Think about your own workdays and answer the following questions:

1. What typically runs out first during the day? Is it time, or is it your ability to get and stay focused on activities that require significant mental resources?
2. What are you doing toward the end of your workday? Are you effectively creating, innovating, and prospecting (CDAs), or are you staying busy with “work-related” tasks?

To succeed with a finite amount of focus, the CDAs you choose to focus on must be high-leverage activities, i.e., those with a significant positive impact relative to the amount of time and energy you expend. Some CDAs have a much bigger return on time investment than others. Other CDAs, such as spending 45 minutes dealing with a difficult customer, have little return on investment. Consequently, increasing your mental energy reserves or working additional hours, without improving focus management, won’t move the needle. You’ll just have more time and energy to work on low- or no-impact activities.

Are you taking the scenic route or the highway?

Think of driving. If the same car takes the scenic route or the highway until the gas tank (mental energy) runs out, both will have exhausted their resources, but the car on the highway will have traveled a greater distance. The Pillar System makes sure you’re always driving on the highway.

Let’s consider this in terms of professional productivity and success. In any business or project, there are more things to do than time to do them.

The Pillar System makes sure you’re always driving on the highway.

Why do some of us stay busy all day without moving the needle while others make leaps and bounds, seemingly without breaking a sweat?

People in the latter group identify high-leverage activities and focus on them at the expense of everything else. People in the former group spend most of their time “doing” and “reacting.” Whether it’s intentional or not, they prioritize activity over results.

At first glance, joining the successful group seems simple

You just identify and prioritize your high-leverage activities. However, as I worked through the process of helping myself, my partners, and my clients transition, I realized that most people can’t correctly identify their highest leverage activities. And if they did, they lacked the ability to execute them consistently week in and week out.

After considerable trial and error, a simplification of their business through the establishment of a custom set of “pillars” yielded the best results. We identified these pillars by running all their potential activities through a system of specific questions and criteria to determine the most critical, high-leverage ones to focus on. The result was a short list of realistic weekly activities (pillars) that, when executed on consistently, all but guaranteed success in any viable business or project.

In a world where the true limiting resource is focus, not time, pillars proved to be the answer

When identified correctly, pillars could align what a person or organization wanted to accomplish with what they actually did on a week-to-week basis. These pillars, the completion of which was 100% in the person’s control, became a simple but powerful business plan that could fit on an index card. I added a second step of creating a Custom Accountability Program to turn weekly pillar execution into a habit and the Pillar System was born.

Being a great mechanic doesn’t guarantee success

Just because a mechanic is a whiz at fixing cars doesn’t guarantee that he’ll have a successful business. The same can be true for financial professionals who might be awesome at building portfolios or client relationships, and yet, their business flounders. Use the Pillar System to create a simple strategy for your practice. A strategy to cut through the clutter and move you toward clarity, simplicity and most importantly…results.