Chapter 4 - Hot Spots
From Getting Results | The Book
One reason so few of us achieves what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. —Tony Robbins
In This Chapter
- Learn how to use Hot Spots to focus and invest your time and energy in major areas of your life.
- Learn how to use Hot Spots to set boundaries to improve your work-life balance.
- Learn how to invest in your relationships more effectively.
This chapter is an elaboration and drill down into the concept of Hot Spots as it applies to Agile Results.
Hot Spots help shine the spotlight on things that are important. The primary goal of using Hot Spots is to have a quick way to identify, organize and scan what’s important. Start by identifying your most important Hot Spots for work, personal, and life. Next, explicitly name the outcomes you want for each of these Hot Spots. Finally, create “scannable outcomes” so you can see at a glance your Hot Spots and desired outcomes. Knowing the results you want for your Hot Spots forces you to get clarity. Keeping them simple and scannable, like a tickler list, makes it easy to update your goals and aspirations as they change. That’s the agile part. What’s important will change as you learn more and gain clarity or adjust to new situations. Time has a way of changing what’s important now.
By having a simple set of Hot Spots, you have a way to keep your life in check. By investing across your Hot Spots, you keep your life in balance and you invest in yourself for the long run. The key is setting boundaries. To set boundaries, simply identify minimums and maximums where you need them. Factoring the Hot Spots out is a way to help you focus and get clarity on where a particular dimension of your life is at. Remember that the sum is more than the parts and that the Hot Spots actually support each other.
Hot Spots
Where do you need to spend your time? What do you need to focus on? Hot Spots is a simple metaphor for thinking about what’s important.
It’s where the action is or should be. More importantly, it’s where your attention, energy, and focus should be. Imagine your Hot Spots as a heat map, a bird’s-eye view of what’s important. Heat maps are often used in the military to show clusters of important activity. For your heat map, simply visualize the clusters of important things going on in your life. The heat map can show either opportunities or pain points. On the opportunity side, you can imagine new interests, business ideas, or potential game changers. On the pain side, you can imagine areas that you’ve neglected and are now causing you pain physically, emotionally, financially, etc. You can also imagine areas that have a lot of friction. Maybe they are just a little tougher than they should be, and maybe a bit of focus would help you unblock results in these Hot Spots.
See the Forest from the Trees
When you’re in the thick of things, it can be tough to see the bigger picture. This is especially true if you don’t know what to look for. Hot Spots can help you see the forest from the trees in a few ways. For example, at the macro level, you can think of Hot Spots in terms of work, personal, and life. You can think of your life Hot Spots in terms of mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun. Within each of those Hot Spots, you can then identify the main things that are important for you. You can do the same for work and personal; if you aren’t sure where to start, you can at least think of your work and personal Hot Spots in terms of your projects, activities, and roles for each.
Hot Spots as Your Heat Map
As a heat map, your Hot Spots help you answer the question, “What’s on your radar?” You don’t need to know all the details, and your map doesn’t need to be complete. In fact, that would actually get in the way. You would either spend all your time updating the map to be complete or bury what’s important among the details. Instead, you need to know your main threats and opportunities. At a high level, your primary threats are things that negatively impact your mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun. Your opportunities are things that will add value or improve your life in these areas. At a lower level, look for the big threats and opportunities in your work projects and activities as well as your personal projects and activities. Your heat map of Hot Spots let’s you take a step back. You want to avoid getting blind-sided or over-investing in one area at the expense of another. You also want to avoid spending all your time fighting fires while missing out on opportunities. When you know where to look, it’s easier to gain insight. You can start to see patterns. You get a better lens for what’s working and what’s not. When you know what to look for, you can figure out which levers matter most. You want to find the right levers to either get unstuck or maximize your results. You should be able to know at a glance where the pain or opportunity is.
Hot Spots as Your Portfolio
Your Hot Spots is your investment portfolio, and the goal is to more thoughtfully spread your life force across this portfolio. You already spend your time and energy on a variety of things. Hot Spots help you answer the question, “Where should you invest your time for maximum results?” When you think of your results as a portfolio, it helps you manage risk. You might be over-investing in some areas, while ignoring or under investing in others. For example, are you investing in your relationships? Are you investing in fun? Your portfolio will have its ups and downs, and Hot Spots allow you to identify areas that need the most attention. They can help you find key indicators for your personal performance. The portfolio metaphor helps you carve out time for what’s important.
Balancing Your Hot Spots
Hot Spots give you a bit of scaffolding to help structure and support your life. When you have a set of Hot Spots, you can better balance your life. This works in conjunction with the portfolio metaphor. For example, are you investing the same time and energy in your work as in your personal life? Are you making time for fun? With the Hot Spots you have a frame for balancing your results.
Know Your Top 3 Pain Points and Opportunities
One way to achieve clarity of mind is to know your top three pain points and opportunities. In fact, the more you have going on in your life, the more you benefit from consolidating and organizing your pain and opportunities. This will help you focus when it counts. It will also help you avoid getting overwhelmed. It’s also an easy way to turn pain and opportunity into action. The opposite is to have an endless list of pain points and an endless list of opportunities that you will never act on. Think of this as simply packaging up your pain and opportunities so that you can free up your mind and take action more effectively.
