To Lose is to Gain

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Proving the Law

I have made several mentions of the Law of Sacrifice over this week, but thought it might be a good idea to make that a little clearer. See, there are actually several versions of the Law of Sacrifice and although the message differs the overall theme is the same. At its essence, the Law of Sacrifice says that to get something you perceive of greater value, you must give up something of lesser value. The Law is universal and there is no way around it.

Yet every day there are people who look at Get Rich Quick schemes and buy all kinds of pills and programs to lose weight without making any lifestyle changes at all.

People are always looking for ways to “break” the Law of Sacrifice.

But you can’t actually break a law and that’s the problem. You can only prove it. For example, if you jump off the top of a tall building you will prove the Law of Gravity, not break it. It is the same with the Law of Sacrifice. No matter what you do to get around or break the law, in the end you will simply prove it.

Making the Trade

Let’s say, for example, that you find a scheme for getting rich quickly using a program that requires no investment from you but requires that you get money from others that they will lose permanently. You get rich and they get poorer. Yeah, you got rich quick, just like the advertisement said and you didn’t have to put out any money so where’s the Law of Sacrifice in that? Well, you just traded in your moral and ethical standards and your self-esteem to get rich. In other words, you decided that getting rich had greater value than maintaining high morals and ethics and more important than your self-image. You decided that getting rich was more important than preserving you.

You must lose in order to gain and you must make that choice. If I choose to watch TV, or browse the Internet, or any number of other activities other than ones that support my business making money, then I have placed a higher value on those trivial things over the success of my business.

This decision is not always made consciously and other factors weigh in. A big one is RESISTANCE, the intangible beast inside of us that seeks to sabotage any attempts to change anything in our lives. For a good reference on that, I highly recommend you read Do The Work by Steven Pressfield ($5 as a Kindle Book). This manifesto talks all about how to overcome resistance. In addition to resistance, fear enters in as well as lethargy. The result is that while we still make the decision, we are not as conscious about why we make the decision, so changing it becomes very difficult. Once we become aware of why we make the wrong choices, we can better develop systems to help prevent us from doing it again and make better choices going forward.

But in the end, you are gonna have to lose to gain, proving the Law of Sacrifice once again.

Action Plan

Identify at least one place in your life where the you are trying to avoid the Law of Sacrifice. Why? What trade off are you making? How can you make a better choice going forward?

The Law You Can’t Break – The Law of Sacrifice

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Don’t Tell Me What to Sacrifice

I have a problem. It has always been with me, sometimes helping me and sometimes haunting me. I just don’t like having someone tell me I can’t have it or can’t do it. For example, I have read a lot of blogs and columns about being an entrepreneur. In a good deal of them, they paint a less than rosy picture. They often talk about how you can’t have it all, something has to give. Andrew Dumont even says you need to acknowledge that there is no such thing as work-life balance for an entrepreneur. Stories abound with businessmen (and women) about missed recitals, soccer matches, anniversaries, and other things. So, forget all about work-life balance.

I don’t buy it. No, I refuse to buy it. The passion of many entrepreneurs is the same; they do something because people said they couldn’t do it. That’s my attitude. Tell me I can’t have balance and succeed? Watch me!

The Law of Sacrifice Always Applies

To be sure, there are things you (and I) will have to give up. Some are daily things, such as extended television time, browsing the Internet, cocktail hour, and a good deal of free time. That’s called the Law of Sacrifice and you cannot avoid it. If you want to have any level of success, whether it is running a small business, moving up the corporate ladder, becoming a top sports athlete, or a celebrity; you will have to sacrifice things to get there. As John Maxwell says

You have to give up to go up!

What sacrifices you make is the decision you must face and I recommend you face it early. Being defiant or rebellious can be a wonderful thing and has helped many an entrepreneur move forward. But the ones who last and build a legacy are the ones who know when to make smart decisions and when to ask for help. And they know to give up things that are trivial or not as important to gain things that are important.

There are good kinds of sacrifice in this. Often, leaders are required to make sacrifices to lead people effectively. One of the biggest that a leader must make is putting others first. Leaders must sacrifice the limelight and yield it to their team. Entrepreneurs must sacrifice being right most of the time to be very wrong most of the time. They must sacrifice their ego because they will fail again and again until little things happen and build and success is achieved. Sacrifice can have very positive outcomes, when you make the right choices on what to sacrifice.

Start right away to devise your strategy for fulfilling the Law of Sacrifice, because one way or another you will have to obey the law. Just make sure it’s your choice what you give up.

