One of the best ways you can create wealth is by mentoring others. 

By mentoring, I mean sharing your knowledge and experience with someone to help them find traction in their efforts or reach the finish line.  I wouldn't be a published author today if I didn't have mentors throughout my life: my pre-Yahoo career, my writing career, my speaking career, etc.  

Mentorship is important for you and the person you help.  You will enter a knowledge feedback loop through mentorship, which will only help you gain valuable insight as your mentee tries out your ideas in the real world.  For them, you pass along your value, multiplying it and strengthening the 'system'.  Often though, we are haphazard about mentorship programs, and often wonder what good we've done. 

Here are a few rules for mentorship: 

1. Pick someone based on a hunch: Don't advertise that you are looking for mentees, or take the first suggestion that comes your way.  You'll know the mentee when you see her.  She's got a passion for the goal, a willingness to work, a respectable level of potential - and she reminds you a little of yourself.  (PS: Don't offer mentorship to a peer or someone that's arguably doing better than you.)

2. Don't be formal: Just start helping, there's no need to make a production out of it.  Besides, she may not be a receptive mentee, so there's no use making a big deal about it.  Just do it. 

3. Listen before you prescribe: It's important to understand what her goals are, what obstacles remain and most importantly what motivates her.  Don't just dive in with your list of biz-tips, take Covey's advice and seek first to understand. 

4. Put your mentee on a reading program: Share some of the great books that helped you solidify your point of view.  Much like a teacher, these books will serve as a foundation for your advice later on. 

5. Be helpful, not Yoda: You don't need to browbeat someone for them to be a good mentee.  You should already have their respect if you've really got something valuable to offer.  Focus on how you can give useful advice related to getting simple things done.  Go beyond knowledge, and offer to network your mentee with others to drive the progress. 

6. Never collect: No matter how much you help, remember, you are in giving mode and not trade mode. If you make mentorship expensive, it becomes consulting.  By giving without expectations, just like Tom Peters did with me, you'll have a friend for life that you look up to and maybe can help someday. 

When you take on a mentor, and make a difference, you are creating some significance in your life.  I call it "multiplying value."

posted on Sanders Says, April 12, 2010

Click here to learn more about Tim Sanders

I'm going to write this post without stopping to check my email. 

It's hard for us to do this in these times: Cell phones, email, twitter, web, people stopping by, etc. But if you want to be effective and sane, you must learn how to single task.  I thought about this today when I read a tweet by Steven Furtick (a true success story).  He wished out loud that he could do just one thing at a time and noted that he was interrupted three times trying to post the update.  

He is not alone. 

Too many of us think we are like our kids, and can do five things effectively at a time.  In fact, the reality is that you dilute your brain when multitasking.  Only through focus can clarity shine through, making all of your work better.  This is especially true for the 30, 40 and 50 somethings reading this post.  You are not digital native.  You did not grow up texting, IMing, browsing, listening to music and watching TV at the same time like your kids. 

I've also found that constant interruption, either self-imposed or imposed by others, leads to stress and depression.  This was one of the findings of my 2003 study on New Economy Depression Syndrome. Think of multi-talking as a habit, a bad one, and make a promise to yourself that you'll go back to the old days, where you did one thing at a time.  

Here are a few ways to become a single-tasker: 

1. Organize your day around single tasks, with two or three breaks for email (thanks Tim Ferriss).  If you allocate 30 minutes at 9:30am to write your daily blog post, do that and only that.  Turn off your phone's ringer.  Close your email application.  Don't even think about checking your Twitter/FB feed as a 'break'. 

2. Train everyone in your life that you are not always available.  Many of our interruptions come from the instant gratification culture we allow.  It's time to either push back on interruptions or ignore them altogether.  Let them know that you are working on this project and your next available 'free' window is at 3pm.  Period.  No apologies.  

3. Schedule your social media/web surfing time, and unless it's core to your business, don't give it more than 15% of your daily schedule.  To make things easier, have a vanilla home page like Google (instead of Yahoo or MSN) so you aren't distracted by the daily news of the weird.

4. After doing this for one month, compare the quality of your work against the previous month when you were a multi-tasker.  You'll find out that you are doing much better, now that you are working with focus. 

OK - The post is written, now I'll go on the web and find the two URLs I need to include above (the study, Tim Ferriss's book).  That would have certainly led to an interruption. 

Tim Sanders spent some time between Christmas and New Years purging his life of the clutter the stale-dated...some of it in the category of 'stuff' - books, magazines, clothes and gadgets - and some of it professional commitments that never came to fruition. When it comes to the latter, he wisely advises us to pick up the phone (avoid the email safety zone - person to person is essential), state your reasons, stick to your guns, and withdraw gracefully. Great advice for starting 2010 with a streamlined office, wardrobe, and daytimer!

