Against a backdrop of global economic compression, political uncertainty and widespread talent shortages, learn why right now is the perfect opportunity for smart business leaders to enjoy the time of their lives.
It’s slipping through our fingers, and we don’t even realise.
We know time is short. Yet we take no meaningful action to make the changes we seek in our businesses and our lives.
You know this. I know this.
But our words betray our thoughts.
Don’t believe me? When someone asks you how your week is going, how often do you reply “busy”, without even pausing to think? How recently have you said something along the lines of “I can’t believe how fast this year is flying by”?
Time speeds up, yet we stand still.
I speak to hundreds of business owners every month, and most of them say the same thing: “Not enough money. Not enough talent.”
But what if money and talent weren’t the real issue?
What if TIME was the solution you really needed?
Queen Elizabeth, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Kobe Bryant: All had bucketfuls of money. All had an endless talent pool of resources to call upon.
All ran out of time.
But what if I could give you more time?
What if I could show you how to achieve more with less?
How much richer would your days be?
Give me five minutes, and I’ll give you your life back.
You’ll never find the time
I don’t care how wealthy or successful you are, you’ll never ‘find’ the time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.
How do you make time? Ironically, you make time by slowing down.
You slow down by prioritising yourself. This means stop putting your calendar in abusive charge of your life and stop letting other people use you.
This will probably feel selfish at first, so let’s hammer home the point by showing you the evidence in black and white. Or – to be precise – red and green.
Let’s do an experiment. Go to your work calendar. Print off two copies of this week’s diary. If you live in the modern world and do things digitally, then do this activity online. If you’re too busy (ahem), then do this in your mind’s eye.
Take a red pen. In the first copy of your calendar, scribble red anything where you are NOT directly serving (i.e talking to) a money-paying customer or client. That means coffee catch-ups, internal meetings, training sessions, weekly updates – all of it gets the crimson crayon treatment.
Next, take a green pen. In the second copy of your calendar, scribble green any activity that you LOVE to do. Don’t BS me that you love budget meetings. I’m talking about the set-your-soul-on-fire, can’t-sleep-because-I’m-too-excited stuff that truly lights up your life.
Look at how much red is on your calendar.
Then look at the amount of green.
Then try to tell me you’ll never find the time to fulfil your business and life ambitions.
The harsh truth is this: You do have the time. You just give it to other people.
Killing Time
There is no greater time waster than pleasing people. I’m not just saying that because I’m an awfully polite British chap. Over my years advising clients on performance, mindset and productivity, the deeper we dig, the more the desire to please others reaches the surface.
Phone rings. Answer it.
Email pings. Read it.
“Have you got a minute?” Take as many as you want.
It’s so easy to fill our days with the arduous task of winning the approval of others.
Answering every call. Fulfilling every request. Interrupting ourselves and our own dreams over and over again.
Then we wonder why our first feeling every morning is: “I didn’t sleep enough”.
And our last thought every night is: “I haven’t done enough”.
That’s why the amateurs of this game talk about ‘Time Management’. But it’s not management. ‘Management’ is a safe-word in the dungeon where our true potential gets tied up and blindfolded.
This is about Time Leadership. Leaders are ruthless when they need to be. A leader will cut away beliefs and perceptions that another person’s time is more important than their own.
A leader understands that their life is theirs. But it doesn’t just arrive. It must be created.
The Business of Busy-ness
Of course, we are faced with something of a time-pressured dilemma.
If you’re running a business and you empower your teams to be selfish with their time, you won’t have a business. Because everyone will be declining meeting requests and skipping down Papamoa Beach, having the time of their lives while shouting “But Freddie Bennett told me I was a Time Leader!”
So you must teach your people how to make more time.
First, give them the breathing space to do their jobs. Efficiency studies have shown that one hour of uninterrupted work time is worth three hours of distraction-filled time.
Next, you can stop your teams feeling overwhelmed. Help them remove regrets about previous projects or worries about future initiatives. Remind them: All that matters is today.
Finally, lead them to understand that so much time is wasted with frustration, upset, anger, gossip and fear. But situations at work (e.g dysfunctional teams, angry customers, power-tripping leaders) don’t directly create these life-sucking, time-burning actions. It is our interpretation of these events that does the damage.
Our time is only wasted by our thoughts about and reactions to incidents – never the incident itself.
The Perfect Moment
So the next occasion you’re wasting time living someone else’s dream, remind yourself of your role, your plan and your priorities.
My dad once said to me: “Stop stressing about creating a perfect year – just create a day.
Define your perfect day and start living it. The year takes care of itself. So will your business. So will your life.”
Then one day, he died. So never had the opportunity to enjoy the time of his life.
But you do.
If you’re not too busy, that is.
Related: Warning: The biggest business mistake you’ll ever make
