Get Er Done—The Green Beret Guide to Productivity © 2011 by Michael Martel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro- duced or transmitted in any form or by any means, elec- tronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

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ISBN: 978-1-936417-17-9 Printed in the United States of America

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Get Er Done

D E D I C A T I O N This book is dedicated to my wife who had to miss holi- days, birthdays, and other important events with me because I was off on a training event or some other adven- ture.

She was, is, and will be forever, my best friend. Her unwa- vering support has been the most important element in my ability to “get er done.”

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The Green Beret Guide to Productivity

F O R E W O R D What a great read! Michael does a great job of taking his years of Green Beret training and military skills into real life practical how to’s for succeeding in life. He translates the highly effective and intense training of the US military Green Berets and applies it to every day civilian steps and systems to help people achieve their dreams.

This book lays out systematic and applicable steps to help train for personal and business success. Michael weaves into Get er Done the mindset and training techniques of one of the most prolific US military units in the world. Proficiency in any profession is determined by leadership and establishing key confidence targets and reducing distractions to a minimum.

By assembling a Mastermind or A-team as Michael likes to call it, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to commit and achieve whatever goals and dreams are impor- tant to you and your family.

Life is all about choices and the time is NOW for you to organize your life, take a time out to review where your point A is and achieve what’s next for you. Simply apply what you read in this book, put together a plan, see the BIG picture and start producing the results you want.

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Get Er Done

So get your intention clear, take ACTION today and complete the exercises at the end of each chapter. Then attack what’s important to you, don’t quit and produce the results that align with your vision.

To your success!

Tom Haupt—Leadership Expert, Motivational Speaker

and Best-selling author of TIME-OUT! Winning Strategies for Playing a Bigger Game in Life

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The Green Beret Guide to Productivity

C O N T E N T S

Dedication 4

Foreword 5

Introduction 8

Chapter One — Backward Planning 15

Chapter Two — Reducing Distractions 21

Chapter Three — Don’t Just Quit 27

Chapter Four — Muscle Memory 33

Chapter Five — Confidence Targets 39

Chapter Six — Point of No Return 47

Chapter Seven — Be a Trained Observer 57

Chapter Eight — Who Are They to Judge? 65

Chapter Nine — You Need an Army 75

Chapter Ten — Commander’s Intent 85

Conclusion 92

About the Author 94

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Get Er Done

I N T R O D U C T I ON

Why am I writing a book on getting things done?

Throughout my career in both the corporate world and in public service, I have heard over and over again the complaint that the boss has given out an impossible task. Employees whine:

“It just can’t be done.”

Usually those given the task didn’t even attempt to get started, having already decided that it was not in their ability to finish it. They figure:

“Why start? I can’t do it anyway.”

You hear the same thing from family and friends when you ask them to do something out of the ordinary, different, or challenging. They complain:

“I’m doing so much already.”

I was brought up different. I am not talking about my childhood or how my primary and secondary education gave me the skills to go out in the world. Though I must say that I believe that I was raised in an accountable

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The Green Beret Guide to Productivity

manner, with a few detours here and there based on youthful indiscretion. What I am talking about was my selection, training, and development as a Special Forces Green Beret. Impossible was not part of our vocabulary. We were expected to do one thing:

“GET ER DONE!” This didn’t mean that we were required to give our lives to make sure the trash got taken out. The means were always to be appropriate to the task.

However, giving our lives was part of the equation when it came to protecting our country and the duties that came with it.

Get

Er

Done!

I T ’S A W A Y O F L I F E

Get er done was simply a way of life. One Special Forces motto is “improvise, adapt, over- come.” The concept is that we would take the situation as it was. There wasn’t time or energy to waste on bemoaning what it should be. We would take the skills we had and as quickly as possible make, borrow, or buy what we needed to get er done. The end result was most often success. The process might not follow the original plan, but because we

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Get Er Done

approached things with the mindset of success, we stacked the deck and found the resources to make it happen.

A R E A L E X A M P L E . . .