Click here for Tim's full Dump the Junk blog post.

Tim is challenging us to reconnect with the feeling of "there's enough to go around, enough for all of us to share" that predominated a few years ago. After a tough 2009, it is all too easy *not* to feel upbeat and generous this Christmas. Tim's strategy for creating holiday abundance goes like this:

1. Thank three people that helped you this year - personally, socially or professionally.  Give them a personal gift and/or a hand written note explaining why you are grateful to them this year, and how much of a difference they've made to you.
2. Brighten someone's holiday season - invite a stray co-worker (with family living elsewhere or alone) over for Christmas day. But a few gift cards for a grocery store or Wal-Mart and give them to people you see everyday that could really put them to use: entry level tweeners, janitorial staff, workers.  When you give, be warm and thank them for the opportunity to share the season with them.
3. Absorb the good cheer of others. The next time you see people celebrating their year, stop to imagine yourself in their shoes and learn to find joy in other's happiness.

Click here to read Tim's full blog post on Holiday Abundance.

All the best for a healthy and happy new year!

Flu prevention is a hot topic this fall. The H1N1 pandemic has us all wondering about the best way to steer clear of infection and whether or not to vaccinate ourselves and our children. But aside from vaccines, there are a few very simple but effective steps we can take to increase our chances of staying healthy this fall and winter. In this week's sanderssays blog, Tim Sanders shares two favourite tips for keeping healthy and combatting the spread of viruses:

1. Wash your hands frequently - as in, as often as you think of it. Take Howard Hughes as your inspiration (perhaps the only case when one should!)

2. Eliminate as much sugar from your diet as possible. There is some compelling scientific evidence that a diet high in sugar limits the body's ability to kill bacteria. Plus it just makes for a more nutritious diet anyway. You can't lose!

Check out Tim's blog for the full post and here's to good health!

AdAge.com's Goodworks blog features Tim Sanders on Social Responsibility is Dead/Long Live Corporate Social Responsibility

Tim's Goodworks post has some fascinating examples of how corporations have partnered with unconventional suppliers to create a great product or service consumers feel good about supporting. Read the full post here: Advertising Age Goodworks blog and visit Tim's blog for more on what he has to say on corporate social responsibility: Sanders Says.

Remember the despondency of September 2008?  Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and many other titans of Wall Street were on the edge of collapse. Fear and caution ruled the day as the media predicted another Great Depression. It was a tough time for Saving the World’s essential message to be heard: that conducting business with empathy, optimism and generosity is key to long-term corporate success.

Fast forward to September 2009 - the world has not ended and capitalism is far from dead (take that Chicken Littles!). As Tim says:

"There are reasons to believe that we could all get back to long-term business planning from technical to social without risking insolvency.  This planet continues to get hotter. Local communities continue to buckle under economic pressure, when thoughtful companies could be synergistically helping.  Employees still struggle to maintain quality of life.  All of that is still there, a golden opportunity to build brands and social value at the same time.

Napoleon once said: the leader's role is to define reality then give hope.  I am trying to use the platform of a book relaunch to inspire thousands of people to resume their late 2008 efforts, projects and programs too.   If I learned anything from the tech-dotcom recession it is this: What you do at the bottom will make a BIG difference on your credibility and momentum during the next up-market."

For every copy of the book sold, Tim will donate $2 to the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues. 

Connect to book excerpts and more information on how you can help spread the message of Saving the World at Work: Sanders Says.

it's definitely not the eye sore or choking hazard you might think!

In his recent Sanders Says blog post, Tim retells a pivotal story from his childhood - as a boy of eight, he hated his weekly chore of dusting a wicker horn of plenty filled with rubber fruit that adorned his grandmother's dining room table. That is, until his grandmother told him about the Great Depression and the role played by the horn of plenty in ending the doom and gloom of her early years. One day in the early 1940s Tim's great-grandmother brought the horn of plenty home from the five-and-dime and announced to her family that as of that moment: "we've had enough misery and worry. As of today, we have everything we need." Tim's grandmother pointed out that the Depression didn't end with a formal announcement or a newspaper headline - it ended when people like her mother decided that it had ended. The horn of plenty was her "declaration of abundance" to the world and to her family.

A valuable story for those of us hoping for word that the recession is officially over. As Tim says "we need to invest, self-educate, dream and give again".

Click here for Tim Sanders blog