already developed a compelling vision for yourself. (If you haven’t completed that activity yet, I recommend stopping now and finishing it. The chapters and exercises build on each other, so you can’t afford to skip one.)
Now that you know where you want to go, you need to figure out where you are right now. For that, you’re going to need a special kind of compass—the Freedom Compass. This tool, which we’ll use throughout the rest of the book, will serve as your productivity guide. It will always be there to prevent you from heading off in the wrong direction. It will also help you evaluate tasks, activities, and opportunities based on two key criteria: passion and proficiency. Getting a handle on these two things will revolutionize your entire view of productivity. It’s not enough to be either passionate or proficient at a task you’re called upon to do regularly. You need to be both or your energy and performance will suffer.
By passion, I’m talking about work you love, work that energizes you. Has there ever been a time in your life when you were working on something and thought, I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this? If so, you know what passion feels like. You’re capable of doing many things, but you’re the most motivated and satisfied when you’re doing things you love. If you don’t love your job, it’s hard to stick with it.
Proficiency is something else entirely. Proficiency doesn’t refer to how much you enjoy doing something; it describes how well you actually do it. The truth is, there may be something you’re extremely passionate about, but if you aren’t especially skilled at it, no one will ever pay you to do it. For example, I live in Nashville, Tennessee—Music City, USA. We’re crawling with musicians. But most aren’t in the music industry; they’re waiting tables. I’m sure they’re passionate about music, or they wouldn’t even bother. I’m sure most of them are fairly skilled too. In any other city in the country, they may be local celebrities. But here in Nashville, it’s a totally different game. You can’t just be a good musician and make it here; you have to be great to get attention.
Many people confuse proficiency with aptitude, but they’re not the same. Aptitude is an ability or knack for doing something. Proficiency is something more. Proficiency means you’re not only skilled at something, you’re also generating results that other people can measure and reward. For executives and entrepreneurs, that mostly comes down to revenues, profits, and other financial metrics. For musicians, it could be downloads, sales, crowds, or awards. Aptitude signals skill alone, while proficiency signals skill plus contribution. It’s what you offer the world that the world rewards. No matter how talented you are, if you’re not making a contribution in a certain area, you’re not truly proficient.
Four Zones of Productivity
Now that we’re clear on terms, let’s look at the mechanics of the Freedom Compass. Start by picturing a grid with Proficiency running across the x axis and Passion running up the y axis. These two criteria will help you identify and understand four different zones that you normally operate in. Before we’re done, you’ll have a much better understanding of why certain tasks make the day fly by and why others bring it to a screeching halt. We’ll review the four zones in reverse order so you can see the progression, and we’ll start with the zone we all hate.
Zone 4: The Drudgery Zone. The Drudgery Zone is made up of tasks for which you have no passion and no proficiency. Basically, these are the things you hate doing and aren’t any good at anyway. This is the worst kind of work for you to do. It’s a grind.
Things like expense reports, handling email, and booking travel fall into my personal Drudgery Zone. I have zero passion and zero proficiency at these things, so making myself do them is a chore. These tasks take longer than they should, and the end result is a lot of wasted time. Why do I say wasted? It’s because my time and energy would be much better utilized—and therefore more productive—if I focused on other things, things at which I could make a real contribution. I’m never going to be good at booking travel, and I never want to become good at booking travel. So why should I force myself to do it?
Keep in mind, though, that just because something falls into your Drudgery Zone doesn’t mean it falls into everyone’s Drudgery Zone. These aren’t bad tasks per se; they’re just things you personally have no passion or proficiency for. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people in the world who love the things you hate, and vice versa. Without that division of labor, our complex economy wouldn’t work.
Passion and proficiency provide a helpful grid for evaluating our tasks. When passion and proficiency for particular tasks run high, that’s your most desirable work. When they’re both low, our tasks feel like drudgery.
Zone 3: The Disinterest Zone. The Disinterest Zone is made up of things that you’re proficient at, but you aren’t that passionate about. Sure, you can do these tasks—maybe better than anyone else in your office—but they drain your energy. Why? It’s because you have no passion. Frankly, you just don’t care about them, so you get bored doing them. Most of us are naturally inclined to avoid Drudgery Zone tasks, but we often get stuck in a rut doing Disinterest Zone activities simply because we’re good at them.
This is something I know all too well. I mentioned before that I have a long background in publishing. I got into the business long ago because I have always loved books. The great motivational speaker Charlie “Tremendous” Jones used to say, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I could not agree with this statement more. In fact, every significant period of growth in my life has been the direct result of either a person I met or a book I read. That passion is what drove me into publishing, and I developed proficiency in each of my positions as I climbed the corporate ladder. The higher I went, though, the less involved I became in the work of making books.