Salute to Veterans – Sacrificing to Move Ahead

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Giving Up for the Team

When a baseball team is up to bat, the objective is to move a player around the bases to score. With the way that the rules work, there are a variety of ways to move a runner to the next base. One of the ways is for the batter, at a critical point, to create a situation to get himself out to allow a runner to advance; for example hitting the ball deep to the outfield so a runner can tag and advance or bunting the ball so the only play is to first base and a runner can advance or score. They call that a sacrifice and the reward for the player is that it doesn’t count against them in their batting average. It’s been a legitimate play in baseball for over a hundred years.

Many of baseball’s greatest players made other sacrifices as well. Especially during World War II, many of them enlisted in the military and spent time overseas serving our country. Some died, some were injured, but many came back and resumed their careers. Here’s some of the greatest players and how they served:

Joe DiMaggio, New York Yankees – “Joltin’ Joe” played Major League Baseball from 1936 to 1951 and is known as one of the most complete players in baseball; in other words, he had all the skills you would want a player to have. But when the war came, DiMaggio willingly left baseball from 1943 – 1945 to serve US Air Force. Upon his discharge, he resumed with the Yankees and had a stellar career.
Bob Feller, Cleveland Indians – Feller, a pitcher, played in the Major Leagues from 1936-1956. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and brought America into World War II. On December 8, Bob Feller left baseball to enlist in the US Navy and gave up four years in baseball to serve. As skilled and dominant a player he was, many wonder how much more Feller could have accomplished if he had stayed in baseball those four years.
Warren Spahn, Boston Braves – Spahn was also a pitcher and is the winning-est left-hander in history. He played from 1942 to 1965, including the 1948 World Series where the Braves battle cry was “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain“. During WWII, he served in the US Army, at one point suffering injury from shrapnel and received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. When the ware ended, Spahn went back to Braves (and eventually other teams) and continued to dominate batters, even winning the Cy Young award for the top pitcher.
Ted Williams, Boston Red Sox – Williams was arguably the greatest hitter in baseball and played from 1939-1960, leaving for a while to join the US Navy and then the Marines, serving from 1942-1946, and recalled in 1952. Like Bob Feller, many wonder what more Williams could have accomplished had he stayed in baseball during that time.

These men saw something greater than themselves and greater than baseball and chose to serve when it was necessary. Certainly there were those who thought they should have stayed in, that they were more valuable in baseball. But they didn’t see it that way.

Sacrifice to Serve

Over the years, many men and women have felt the same way. My nephew Cody is currently serving overseas. I have many friends who also have served or are serving. They all know there is something greater than themselves, greater than anything they might accomplish during this time. They are giving up careers, family, and much more to serve this country. In some cases, they are sacrificing all of this for the benefit of people in other countries. While some may question that, they do not. They serve, for a greater good.

Like in baseball, they sacrifice themselves in order to help others move ahead.

Thank you to all Veterans for the service and sacrifice you have made.

Action Plan

Make it a point to say “Thank you for your service” to any Veterans you encounter day and every day.

Why You Waste 12 Hours a Day of Your Precious Time

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Too Much Time on Trivia

Spending a little time doing research on this, I wanted to find out what the top time wasters we use are. While opinions vary there are some items that popped up on pretty much everyone’s list and you probably know which ones. That said, let’s look at some of the top daily time wasters and how much time they take.

FACEBOOK
Is it any surprise that this shows up on the list? For many people, their world revolves around Facebook and similar social networks. On a Marketing Charts website article, they report that Americans 18-64 spend an average of 2-3.5 hours per day on social networks. The number slides higher depending on age group and other demographics. Interestingly, business owners spend more time on social networks than non-business owners. In many workplaces, they thought that they had managed this problem early on by blocking social networks. That worked until people got smartphones with Facebook apps. Let’s call it 3.5 hours a day.
EMAIL
Again, no big surprise. What do most people do first thing when they get to work or boot up their computer? Check their email. We check it again an hour later. And then again an hour after that. And again. And again. Many even check it just before they call it a day. It becomes really time-consuming when we receive mailings from a variety of sources with people who want some of our time and/or money. We gotta filter through all that and then read the “urgent” stuff. Another 3 hours per day.
TELEVISIONReally?! But it is so educational! (yes, that was sarcasm) Many will tell you that you should find an alternative, like the wonderful recording features on many systems today. But that just means you will watch it later. Either way you are wasting time. Not too long ago our TV went out and was out for a couple of weeks. We found other things to do. Most peaceful two weeks in a long time. Still wondering why I fixed it. Average of 5 hours per day.

