TIME MANAGEMENT
CO-SUMMER 2010
THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS ARE COMING UP AND IT IS A GREAT TIME FOR REFLECTION.
But why does there never seem to be enough time ?
I am always asked about time management and getting balance in your life. Certainly for busy folks like you and I, time is a premium and sometimes seems like there is never enough of it. I tell folks that I am the LAST person to take advice from on time management. While I am pretty good at getting things done, from the outside it normally looks like barely managed chaos. Part of it is that I have a great team who is able to keep my life flowing in a productive direction.
Yet the other part of it has to do with how you look at time and balance and how you understand it. First of all, there is plenty of time. Second of all, if you think there isn’t enough, you will be right. Worrying about it is actually a waste of it !
My philosophy about it may upset you, but it has worked extremely well for me, has made me a lot of money and given me a great life. That’s because I have inherently understood that…
THERE IS NO BALANCE IN BUSINESS, LIFE OR NATURE ITSELF
Everything in nature and in life swings from one extreme to the other. There are peaks and valleys, busy times and slow times, abundant times and lean times, chaos and order. The truth is that the pendulum of nature only spends a fraction of an instant swinging through that fictitious point of balance. That thing that they taught us in high school biology called "steady state" barely even exists. That was propaganda to get us to believe that we should be balanced, staid, calm and non wave-making obedient drones.
I have never met a successful person that didn’t operate at the boundaries. They operate in a world of extremes. They seem to rarely sleep, have a hundred things going on and are in continuous motion.
If I look at my life at any moment in time there is no balance. It is a view of chaos, extremes and intense moments, connections and activities.
It feels like accelerating acceleration. I just came off of a road trip that went from Phoenix to Sydney to Vancouver to New York to Singapore to Jakarta back to Singapore to Hong Kong to Boston to El Paso into my 2-Day program and now home. But now I’m home ! Time for lots of skiing, football games, etc.
A woman in my 2-Day Sales and Leadership program recently said her husband is a nuclear physicist. She said that nature exhibits no balance if you look up close. She verified that balance is dependent on the time frame you are looking at. She said that I seemed very balanced to her if you looked over the course of the year. 4 weeks on the road, 2 months of skiing and playing.
Look, when I am with my kids… I am ONLY with my kids and I take no interruptions, but when I switch over to business, Boom ! I am there. To try to balance my life is nuts. What I have learned is that being 100% present is what counts. When I am with someone else and fully locked in on them and what is happening between us…time disappears and the relationship thrives !
My two year old is great at this. When he grabs my finger to take me to play with him… he is fully engaged and even outraged if my mind or attention begins to wander. Yet when I have to take a conference call 15 minutes later, I am locked and loaded there. The skill is to be able to switch from interaction to interaction and be totally present in each one.
That’s the key to sales and nearly every relationship. How many times have you been in a conversation with someone else and realized that you have not been paying attention ? When you disconnect, you break the relationship. Now I am the first to admit that there are some people who are hard to stay connected with in any conversation. But that brings up the next point about time.
TIME IS NOT THE ISSUE AS MUCH PRIORITIES. JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DO SOMETHING, DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD DO IT !
You don’t have to do everything, you don’t have to run every errand and you don’t have to control every activity in your life. You can have priorities, you can learn to ask for support and find others who are better at things than you are. You have to ask yourself : Is it revenue generating or not ? Relationship building or not ? Is it a worthwhile relationship or not ? Is it busy work or not ? Are you giving yourself lots to do and being busy rather than being effective ? Are you on your own or do you have a team ? Is it time with the special people in your life or not ? Choose and then be present with your choice.
Running around in circles is nuts. Wasting time with those who suck away your energy and time is crazy. Spending your time on the minutiae
of life is insanity !
So the next time you are in conversation with someone else and you find your mind wandering. Stop and get 100% present again.
Because when it is all said and done, there is no tally sheet that will score you on how many things you were able to do in this lifetime. There will only be the impact, the relationships that you nurtured and the memory of what your priorities were.