Organizing Your Hot Spots
At a high level, the simplest way to organize your Hot Spots is by three areas:
- Life Frame
- Work
- Personal
Life includes your key areas in life, such as your body, mind, or emotions. Work Hot Spots would include any projects, activities or roles at work. Personal Hot Spots would include any projects, activities or roles at home or anywhere outside of work.
Life Frame
This is the big picture. It’s how you chunk up your overall time and energy. There are certain areas in life that if you invest in, you get rewarded. On the other hand, if you ignore these categories, you get penalized. Here’s a starter set of categories you can use to think about the areas in your life that need your focus and energy:
Table 4.1 Life Frame
| Hot Spots | Description |
|---|---|
| Mind | Includes investing time in learning thinking techniques and keeping your mind sharp. |
| Body | Includes investing time in keeping your body in shape and learning patterns and practices for health. The most important basics are eating, sleeping, and working out. |
| Emotions | Includes investing time in keeping your emotions healthy, learning emotional intelligence, and keeping your emotions in check. It’s about learning skills for feeling good. |
| Career | Includes activities and projects for your job and other professional endeavors. |
| Financial | Includes investing time to learn patterns and practices for building and sustaining wealth. |
| Relationships | Includes your relationships at home, work, and life. The key is to create and maintain important, healthy relationships that add value to your life. |
| Fun | Includes investing time to play and do whatever you enjoy. |
By identifying a set of Hot Spots, you can be more deliberate about how you spend your time and energy, as well as the trade-offs you make. You can also focus on finding key patterns and practices that help you improve in these areas.
Asking Questions with the Life Frame
You can use the Life Frame to help you ask better questions to drive results. Here are some example questions for each Hot Spot area:
Table 4.2 Asking Questions with the Life Frame
| Hot Spots | Key Questions |
|---|---|
| Mind | How to improve your intellectual horsepower? How to improve critical thinking? How to ask better questions? How to find better answers to your questions? |
| Body | How to get fit? How to improve your body? How to manage your health? |
| Emotions | How to improve your emotional intelligence? How to feel good? How to deal with life’s ups and downs? |
| Career | How to manage your career? How to climb the ladder? How to follow your passion? |
| Financial | How to build your wealth? How to protect your wealth? How to share your wealth? |
| Relationships | How to improve your relationships at work? How to improve your relationships at home? How to grow your network? How to leverage your network? |
| Fun | How to have fun? How to integrate fun into your life? How to balance play with work? |
Setting Boundaries
You should set minimums and maximums for your Hot Spots in terms of time and energy. This keeps you from getting over-invested. Use your Hot Spots to set boundaries. For example, you might set a maximum on career and a minimum on relationships, body, and fun.
Table 4.3 Setting Boundaries with the Life Frame
| Hot Spots | Boundaries |
|---|---|
| Mind | |
| Body | Minimum of 3 hours |
| Emotions | |
| Career | Maximum of 50 hours |
| Financial | |
| Relationships | Minimum of 8 hours |
| Fun | Minimum of 3 hours |
In this case, step one is deciding to spend no more than 50 hours each week on your career Hot Spot. You’re forced to bite off only what you can chew. This is how you start improving plate management and pushing back effectively. You can only spread your life force over so much. The categories help support each other. If not properly allocated, they can also work against each other.
Note that you might need to set the opposite limits. Set your limits and test results. The key is to use boundaries and limits to keep yourself balanced and improve your results. Schedule time in your calendar to reflect and reinforce these boundaries.
Key Insights
- When you set a minimum in the right categories, you avoid getting unbalanced and spending too much time or energy in a category at the expense of others.
- When you set a maximum in the right categories, you learn how to become more effective. For example, if you only have three hours to throw at a particular Hot Spot, you’ll use them wisely.
- The worst mistake it to continually throw more time at problems.
- The key is to reduce time spent while increasing value and improving your efficiency and effectiveness.
Work Hot Spots
You can group your Hot Spots at work into the following buckets:
- Activities
- Active Projects
- Backlog
Work Hot Spots is a very simple way to get a handle on your job by thinking in terms of your recurring activities, any active projects that you’re working on, and things that you plan to work on, but that you aren’t actively working on right now (your backlog). By organizing your mind, you can improve your results and free up your mind to focus on higher-level strategies and outcomes.
To get a handle on your activities, identify your key activities, themes, and major roles and responsibilities. For example, you may have activities such as administration, managing budgets, mentoring, holding meetings, etc. Make a list for each big, recurring activity, role, or responsibility. This will let you see your job at a glance. You can then identify the main outcomes that you want for each of these activities. You may have a lot of outcomes or results that you want to achieve. In this case, list the most important three results at the top, and then list the rest after that. This way, you can quickly walk each significant activity, role or responsibility and see your three main outcomes at a glance.
