Your greatest resource is your time.
Brian Tracy
Everything we do takes time, whether a little or a lot, time is going to be involved. One of the keys to making the greatest strides in your business is to learn the art of time management. There are so many things we could achieve in our lives if only we took the time to manage our time.
I’m always reminded of the secret to Larry Bird’s success in the NBA. While Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson had extreme talent, Larry Bird had extreme dedication and whether he knew it or not great time management skills. Larry would shoot 100 jumpshots before each game and 100 jumpshots after each game. He made the most of his time by perfecting his craft each time he was scheduled to play. His dedication, implementation and good time management made him into one of the greatest to ever play the game.
You my friend are no different from Larry Bird. You were born with all the potential you need to be great in anything you choose to do. To quote one of those motivational posters we always see “it doesn’t take aptitude it takes the proper attitude to achieve your dreams.” I have been a witness to many people squandering their talents for the dumbest of reasons. Ultimately talent is great but its only as great as what you do with it.
This brings me to the essence of why I wrote this post. Your time is valuable and what you do with it determines most of the outcomes in your life. If you spend your time perfecting your craft (whatever it is) you’ll probably achieve greatness. Greatness and wealth aren’t always tied together but they generally serve the same master.
You may have heard about a ridiculous phenomenon called the “open door policy.” This was probably devised by someone with nothing better to do than listen to other people’s problems. It is one of the greatest causes of wasted time in the work place. Here’s how it works: you have work to do, deadlines to meet and projects to complete but John from accounting is breaking up with his girlfriend or having a disagreement with Sally in receivables and now you have to stop what you were doing to listen to the problem (however long that may take). Then you have to give him advice he won’t follow (more on that later) and neither of you gets any work done during this time.
Essentially you are paying to hear someone else’s problems. All your productivity comes to a screeching halt and you begin to hemorrhage profits that should have been earned during this time. Add to this he’ll be back to repeat this the next time a problem arises and others will start to follow suit.
There are a number of problems with this situation.
1 – Perfectly capable employees or coworkers now become whiny unproductive dependents, who will expect you to solve problems they’ve been hired to solve.
2 – The amount of money lost to the company per year can be a fortune depending on how much you bill per hour.
3 – The projects you had planned take longer to complete or are lost all together because of issues usually solved in minutes by the very person complaining about them.
4 – Free advice is very rarely taken seriously. Since it didn’t cost the person anything they have no reason to heed it, regardless of how good it is and this just adds to the amount of time wasted.
5 - Worst of all, you can never get back all the time you lost.
Here’s a quick solution to most of these problems, calculate how much you want to earn this year.
Let’s say it’s a cool million.
Divide it by the number of days in a year.
$1,000,000 / 365 = $2739 per day
Then divide that number by hours in a day.
$2739 /24 = $114 per hour
This gives you your billing price per hour and a perfect idea of how much it’s costing you to listen to Sally spread some more office gossip. So, the next time you sit down to watch “Dancing with the Stars” just remember it’s costing you a $114 to do so and ask yourself if its really worth it.
Image by: visualpanic
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