During Operation Provide Comfort, thousands of Iraqi Kurds had fled Iraq into Turkey after Desert Storm because Saddam Hussein was waging a war of retalia- tion for their assistance to the coalition. The Kurds were stretched across northern Iraq and southern Turkey. It was a humanitarian mess. My Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) had been inserted into the area to help with the humanitarian effort and to help get the Kurds to move back into Iraq and the big United Nations’ camps that had been established for them. When families flee, they take everything with them, and that includes the family automobile. We found aban-

doned cars stretched out for miles

Impossibl

e was not

part of our

vocabulary.

leading up into the mountains that formed the border between Iraq and Turkey.

Higher command decided that one way to get the people to start moving back was to fuel up their cars so they could drive back to the refugee camps.

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The Green Beret Guide to Productivity

My fellow weapons sergeant and I had been given the role of finders. That meant we were supposed to go out and talk to the locals and find out what resources were available. We were told:

“Figure out how to get gas passed out to all the abandoned cars.”

On the surface, it sounded impossible. We were in the middle of the mountains! There were limited roads! And no gas stations were anywhere close! But we had to get er done. We improvised, adapted, and overcame. Using a trans- lator, we asked the local Kurdish guerrilla band, called the Pesh Merga, if they knew of

anything that could possible hold gasoline. Incredibly, one of the fighters had been in the next valley over and had seen a gasoline tanker truck. Someone had driven the truck unti it ran out of gas. We immediately set out to find it, with

Improvise,

adapt,

overcome.

our own gas can in hand. A few hours later, we found it, a tanker truck just like you see on the roads back in the US. This one also had a family of five living in the tank, taking shelter from the elements. We coaxed them out by giving them a UN survival tent. Then we cleaned out

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Get Er Done

the tank and our small amount of gas was enough to get the tanker back to our valley.

You made

the choice

to be

here.

The next day, a military tanker arrived and filled up our pirated tanker truck, which we then used to fill up the cars that had been abandoned and scat- tered for miles and miles across the countryside. This proved to be an important part in getting the Kurds to move back.

We got it done:

1) We improvised,

2) found something that would work,

3) adapted the plan from what we thought originally, and

4) got the mission accomplished.

If you follow these principles, and some others I will share with you, you will get amazing results and find you are performing at levels you never thought possible.

S H O U L D Y O U C H O O S E T O A C C E P T I T : At the end of each chapter, I will give you a mission that

you can accept or not (I suggest that you do!). This

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The Green Beret Guide to Productivity

mission is a list of things you can put in action right now that will have positive results in getting things done.

It’s your choice if you put them in practice. As we said many times on my Special Forces teams, “You made the choice to be here.”

You’ve made the choice to read this book, and you can make the choice to get results or not.

Now, let’s get er done!

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Get Er Done

1 C H A P T E R

Those who can plan ar e the ones who wi l l get i t done.

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The Green Beret Guide to Productivity

B A C K W A R D

P L A N N I N G I actually learned about backward planning before I attended the Special Forces Qualification “Q” Course. I learned it in the US Army Ranger School.

Ranger School is primarily a leadership course that uses patrolling in harsh conditions to duplicate the stresses of combat. It is a very demanding course with a planned lack of food and sleep.

While some might say that Ranger School is a time of intense confusion, hunger, and fatigue, backward plan- ning does not mean that you plan in a confused or awkward manner.

T H E R O L E O F T I M E M A N A G E M E N T

One of the biggest factors in whether you get a task completed is how effective you are at time management. Without good time management, you will almost always fail. This was beat into our heads by the Ranger School

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Get Er Done

Ranger Instructors. The instructors would continually ask us:

“What time is your time to be on target?” Time on target was the end point, the final moment when all our get er done efforts culminated in a completed mission. Everything else led up to that time. We simply then mentally walked our way backwards, putting time points at each important step.

F O R E X A M P L E...

If time on target was at 23:00 hours, than we needed to do a final reconnaissance of the target an hour before- hand. Given backward planning, our time to arrive there

would be a 22:00 hours.

What’s

your

time on

target?

Prior to that, we had to set up a small patrol base in the area about 15 minutes in advance. This would be at 21:45 hours. It would take us about three hours to get there from where we were, which meant we would need to leave a 18:45 hours.

It would take an hour to get our equip-

ment ready, 15 minutes to eat, and three hours planning, which then meant we would need to

start to get ready at 14:45 hours.