For active projects, the first thing to do is make a list for each one of your active projects. This is your “queue.” It’s a place where you can queue up your work, rather than store it all in your head. This gives you a place to write down important outcomes or tasks. You can do the same for your backlog. Make one list for each project in your backlog that you are not actively working on. By having a list, you have a place to put things, rather than having them float around in your head. You know you have a good set of lists when you can quickly tell at a glance what all the current projects on your radar are. If you aren’t used to thinking in terms of projects, simply think of all the balls you are currently juggling at work. In each project list, you should see a set of outcomes at a glance. The outcomes will help you see the forest from the trees.
The value of these lists is that they are a simple way to stay focused on what you want to accomplish. They are lightweight and scannable. They are easy to update or throw away as needed. They can help serve as scaffolding for your work life. By periodically reviewing these lists, you can very quickly remind yourself of what’s important and you can very quickly adjust your plans if you’re not getting where you want to go.
Personal Hot Spots
You can group your personal Hot Spots into the following buckets:
- Activities
- Active Projects
- Backlog
These are your personal projects or activities outside of work. This could be anything from writing a book to fixing the house. These are the balls you are juggling at home. And the advice just covered for work Hot Spots is applicable here as well.
Additional Considerations for the Life Frame Hot Spots
Your personal and work Hot Spots reflect your current projects and activities. Your Hot Spots create a simple, but effective map of “what’s going on” in your life. Your life Hot Spots are a durable, but evolvable set of areas to invest in throughout your life. With this map in your hand, you can drill into any of the key areas of your work life or personal life or the bigger picture.
Sometimes when I explain the Life Frame to people, they want some elaboration on the Hot Spots. They want some of the next level down inside the buckets. Breaking the Hot Spots down into more actionable categories can help you get traction and make progress in that Hot Spot. For example, if I know I need to invest in “emotions” as a Hot Spot, how do I think about that? I can start by breaking emotions down into things like emotional intelligence, feeling good, passion, etc. Doing so can provide the clarity to define actionable steps. Next, I can look for and learn success patterns and good habits from books, mentors, or my own trial and error. It gives me way to focus my energy as well as organize any information or insight for that Hot Spot. You can imagine that over a lifetime, this creates a pretty deep personal knowledge base of insight and action.
The relationships Hot Spot is can also be a sticking point. People know that relationships are important, but they don’t have an effective way to think about the various relationships in their life. Part of investing in your relationships means knowing how to map them out effectively. By having a simple way of looking at your relationships, you can more thoughtfully invest your time and energy in your relationships that really count. Your relationships serve as a foundation for the rest of your success, so it’s worth adopting a new lens for looking at the people in your life.
In the next two sections, I share some examples of breaking Life Frame Hot Spots down into actionable categories, and how to think about the relationships Hot Spot in a way that’s more actionable.
Examples of Life Frame Hot Spots
Here are some simple prompts to help you think of Hot Spots in your life. The list is not meant to be complete or exhaustive. You may want to add some other Hot Spots for your life, such as spiritual or social. The key is to have a simple heat map of what’s important for you. It’s a high level way to remind you to spread your life force across your meaningful buckets. It’s a way to more thoughtfully invest in yourself.
Table 4.4 Example Hot Spots
| Hot Spot | Example Hot Spots |
|---|---|
| Mind |
|
| Body |
|
| Emotions |
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| Career |
|
| Financial |
|
| Relationships |
|
| Fun |
|
Relationships Hot Spot Explained
Investing in your relationships will serve you throughout your life. You can tell yourself you are a rock, you are an island, and you need no one, but the reality is you share the world with people, whether it’s your family, your friends, the people at work, or the people in your community. Make the most of it.
Interactions and Roles
You can think of your relationships as the roles and interactions that are important in your life. More precisely, you can think of relationships as connections. You can then think of your roles in those connections. Your role is what part you play in that relationship. Your Hot Spots for relationships are any roles and interactions that are important in your life.
Table 4.5 Interactions and Roles
| Hot Spots | Relationships | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Family | Family, friends, relatives, etc. | Role model, grandparent, father, mother, sister, brother, etc. |
| Work | Teammates, peers, manager, partners, cross-team groups, key contacts, etc. | Manager, leader, mentor, etc. |
| Friends | Friends, community, groups, clubs, teams, special interest, online, etc. | Friend, neighbor, community leader, etc. |
The idea in relationships is to invest based on what you want to accomplish. For example, be the father you want to be. Get the people on your side to make things easier at work or to sell your ideas. Be a great friend. Be a good role model. Be a great mentor.
Another important concept in relationships is to continuously invest. Life’s not static. People will flow in and out of your life. Your relationships are growing, or they’re dying.
In Summary
- Hot Spots are focal points and help you create a heat map of both opportunity and pain in your life.
- Know the three most important opportunities in your life.
- Know the three most important pain points in your life.
- Hot Spots as an investment portfolio helps you manage risk and determine where to invest your time for maximum results.
- By having a simple set of Hot Spots, you have a way to keep your life in check.
- Identity a simple set of Hot Spots for your life, your Life Frame (for example, mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun).
- Set boundaries for your time in your key Hot Spots (for example, a maximum of 40 – 50 hours in career, a minimum of 3 hours in body, a minimum of 8 hours in relationships).
- Schedule time in your calendar for your key Hot Spots.