Every promotion led me a little further away from books and a little closer to admi
nistration. By the time I became CEO, my job was primarily about finance. I do have an aptitude for finance, and I eventually developed proficiency for it. However, my passion didn’t last beyond the initial phase of learning and mastery. Bottom line: it bored me to death. The problem was, that’s what I was getting paid to do. Confronting this was one of the key realizations that led me to leave my position and refocus my energy on my first love, creating content. I’ve heard similar stories from so many people. If we’re not careful, we can get stuck in the Disinterest Zone for years, maybe decades, simply because it’s what pays the bills.
Zone 2: The Distraction Zone. In this zone, life starts to get a lot more tolerable. The Distraction Zone is made up of things that you are passionate about but sadly have little proficiency for. This means these activities aren’t draining your energy and you enjoy doing them, but if you aren’t careful, they can be massive time-wasters. The problem is that you aren’t proficient at them, which prevents you from making a significant contribution in these areas.
Here’s the problem with the Distraction Zone: your passion can mask your lack of proficiency—but only to yourself. Our proficiency is best seen by other people. That means we may be the last to know that we’re wasting an enormous amount of time doing subpar work on something we enjoy.
It’s not just fair-to-middling musicians in Nashville. It’s the finance exec who can’t stop interfering with marketing. Or the salesperson who meddles in graphic design. Or the manager who finds it easier to do the team’s work than lead the team. Unless these efforts are validated by others (e.g., colleagues, customers, clients, superiors, an audience, the market) as truly—uniquely—valuable, then they’re Distraction Zone activities. When we’re identifying tasks that fall into our Distraction Zone, we have to be ruthless with ourselves, knowing that we’re calling out things we love but probably shouldn’t be doing.
Zone 1: The Desire Zone. The Desire Zone is the point where your passion and proficiency intersect, where you can unleash your unique gifts and abilities to make your most significant contribution to your business, family, community . . . and maybe the world. If your destination is freedom, this is where you’ll experience it. The rest of the book will be focused on getting you into the Desire Zone and helping you stay there as much as possible throughout the week.
Working in your Desire Zone has a profound effect on personal productivity—and more. It’s the best way I know to win at work and succeed at life in general, because you’ll do more high-leverage work in less time, which frees up margin for the other domains in life: family, friends, and so on. This is what started making the difference for my client Roy, who we met in the last chapter. “Focusing on my Desire Zone and ditching everything else was big for me,” he told me. “Realizing that it’s okay to delegate everything—and I do mean everything—that’s not in my Desire Zone has been one of the most freeing things I can imagine.”
By delegating work outside his Desire Zone, Roy cut his hours from seventy a week to forty on his primary job. I say primary because he works another ten hours a week in two passion projects he started with his family. Before he had committed to working at both peak passion and peak proficiency, he didn’t have margin for extras like that. His margin was gobbled up with low-leverage tasks that killed his energy and undermined his effectiveness.
Another client, Rene, has a similar story. Rene’s company buys and sells private jets. Before she discovered the four zones, she described her life “on a hamster wheel . . . I worked all the time.” Understanding this link between passion and proficiency was key to escaping the rat race. “It gave me permission to concentrate on items in my Desire Zone, and really it enabled me to say, ‘I don’t have to be busy all the time. I can have time just to do deep thinking and deep work on what matters most.’” The impact for Rene was immediate. She cut her weekly hours from sixty to thirty, and she said she reclaimed even more than that. By ordering her tasks, she said, “I’m not distracted by the things that don’t matter. So really, I’ve reclaimed my whole life.”
Mariel runs an accounting business and, like many of us, found work pushing into every corner of her life. When we first started working together, she regularly worked sixty to seventy hours a week and never left work at home on vacations. “I had grown up in a family business,” she explained. “Working extra hours and working all the time was something I was accustomed to, and I loved work.” But she found some work was higher leverage and some lower. “The thing that made the biggest impact on me,” she said, “was working through my zones—figuring out what’s disinterest, what’s drudgery, and where my desire actually was.” Once she had a clear sense of that, she was able to eliminate, automate, and delegate tasks outside her Desire Zone (more on that follows in Step 2).
Mariel not only cut thirty hours off her workweek, she also grew her business while working less. And the same is true for Roy and Rene. In fact, it’s true for everybody I know who works at the intersection of peak passion and peak proficiency.
