Blurred by my inbox, voice mails and a dense calendar, I may never know what it is I actually do.  What am I going to say when my kids ask me about my work?  (They currently think I go on the cruises to turn on the water slides and ice cream machines.)

Howie Mandel has a line in his act where he asks an audience member their name and what they do for a living.  When they stumble thru the answer, he says what has to happen at your work so that people go “Oh shit, you better get Andy?”

We just finished our annual company retreat last week and I was overwhelmed with the caliber of people on our team.  These folks would make any organization better and they are growing as leaders right in front of my eyes.  With the new opportunities we are earning, there is more work to go around.  Plus the fact that I aspire to be a contestant on the “Survivor” reality show next season, which would mean me being gone for at least 39 days (I am not planning on being voted off early), I have been trying to figure out how to communicate my responsibilities so our team can cover while I am starving on an island somewhere in the world making alliances and competing in cool challenges.

So I am making my, “Oh shit, you better get Andy list?”

The goal is to write down a set of tasks to be performed by your Evil Twin over a 30-day period (because we all think only a clone of ourselves could do our job and have an instinctually hard time believing anyone else could survive).  In addition to thinking forward about upcoming responsibilities and deadlines, I reviewed my calendar, call log, inbox and sent items from the past 30 days to discover patterns of efficiency and inefficiency.

Then, I made a list of the top 3 things that I do that have the largest impact on the organization and put them in Bold and in a LARGE FONT for my Evil Twin.  I included the other items in a font half the size as well as a “Watch out for these distractions” list to warn my Evil Twin.

It’s been a fun experiment and since I likely won’t get my chance to be on Survivor, I will just use my list to ask people at Sixthman to join me in taking on some of these responsibilities.

Do you have the courage to document what it is you actually do?

Andy