Today I arose refreshed and ready for the work-week. I believe the feeling stemmed from two events: (i) I went to bed early, (ii) and I exercised yesterday.
Unfortunately, I didn’t exercise today; however, I’m optimistic because I’m starting to associate exercise with pleasure. After researching and writing about exercise (a chapter that I released yesterday), I’m beginning to buy into the positive effects exercise has on the brain.
Today I’ll be fleshing out my organization system, as well as my contact management system. I’ve been reading up recently about leading business people, politicians and celebrities. They all know a lot of people. The best ones have a focused system for getting to know people. Being that life centers around people, it’s my goal to improve my system in meeting more people. I’ll be applying focused habits to not only networking, but also getting to actually know people.
Bill Clinton. Love him or hate him, he’s known for one thing: he’s a charmer. The people he comes across are typically awed by how he remembers personal details about their lives. I remember a person I worked with telling me a story of how he met Bill briefly at a charity function. Two years later he ran into him again and Bill remembered not only his name, but their entire conversation. My colleague recalled, “He picked up the conversation as if a half-hour had passed between the meeting.” I’ll be experimenting with basic notecards as a contact management system, as well as some online contact management solutions.
There’s another tale of young Bill Clinton, where he was at a social gathering, and while talking to an individual, he pulled out a notecard and started writing down bits of their conversation. The person Bill was speaking with asked him what he was doing, and Bill told him, “I’m taking notes about you and our conversation.”
IMPORTANT: If you enjoyed this article, I'd like for you to experience much more by purchasing the book. You can check out via Paypal. Click here to buy the book.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
What kind of contact management solution (besides notecards) do you use? I remember reading this bit about Bill Clinton as to how he remembers stuff, and I’ve been meaning to do this myself, but haven’t found an effective and scalable solution that works.
Great chapter, Scott!
Hey Rishbah — Thanks for the comment. Appreciate it!
Regarding contact management, I’ve tried using a variety of services like Outlook Contacts, 37 Signals’ Highrise, SugarCRM, etc. What I’ve found is that Google Contact is actually a fantastic method for remembering tid-bits about contacts. It’s often overlooked, and runs in the background. But it works great. You can add notes such as their birthdays, your discussions with them, etc.
Additionally, I recommend LinkedIn for not losing touch with contacts.
Apart from Google’s contact management (which I use sparingly), and LinkedIn (which I only use after networking events when adding clients), I don’t suggest using a contact management system apart from notecards, or a simple offline system.
Honestly, though, it’s a work-in-progress and I’m always looking to improve. If you come across any methods that drive results, be sure to let me know.