6 Week Cycles

Welcome to another episode of halftime Talks. My name is Rahim, Rasul and you’re listening to the podcast, where we recognize in the middle of your game of life, whether you’re a bad sin or down by 20. Each of us, you and I, we both need halftime talks, to uplift us inspire and challenge us to bring that level of performance. You and I both know it’s gonna take. So win the game I’m here, you’re here. That’s all that matters. Welcome to another episode of halftime Talks. My name is Rahim, Rasul and today we have an idea worthy of sharing worthy of giving you that little edge, that little edge that pushes you beyond that scale of mediocrity. And as halftime talks, we begin, we want to appreciate to activate that space that lets us know, life is good.

And today, one thing I want to appreciate is that you can take advantage of other people’s experiences. While you may not fully get the connection, you may not have to go through the adversity to see the benefit to see the virtue and value of somebody in your life. Like somebody’s doing it wrong also informs you how you could do it right, they show you and inspire you towards a path of more preference. I don’t have to get into a car accident to appreciate my life. So let them go through the hard stuff. But you have to be receptive, you have to be aware, and you have to have that sense of presence to fully engage and appreciate the life experience that they provide. It’s fitting.

In this week’s episode, we are going to be talking about some lessons other people learned that we can take advantage of obviously listening to this podcast, you’re taking advantage of some of the highs and lows of my life highs and lows that I’ve seen in the world to apply to your process. And this week is not any different. So what we’re going to be talking about is the six week cycles. It was first introduced to me on Kevin Rose’s podcast called the journal. And as I kind of congealed my, my goals going forward for the second I listened to that the six week process was the avenue to really experience a massive growth. And so I’m going to play excerpts and have commentary about that throughout this episode, ready to launch ready to start.

And so strapping your seat belts, open your mind prepare for an idea to touch it in a unique way that can transform your life. Here we go. Before I play this excerpt, I want to give context to what you’re about to hear. I kind of took the liberty of frankensteining bits and pieces of the interview between Kevin Rose who by the way, founded Digg, he had a podcast or early series called Diggnation. And now he works with Google Ventures. Also, this is Jason freed of 37 signals, he created a product called Basecamp. A lot of a lot of project management software that people use is Basecamp. And there’s a couple other products that he has with high rise. But he’s a thinker, he has a different approach to business.

He’s the author of the book, rework, and they have a very cool podcast and a blog, where they talk about different ways to approach business. So within this conversation, it is a I Frankenstein, and I pulled together pieces, and hopefully it has the continuity. And after they finish, I will tell you my experience with the six week cycles that they talked about [Excerpt: Jason Fried on Kevin Rose’s podcast, on how Basecamp works in six-week cycles.] So if you want to hear more of that conversation, you can go to iTunes and look up Kevin Rose, it’s a podcast called the journal. And you can hear that whole conversation with Jason freed. I knew upon listening to this podcast that I struck oil, that there were things that he was saying and delivering with the six week cycles that I had been subconsciously and implicitly asking for I had to previous I had previously had some experience with do with a two week experiments.

And I knew I wanted something more sustainable. And the six weeks was the perfect amount of time, I’d experimented with month goals and quarterly goals and yearly goals. But there’s something about the extended amount of time that makes the intensity and the intention tend to evaporate as the weeks go on. And the ones month goals seem a little bit too short. And there’s a law called the Parkinson’s Law, which states that work tends to expand into the amount of time allotted for it. So if you say something’s gonna take eight weeks, it’ll take eight weeks. But something happens in that last seven and a half weeks when you end up doing the majority of the work. So what if you gave it two weeks? Or what if you gave it four weeks or six weeks instead of double that time?

What is the efficiency and the effectiveness of having a shorter period of time, and you’ll tend to notice that it is only marginal. And so by giving it a compressed period, this six week period to attack, a project or a series of project and some small, other projects that over the aggregate of a couple of six week cycles, you end up meeting your goal. I’m right now engaged in my first six week cycle. I am on week five, day three. And to say that it has been short of amazing would be an understatement. I have the capacity to focus on my goals in a way that I haven’t before. And what is different about this. So at the beginning of the six week cycle, I set the characteristics and the qualities of things that I want to achieve.

So I set each of those projects down that I said I’m exclusively focusing on within these next six weeks, I wrote an executive summary, a bullet point of objective. So above and beyond anything I got clear. I know what it’s for the why was more alive than anything else. And the radical change that I experienced as a result of it is when confronted or presented with options of other behavior for things I could be doing with my time. During this six weeks, I realized that what that was asking for my attention did not lie within the objectives of the six weeks. It did not lie on that list. So Guess what I’m doing now? I use that distraction to say, Hey, should we be doing this?

Yes or no simple question. Then I put that on my next six weeks agenda, or the queue of ideas of what I want to accomplish, to get the total goal met down the line. One thing I’ve learned as a result of this summer, and actually engaging in ideas, if you listen to podcast, or you watch YouTube, or you just have a ear open to the world magazine articles, or whatever type of media you’re consuming, you realize that there are gems of advice being offered. And so I challenge you not to let this be an intellectual idea that you entertain, but how could you incorporate it in your own personal way? It may not be six weeks, it may be five weeks, it may be seven weeks, it may be three weeks?

But how can you get more clear on what you want to accomplish without the bias of what you’ve done before inhibiting the possibility of what you can get done next. So six weeks cycles has really invigorated my process. It’s expanded my curiosity, and increased my perceived capacity of what I’m capable of doing. So this gets a check mark, this gets a red star, this gets everything good in my book that I can give it. I am so curious about this next six week cycle for me, I’ve jotted down my notes. During my interim period that week, I take off to clean up the rest of the stuff and prepare for the next six week cycle. I’m clear, I’m focused, I feel the momentum. Instead of focusing within this infinity, this infinitude of options, we dial that down, we discriminate from the infinite field into a few specific things.

And we’re able to really harness that momentum. That that’s the beauty of the six week cycle. And it can be yours, you can try it and let me know what you what you think about it. If you do give it a chance. This has been another episode of halftime talks. Hopefully this concept of six week cycles is something that you begin to incorporate it whatever whatever method meets where you are, make sure you get to iTunes subscribe, rate, and give us a review. Let us know what you think about the podcast and provide some feedback. Let us know what you think. Also go to your social media share with a friend because the more who know the more we grow and we’re growing by you guys sharing the episodes and listening each week. We’re on the track to everything that we want to achieve. So thank you guys for listening. Until next week, my name is Rahim. Rasul This is halftime talks. Peace