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The Green Beret Guide to Productivity

A P PLY B A C K W A R D P LA N N I N G

Backward planning lets you know when you need to get started. It also gives you timing points along the way to let you know if you need to adjust your plan in order to get er done when you need to.

In the planning for the mission I just mentioned, if we were running late, we might skip on eating or cut down on equipment prep time. Whatever it took to reach our target time.

Think about how you could apply backward planning in your daily life. Suppose the kids need to be picked up from school at 3:00 p.m. You need to first get the dry cleaning, and the dry cleaners is 15 minutes from the school.

Backward

planning

will serve

you in

anything

that has a

deadline.

It will take five minutes in the store, which means you need to arrive there at 2:40 p.m.

Before that, you want to meet a friend at a local coffee shop. If you leave 30 minutes for your coffee time, and the shop is 10 minutes from the dry cleaners, then you need to arrive at the coffee shop at 2 p.m. And finally, if the coffee shop is 20 minutes from your house, then you need to leave home at 1:40 p.m. in order to pick up your kids on time.

Backward planning will serve you in anything that has a deadline or a “time on target.”

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Get Er Done

G E T T I N G I T A L L D O N E

In the Special Forces we are known for our focus on being on time. This keeps us on track and on schedule. In combat, arriving too early might leave you exposed without air cover, while arriving too late at an ambush might mean that you missed your target. Either way ...

arriving too EARLY or too LATE was failure, and failure was NOT an option!

It might be a good idea to think about this, and why time management is so essential to your own personal or business success. Perhaps you can begin by thinking of the opposite, of

ways this does not work. Even if you have

It’s all

about

getting

it done,

isn’t it?

one very small task to complete, if you do not manage your time appropriately, it may get done on time, it may be too late, or it may not get done at all.

Perhaps you are working on a deadline or have a task that does not have a specific time to be completed. If you do not have a plan for getting it done on time, it will show in your results.

If you have ever felt there are not enough hours in a day to do everything you need to do, then backward planning will be a very positive step forward

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The Green Beret Guide to Productivity

for you. You will be pleasantly surprised with how much you can accomplish.

With a game plan focused on mission completeness, you may find yourself getting more done each day than you usually accomplish in a week. Not only will you be more productive, but achieving each goal will come much easier. You will soon appreciate this all-important factor in your success.

C H A P T E R O N E M I S S I O N

— should you choose to accept it Here is your mission ...

Q Take several tasks you have to do today

and conduct backward planning on them. Establish your final time on target, work backwards, and decide when you need to start.

Q If you use projects in your work, introduce the

concept of backward planning. You will find that projects will have a much better chance of getting done on time.

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G e t t h e r e s t o f

G e t E r D o n e

A t

w w w . M i k e M a r t e l . c o m

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Michael Martel

Michael is an ex-Green Beret, a trainer, a teacher, and a leader. He focuses on helping people get started, making it happen, and having a life.

When Michael was barely 18 years old, he walked into the Army recruiter’s office in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio. He said he wanted to see the world. That wish was satisfied when he was shipped off to Berlin, Germany where he had a great time in the “Divided City.” There began his love of travel. He spent a total of 13 years living in Germany, traveling around Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. His Army career spanned 20 years, including time as an infantryman, paratrooper, and Green Beret.

Best of all, during his adventures he found his beautiful wife. Together they have a wonderful son. Michael is very proud of them both and so grateful that they are in his life.

After the Army, Michael moved on to technology where he worked as a computer security expert keeping

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extremely sensitive information safe from hackers. He earned Bachelors and Masters degrees (Science in Information Technology and Business Management) along the way.

Michael was quickly recognized for his leadership, knowledge, and ability to work with people. He moved into the executive ranks and led large business divisions.

Always on the lookout for a challenge, he discovered he had a gift for coaching. From the experiences, both in the military and in corporate world, he has a lot to give back. His real world leadership experience, combined with his technical education and skill, give him a unique ability to work with other leaders to help them achieve success.

Throughout his life, he has done the hard stuff, experi- enced what works, and has the skills to get the job done, whatever it is.

www.mikemartel.com

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