There’s 2 things that eat the lunch of successful people and sabotage effectiveness:
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Thing 1 – Time
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Thing 2 – Stress
Thing 1 – Time. Who among us has not at one time or another attempted “time management”. The problem is that you can’t manage time – you can only manage your schedule. Time doesn’t stand still for anyone. Time is a non-replenishable commodity, unlike money. You can lose all your money and be down to your last dollar, but you can take that last dollar and invest it properly and turn it into fortunes. Time spent is time gone, whether you spend it wisely or not.
There are two key elements of time you can control: 1) margin, and 2) priorities.
Margin is that essential downtime that everybody must have to recharge his or her batteries. Consider the margin of a book. Wouldn’t it be smarter for publishers to cover the entire page with text? Why waste the paper by having margins? But it’s there for a reason. It lets the text “breathe” and it makes your read more pleasant, even possible. We all need margin. It puts things in perspective and it gives us room to breathe.
Priorities. We schedule what’s important to us. Scheduling everything that comes along is a poor use of our time, especially for high capacity, successful people. The President of the United States is selective in what he puts on his calendar, as does the CEO of a successful publicly traded company. You should do the same.
Schedule the most important activities that increase your revenue stream and the forward progress of your business. Schedule time with the people that matter most to your business success – the right clients and the right prospects. Schedule time for your family. And schedule time for you!
Thing 2 – Stress. Generally stress comes from one of two places: 1) indecision, and/or 2) lack of control.
We’ve all got issues that we’re dealing with. When we fail to tackle these issues, delaying the inevitable, we default to stressing over them. As we stress we rob ourselves of the necessary energy needed to move our business and personal life forward. The remedy? Look at the decisions on your plate that need to be made and make them. Eat or be eaten. Kiss the demon on the lips and move on.
The other component of stress is lack of control. You are either in control of your life or it is in control of you. We have choices as to what we put on our schedule, the activities in which we participate, and the thoughts we think. But we don’t get to choose our circumstances.
The starting point is simply recognizing what we can control and what we can’t. We stew over the things we can’t control, and in doing so, we lose the necessary energy needed to move the ball down the field. If it’s “fourth and ten” run a play with the last down that you have. Don’t stew over your unchangeable circumstances. Just focus on calling the play that makes the most sense.
As an executive coach and marketplace leader for the past several decades, I can corroborate that Thing 1 and Thing 2 are the top two “lunch eaters” of the individuals I work with. My role is to help each of them mitigate these “lunch eaters” so they can advance personally and professionally. We’ve all got a big windshield and little rearview mirror. The future is where we make our mark. The past is history.
When something eats our lunch, we are robbed of the essential nutrients that provide sustainability. Let me stop here and ask you these questions:
- Is your current calendar and stress level sustainable?
- If not, what are you going to do about it?
- If you don’t do anything about it, how does the final chapter read?
If you don’t get the nourishment you need you will eventually wind up in the hospital with an IV stuck in your arm. To be able to work remotely is a great thing, but a remote office in your local community hospital is not an ideal working condition.
Don’t let Thing 1 and Thing 2 eat your lunch. If you can’t get your arms around time and stress, hire an expert who can help you. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, said about his courage to act on the best advice he was ever given – “Get a coach.” Schmidt says, “The coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to be your best. A coach is somebody who looks at something with another set of eyes, describes it to you in his or her words, and discusses how to approach the problem.”
Bon appetite!
Bill Edmonds is an “Outside-Insider” (an Executive Coach and Consultant), who works with leaders to help them reach their full potential in the areas of organizational and personal development. He spent 24 years with Merrill Lynch until his retirement in 2014, where he led a $100+ million per year revenue wealth management business unit as a Director with the firm.
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