A 5 Minute Overview Of

Disrupt! Think Epic. Be Epic.

25 Successful Habits for an Extremely Disruptive World

By Bill Jensen (2013)

About the Author

Bill Jensen is founder and CEO of The Jensen Group, a change management consulting firm. Mr. Jensen is an information architect and has carried out a twenty-yearresearch program titled Changing How We Work: The Search for a Simpler Way.He is the author of several books including Simplicity, Work 2.0 and Simplicity Survival Handbook. Mr. Jensen is an accomplished public speaker and is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology.

The Main Idea

The introduction of new technology and change are ongoing and won't be slowing down any time soon. This is absolutely the age of continuous personal and business disruption — some major, many minor but disruptions nonetheless.

So how do you excel in the face of ongoing disruptions? The key is to develop the right habits. Studies consistently show that up to 45 percent of what you do every day is driven by your personal habits. To excel today, focus on developing the right set of personal habits.

In particular, there are 25 habits which world-class performers use today:

To achieve more now and in the future, don't worry so much about the external changes which are happening in the world. Focus on the inward journey. Integrate these habits into your daily routine and you will welcome rather than fear the disruptions of the future.

Everything is figureoutable. It boils down to a pretty simple thing: Put one foot in front of the other and figure it out. We should be seeing what sucks and taking the steps to fix that. People always assume that someone else is going to take care of it, but if everyone took personal initiative, then we'd have a much more exciting, vibrant world.

Miki Afrawal, founder, WILD and THINX

The people who will succeed in this era are those who figure out how to benefit from, or take advantage of, continuous disarray, disorder and disruption. You already have much of what it takes to master successful habits in the age of personal disruption. It's time to free those qualities and skills.

Bill Jensen

25 Successful Habits for an Extremely Disruptive World

1. The Do's — 14 habits for doing great work in a disruptive world.

Be audacious. Be aggressive with your ideas and beliefs. Look to make big changes, not incremental improvements.

Kill what you cherish the most. Whenever you develop a project, build in obsolescence right from the start. Get iterating from the word go.

Do epic stuff. Disruptive times call for epic dreams, goals and actions. Do something great which will make you stand out.

Blow your own stuff up. Create some revolutionary change in what you do. If that's not feasible, study rebels and steal from them.

Become adept at triage. Get very good at assessing what needs to be done, formulating a strategy and then executing it.

Go ahead and make a mess. The best way to achieve more is to fail more, to fail faster, and then to iterate, iterate, iterate.

Go ahead and do it anyway. In the disruptive era of business, there will always be massive opportunities for those who ignore "No."

Go faster. Today, speeds trumps precision. You've got to get out of your own way and figure out how to do more.

Leap before the net appears. Society's safety nets were always an illusion. Be prepared to leap even when there's no net in place.

Simplify again and again. Most disruptions are an effort to simplify things. Look for ways to reduce friction in everything you do.

Have a business on the side. Don't rely on others for a living. Always have some small projects going on the side. Be entrepreneurial.

Keep going back to the future. Get two mentors — one half your age and one twice your age — and tap into their advice.

Do things that make a difference. The world is full of serious problems. Find something important and dedicate your life to it.

2. The Don'ts — 4 habits for enjoying the ride.

Don't hesitate. Acknowledge your fears but then make a deliberate decision to push past them and keep disrupting.

Don't use weak tools. You can't aspire to "put a ding in the universe" unless you have great tools. Invest in the very best tools.

Don't knock down - try and build. The best way to influence people is to be kind to them and to be optimistic about them. Treat people well.

3. Guiding Principles — 7 habits for saving the world and having a great life.

Of course, follow your passions. In a disruptive world, if you don't follow your passions, you'll be pushed into following someone else's.

Remember resilience matters. There's no point being "sustainable" when the world is changing quickly. Instead, you have to be resilient.

Disrupt yourself again and again. It's inevitable that sooner or later someone is going to disrupt you — so get in first and do it to yourself.

Your network is powerful. Figure out how you can do extraordinary things with the people in your network. Harness the power.

You are the powers that be. Insiders never topple the status quo. Don't wait for permission to disrupt, Make it happen.

It's never about you. In this era, we're all dependent on each other to a greater degree than ever before. Erase the boundaries.

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Summary published 8/2013