In this holiday season… be thankful for the time that you DO have. Choose wisely.
But why does there never seem to be enough time ?
I am always asked about time management and getting balance in your life. Certainly for busy folks like you and I, time is a premium and sometimes seems like there is never enough of it. I tell folks that I am the LAST person to take advice from on time management. While I am pretty good at getting things done, from the outside it normally looks like barely managed chaos. Part of it is that I have a great team who is able to keep my life flowing in a productive direction.
Yet the other part of it has to do with how you look at time and balance and how you understand it. First of all, there is plenty of time. Second of all, if you think there isn’t enough, you will be right. Worrying about it is actually a waste of it !
My philosophy about it may upset you, but it has worked extremely well for me, has made me a lot of money and given me a great life. That’s because I have inherently understood that…
THERE IS NO BALANCE IN BUSINESS, LIFE OR NATURE ITSELF
Everything in nature and in life swings from one extreme to the other. There are peaks and valleys, busy times and slow times, abundant times and lean times, chaos and order. The truth is that the pendulum of nature only spends a fraction of an instant swinging through that fictitious point of balance. That thing that they taught us in high school biology called "steady state" barely even exists. That was propaganda to get us to believe that we should be balanced, staid, calm and non wave-making obedient drones.
I have never met a successful person that didn’t operate at the boundaries. They operate in a world of extremes. They seem to rarely sleep, have a hundred things going on and are in continuous motion.
If I look at my life at any moment in time there is no balance. It is a view of chaos, extremes and intense moments, connections and activities.
It feels like accelerating acceleration. I just came off of a road trip that went from Phoenix to Sydney to Vancouver to New York to Singapore to Jakarta back to Singapore to Hong Kong to Boston to El Paso into my 2-Day program and now home. But now I’m home ! Time for lots of skiing, football games, etc.
A woman in my 2-Day Sales and Leadership program recently said her husband is a nuclear physicist. She said that nature exhibits no balance if you look up close. She verified that balance is dependent on the time frame you are looking at. She said that I seemed very balanced to her if you looked over the course of the year. 4 weeks on the road, 2 months of skiing and playing.
Look, when I am with my kids… I am ONLY with my kids and I take no interruptions, but when I switch over to business, Boom ! I am there. To try to balance my life is nuts. What I have learned is that being 100% present is what counts. When I am with someone else and fully locked in on them and what is happening between us…time disappears and the relationship thrives !
My two year old is great at this. When he grabs my finger to take me to play with him… he is fully engaged and even outraged if my mind or attention begins to wander. Yet when I have to take a conference call 15 minutes later, I am locked and loaded there. The skill is to be able to switch from interaction to interaction and be totally present in each one.
That’s the key to sales and nearly every relationship. How many times have you been in a conversation with someone else and realized that you have not been paying attention ? When you disconnect, you break the relationship. Now I am the first to admit that there are some people who are hard to stay connected with in any conversation. But that brings up the next point about time.
TIME IS NOT THE ISSUE AS MUCH PRIORITIES. JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DO SOMETHING, DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD DO IT !
You don’t have to do everything, you don’t have to run every errand and you don’t have to control every activity in your life. You can have priorities, you can learn to ask for support and find others who are better at things than you are. You have to ask yourself : Is it revenue generating or not ? Relationship building or not ? Is it a worthwhile relationship or not ? Is it busy work or not ? Are you giving yourself lots to do and being busy rather than being effective ? Are you on your own or do you have a team ? Is it time with the special people in your life or not ? Choose and then be present with your choice.
Running around in circles is nuts. Wasting time with those who suck away your energy and time is crazy. Spending your time on the minutiae
of life is insanity !
So the next time you are in conversation with someone else and you find your mind wandering. Stop and get 100% present again.
Because when it is all said and done, there is no tally sheet that will score you on how many things you were able to do in this lifetime. There will only be the impact, the relationships that you nurtured and the memory of what your priorities were.
In this holiday season… be thankful for the time that you DO have. Choose wisely.