Zone X: The Development Zone. There is a fifth zone with no fixed place on the grid. I call it the Development Zone, and it’s how to gauge work outside your Desire Zone but potentially moving toward it. Maybe you’re high-proficiency/low-passion, but you’re developing passion. Or you’re high-passion/low-proficiency, but you’re building proficiency. This progression is important to keep in mind, because our experience affects both passion and proficiency.
We don’t come with default or fixed settings, being either naturally passionate or proficient. Rather, we all begin with curiosity, interest, and possibly some raw talent. Time and practice play a part in where a task falls, and that task can move based on how we evolve in relation to it. In other words, passion and proficiency are the result of personal or professional development.
Several tasks in my Desire Zone today migrated there from the Development Zone. That’s true for many. When my daughter Megan Hyatt Miller first started working for me, she had zero passion for financial analysis. She excelled at branding and marketing, but spreadsheets and projections were a grind. She had neither passion nor proficiency. She was, however, willing to learn and possessed some aptitude. With time and training she developed genuine proficiency. And that wasn’t all. As Megan developed proficiency, her passion also grew. Research by Florida State University psychologist Anders Ericsson and others shows that practice and eventual mastery can influence the joy we feel in a task. I say can because it’s not a given; as a publishing CEO, I could hold my own in a room full of bankers, but I rarely enjoyed it. For some, however, practice doesn’t just make perfect; it also makes pleasurable.1 And that’s when we notice a task has migrated from one zone to another.
Mindset is another aspect of tasks shifting into our Desire Zone. Megan is visionary and oriented toward the future. In StrengthsFinder language, Futuristic is her number one strength.2 Part of what drove Megan’s growing interest in the numbers was how they played into company goals and strategy. “The financials are how we execute on our vision,” she told me. “It’s the practical application.” Today, financial modeling, cashflow projections, and high-level budgeting are all Desire Zone activities for Megan, who now serves as chief operating officer of MH&Co.
We sometimes know a certain task is not in our wheelhouse. Other times we just need more experience with it. If we have a hunch we could develop passion and proficiency with a task, we should stay open-minded about it.
Rotating the passion and proficiency grid creates your Freedom Compass. The more you can steer your efforts north, toward your most desirable work, the more productive you’ll be. The adjoining examples show you how the Freedom Compass gives direction to your work.
Finding Your True North
Now that you understand the four zones of productivity, let’s look at the Freedom Compass itself. You’ll see the compass is simply the passion-and-proficiency grid rotated so the Desire Zone occupies the top position. What’s one of the most important skills for navig
ation? Finding true north. Zone 1, the Desire Zone, is true north for your productivity. That’s the direction you want to head. Just like a navigational compass can save your life if you’re lost in the wilderness, the Freedom Compass can guide you through the jungle of meaningless, unproductive work.
The promise of this book is to help you achieve more by doing less, and here’s how we’re going to do it. This is the secret to productivity that many either take for granted or miss completely. True productivity is about doing more of what is in your Desire Zone and less of everything else. Underline that statement. Write it on a Post-it Note and stick it to your computer monitor. Post it in your car. Recite it ten times a day if you need to, but do not miss this point: true productivity is about doing more of what is in your Desire Zone and less of everything else. Focusing your time and energy on your Desire Zone is going to drive results and create freedom. This is the key to achieving more by doing less.
The more time you spend in your Desire Zone, the more good you do not only for yourself but also the world around you. I know that’s a bold statement, so let me explain. All of us possess unique gifts—a specific package of native talent, acquired skills, drive, and wisdom particular to us as individuals—and we are never more effective, never more powerful, never more influential than when we are exercising those gifts. You can’t be me, and I can’t be you. However, we can all be the best version of ourselves. I believe that happens when we live and work in our Desire Zone.
One more word on this before we move on: while the Free to Focus system can get you into the Desire Zone quickly, it won’t happen overnight. Today, I spend about 90 percent of my time on Desire Zone activities, and I want you to join me there as quickly as possible. Stephen, an online sales wizard and coaching client, told me he’s now working 80 to 90 percent in his Desire Zone. But he didn’t start there. When he first took my Free to Focus online course, he realized, “I’m doing all of these things in my Drudgery Zone. . . . I was trying to do everything,” including “trying to fix printers, and it was just painful!” If you’re responsible for major results, can you afford to mess with the office equipment? When Stephen figured out how much effort he was wasting, he began using the Freedom Compass to point him to his most high-leverage tasks. He not only reclaimed margin—which his young family appreciates—but his business doubled. “It’s made a huge impact on the bottom line and given me a lot more joy,” he said.
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