Getting Things Done and Presenting to Win

I started reading Getting Things Done by David Allen and found that his approach to planning has a lot in common with Jerry Weissman's Presenting to Win.

According to Allen, when you plan, you want to brainstorm first and then organize your ideas. Weissman preaches that you should think of all things you might want to cover in your presentation and then organize them into logical blocks.

Two books on two different subjects, and yet the path to success is the same in both. Nabokov once said that the entire body of literature has 10 universal stories (love, hatred, betrayal, etc.), and each new book is merely a variation and a combination of those ideas. Drawing a parallel with commonalities in professional, non-fiction books, I would think that when more than one book talks about the same principles, there's a chance that those principles might be universal. When I throw in the fact that each of the two books in question led many people to new heights in their career, there's a good chance that these principles are universal and should be studied and practiced.

I am only one quarter of the way through the book, and the learning has already begun! More to come.

The Boomerang Theory

I had a great, very educational lunch with a friend of mine Josh today, and he talked to me about boomerangs. Here's how the conversation flowed:

Josh: What would you expect to happen if you threw a boomerang?

Sergey: I would expect the boomerang to return to me.

J: How do you know it'll return?

S: Well, that's what boomerangs do.

J: Have you ever thrown one?

S: No.

J: If went to the field now, how much money would be willing to bet that the boomerang would return?

S: How about 5 bucks?

J: How about $400,000?

S: I wouldn't. I have never thrown a boomerang, and throwing it may require a technique I don't know.

J: Ok, so what would you do if threw a boomerang, and it wouldn't come back to you?

S: I would fetch it and throw it again, trying a different way of throwing it. I don't know what the difference would be. Maybe I would flick my wrist more.

J: And if it failed to return again?

S: I would try again and do something different again.

J: So eventually the boomerang would come back?

S: Yes.

This brief conversation desribes 2 critical components of success:

1. In order to succeed, one must be willing to fail. The boomerang (a new business, career, girlfriend) may not fly on the first attempt. What you learn from this experience is a way to throw the boomerang that doesn't work.

2. In order to succeed, one must do something different when trying again. When you try again, you have to change the way you throw the boomerang.

In other words, succeed by not being afraid to make mistakes and learn from them.