THE ONLY TIME MANAGEMENT SYSTEM YOU’LL EVER NEED (PART ONE)
Once I was listening to Tony Robbins in one of his lectures and audiobook. The topic was about time management.
When he popped the question of:
What does Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Tony Robbins and you, have in common?
You can be a millionaire (but I doubt that), then you can say that these guys and you are millionaires. But what does these gentlemen and me have in common?
Tony Robbins said, one common denominator is that we only have 24 hours in a day. Nothing more, nothing less.
When I realized this, it came to me that, yeah, it’s not how much time you have, but what you put in that time matters most. I want you to truly realize how valuable a single minute is.
Money, we can lose it and make it back again. Our health we can get sick and get healthy again. Time, once it’s gone, it is gone.
Time is life.
After several years of trying to decipher the things effective people have in common, I realized there are 15 secrets successful people know about time management. These productivity habits came from seven billionaires, 13 Olympic athletes, 29 straight A students and 239 entrepreneurs.
You might not use all of them, but if you use one, two, three or four of them tell you you’re going to get a lot more out of your day. Anyone can make a big difference.
Again, we all have the same amount of time. Every single one of us has the same amount of time, but some of us squander it. Some of us wasted, some of us don’t make the best use of it. It’s my goal, my hope at the end of this piece that you’ll be able to see just how much time you have in the day and there’s something in this message that you’ll be able to use to maybe get more out of your day. And that to me is a win.
So let’s start with Golden Nugget Number One: time is your most valuable and scarcest resource.
1440 is the number that can change your life and that number is the number of minutes we all have in a single day. Although most of the successful people I hacked are not doing all of the same 15 secrets, there are common denominators.
The common thread was that, they always spoke about minutes in the value of time. And when you truly realize that, like just how valuable a single minute is, I mean money, we can lose it and make it back again. Our health, we can get sick and get healthy again, but with time once it’s gone, it is gone.
And so you know, in one minute for your health, you can bang out some pushups or sit ups. You can tell someone that you love them or that you’re grateful for them.
In business, it takes a minute to have a breakthrough idea. And once you truly understand that, all of a sudden you know you’re not going to let people steal your time with all those useless minute on meetings or other trivial things.
There’s a certain number of minutes every single day that I have at my disposal. And so much of it is just wasted minutes. So if you start to capitalize on the time that you have, you’ll realize: I can get a whole bunch done.
So golden nugget number two, identify your most important task and do it first.
Most important task, the MIT your MIT is, you know, what is that project that is gonna double the size of your business What does that project that’s going to get you to promotion or Max out your bonus at work.
And then break it down. It’s like what domino can I tip over today that’s gonna lean on the next one and the next one. And then we have to get in that discipline of scheduling time to work on our MIT first thing in the morning.
Behavioral psychologist, Dan area, Ellie talks about we are at our best for about a two hour window of time in the morning. You know, we’re at our cognitive best, but what most of us do, we stroll in with, you know, to work. We open up email, we start working on everybody else’s MIT’s by answering their emails and all that stuff before we respond to texts.
Before we listen to voicemails, before we do email, we should work on our MIT.
Golden nugget number three, work from your calendar, not a to do list.
Stop using to do list. You know, I was asking all of these people, self-made billionaires, self made millionaires. What is your number one secret to productivity.
They could have said anything and none of them mentioned a to do list. That’s about halfway through the interviews and finally I started doing the followup. I’m like, well, what about your to do lists, me some advice. They laughed at me.
We work from a calendar.
And as I did the research, it turns out 41% of items that people put on their to do list are never done it all. It’s like a to do list is, is the graveyard of you know, important but not urgent goals.
If you really want to get something done, pick a day, a time and a duration and then live from your calendar.
Golden Nugget number four, to overcome procrastination, beat your future self.
So we need to think about how’s that future evil version of yourself going to jeopardize our best intentions. And you know, let’s say we want to start jogging this week. We want to, we want to work out, well you know what, I know that my evil self is going to hit that snooze alarm.
How do I fight back?
I’m going to set that alarm, put on the other side of the room. So I got to literally get out of bed to shut it off and what evil Kevin’s going to say? Oh man, I don’t know where my workout stuff is. I’ll, I’ll work out tomorrow instead. Well, you know what, I’m going to beat that future version by putting my sneakers right at the end of my bed.
In fact, I’m going to go to sleep in my shorts and t-shirts so I just need to put my sneakers on and I’m dressed nice.
So we just need to think about all the ways that we’re going to procrastinate. All those excuses were to come up with and try to beat them in the present moment.
Golden Nugget number five. There will always be more to do.
Back when I was young, a young and dumb entrepreneur, I was the guy who has just eight hours a day. But, It wasn’t enough, so I’d work more, but wasn’t enough. I’d worked until seven and the family would be like, hey, it’s six o’clock dinner’s ready, when you coming home? Then I’ll reply I’ll be leaving the office in five minutes.
Then an hour later, I’m still in the office.
You know, one of the things that I learned from interviewing all these people is that they have this sense in their bones, like there will always be more to do.
Andy Grove, the founder and CEO of Intel, said, you know, my day ends when I’m tired and ready to go home. Not when I’m done because I am never done.
A manager’s work is never done. There’s always more to be done. More that should be done, always more than can be done. Maybe a, you know, maybe we’ve decided that we’re gonna work a 10 hour day or a 12 hour day or a six hour day. Whatever you decide, be intentional about it and then realize you’ve allocated other minutes for your health, which is gym time. You’ve allocated other minutes for your relationship, including date, night or time with your kids.
