Time management issues? Lately I have been hearing a lot of talk about time management and developing habits and so I just want to take this quick moment to talk a little bit about time management and how I think you can manage your time better and develop new habits for yourself.
First, I think time management is a very overplayed idea. I think most people know that they need to manage their time. What they don’t realize, is the root cause of why they don’t follow their schedule and what the cost of not following that schedule is. My focus with my clients has never been to get them to manage their time. It has always been to figure out how to create more time in their schedule because time is finite. You can get more money but you cannot get more time. So here are a couple of reasons I think people have a hard time with time management and what you can do about it.
You don’t like to do what you’re not good at. We are naturally good and stay consistent at what we are obsessed with and what we like to do. The problem in sales is that most people don’t like sales. They don’t like getting on the phone and talking to new people everyday. They don’t like the idea of calling someone or reaching out to somebody and having them tell them “No”. Couple that with when they actually do it, they’re not getting very good results which then leads to a poor perspective of the activity. And because of this perspective, it is easy to do what is called “creative avoidance”. They creatively find things to do, anything to do (other than the task at hand) that might seem like a better option in the short term. Now, I’ve heard people say in the past “You just have learn to do the boring stuff everyday”. I can tell you right now that that is a road that leads to nowhere. It leads to the ups and downs of frustration and beating yourself up and wondering “Why won’t I do what I’m supposed to do? What’s wrong with me?”.
Here’s the thing, “Getting” yourself to do anything for a prolonged period of time that you ultimately find boring, will never happen long term. Instead, the game should be to figure out how to create an activity or a job that inspires you to take action. Change the environment, change the people in the environment, and all of the sudden you become a time management machine. For example, take somebody who does not like to prospect and put them in a room by themselves with the phone staring and growling at them like it’s going to attack them if they pick it up. In this situation, the odds of doing it consistently over and over and over again are between slim and none. However, if you take that same person and you put them in a room with other people who love to prospect and are setting appointments every minute and have music on and energy going around the room and playing fun contests and things like that, all the sudden that person who schedules no appointments a day will start scheduling two or three or more appointments everyday single day. And you know what those little successes bring? Inspiration to keep going! And then the cycle continues and you have a new habit.
What happened? Did they suddenly get better time management? Did they all the sudden become more disciplined? No! They were simply put in a position that is more inspiring than the other way. So don’t listen to people who tell you that you just have to do the boring stuff everyday. Because nobody wants to do boring stuff everyday. You were not put on the planet to be average. You were not put on the planet to do boring stuff all day long. You don’t have to sacrifice fun to make money. Simply create an environment and a new context. Create a situation that inspires you to do those money making activities and you’ll take action all day long. That is how you develop habits.
You’re not aware of your time. My guess is that if you knew what the cost was of you getting distracted, you might never get distracted again. Because with every activity you do there’s something called “opportunity costs”. Meaning if you sit on the couch and watch TV then you are sacrificing the opportunity to go workout and create an amazing body. And if you go work out to create an amazing body you are sacrificing being lazy and sitting on the couch and watching TV. But the question is, what are you sacrificing if you go into a walking coma throughout your day and start reacting to other people’s agendas?
Let’s take your goal. Let’s say you have a goal of $250,000 GCI over a 12-month timeframe. Now let’s divide that by 240 working days. You come up with $1,041 a day. Now let’s divide that number by 8 hours a day. Now you come up with $130 an hour. Do you know what this means? This means that for every day that you don’t get done what you’re supposed to get done you essentially write a check to your competition for $1,041. And for every hour that you get caught up on Facebook or reacting to other people’s emails or getting distracted, you essentially write a check for $130 and give it to your competition. So what if your goal is to earn $250,000 over 12 months and we played pretend for a moment that this amount of money was already in your bank account? You just don’t have access to it for another 12 months. And what if for every day that you don’t execute on your schedule we take out $1,041 and for every hour you get distracted we take out $130? How much money will we end up with in your bank account at the end of the year? This changes the game, doesn’t it? All of the sudden you become aware that your time has a price tag on it. You see, time awareness is what you need to master first, not time management.