Wow! Let’s stop there. Just in those three items we have 11.5 hours of time spent out of our day. All those things are useful but none of them are critical; if we spend any more than an hour total on any of them we are wasting time. And this does not take into account the time we spend on other things like instant messaging or texting, pointless meetings, various interruptions during the day, generally surfing the web, and procrastinating. But there is one that I think is the most critical, first because I think it is the source of most of the others and second because of the effect it has on us overall. And that time waster is multi-tasking. We will talk about that on Friday.

Get Time Back

Knowledge is great, but action is better. How can we manage this a little better?

If Facebook is not part of your work, then you should invoke a no social networking rule during the work day. Chances are your company does not permit it and even doing it on your smartphone during business hours violates company policy. Besides that, it’s just not right. If you simply must, check it during lunch elsewhere.
If Facebook IS a part of your work, as it is for many small businesses and entrepreneurs, then block time out for it on the schedule in both the morning and afternoon, each one with a 30-minute limit.
Do not, I repeat DO NOT, check your email first thing in the morning. Save it until mid-morning after you have had the opportunity to eat a few frogs. Create a tagging system for marking emails. When you view your inbox, scan the messages and quickly and use your tagging system to mark them as urgent, critical, important, or not important. Urgent emails you respond to immediately, critical emails within a few hours, important emails by the end of the day, and not important emails either get filed or deleted. That allows you to get through it within 30 minutes each time, likely even less. Another thing: nothing stays in the inbox. Act on it, file it, or delete it.
This one is easy. Make TV time earned. Works for children, it will work for you. Half-hour segments of TV time is earned by meeting objectives or goals. Or do it by program if you wish. Either way, the idea is that you don’t watch TV unless you have earned it by accomplishment. Better yet, just keep it off and find something else to entertain you. Delegate the time to personal growth. Read a book or watch a webinar. Remember the caveat

Really successful people have large libraries and small televisions.

No matter whether you work for a large or small company, are a business owner, network marketer, run a charity, or manage a household; getting things done is a matter of managing the things that can waste your time. Knowing what they are and developing systems to handle them in definitive periods of time will go a long way towards making your day more productive and helping you find time for things you enjoy.

Action Plan

Buy a journal or notebook and document your time from the moment you wake up until you go to bed. Do this for at least three days but preferably a week. Include everything, no matter how insignificant it might seem. What you want is a good idea of how you are spending ALL your time.
Total up the time you spend per day on non-critical things like the activities above. Remember, social networking is not essential unless you use it to market yourself or your business IS social networking.
Create time limits and block out time on the schedule for those activities. Make sure that the beginning of the day is spent doing critical activities for the day, especially the ones you don’t really want to do or procrastinate on (eating the bullfrogs).
Follow the new schedule for 3-5 days and again document your activities. How much free time did you discover? Were you more productive and effective?

The Strongest Time Management Tool You Have

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Finding the Time

There’s lots of information out there about time management and how to find more time and get the best out of your available time. In our world, we have lots of things that demand our time and want a piece of our day.

Our work which can take 40 or more hours a week
Our house which demands we clean it occasionally
Our family which would like meals every now and then
Our kid that would like us to take them to dance class
Our other kid that would like us to them to football practice
Our other other kid who would like a playdate
Our elderly parents who would like use to drop by and help them with something
Our church committee that wants us to volunteer to help out with the rummage sale
Our spouse who would like us to pay a little attention to them while they tell us about THEIR day
The dog who would like to go for a walk
Our laundry that needs to be washed
Our friend who would like to catch up over coffee/beer
Our local charity that wants us to participate in a fund raiser

And the list goes on. From the moment we rise until we collapse exhausted in our bed, there are demands on our time. They come at us from all directions and call us to action on their behalf. And we respond, because we are people of action and people of action take action when called upon in the service of others, right?

So, how do you deal with all that? Isn’t there some special trick or time management technique that is going to help me get all this in? Isn’t that some super secret technique that I can apply that will help me manage and free up my time?

The Time Management Solution

Well, as a matter of fact, there is! This is actually a secret that has been available for centuries but little used as of late. In fact, it seems like many people aren’t even aware of this secret, not even sure of its existence. It is both simple and hard. But if you apply it constructively, you will be amazed at how much time it will free up. Do you wanna know what this secret is; the key to handling your time with skill and clarity?

Here it is.

Listen up!

Come closer!

The secret is:

Say NO.

That simple. NO. When someone says, you are such a go-getter can I convince you take on another project for our church committee?

NO.

You don’t owe an explanation. They are not entitled to one.

You are not an evil person for saying NO. You are not selfish. In fact, you are being considerate and caring. You are wanting to save yourself for the things where you can really add value by choosing the places you serve and when you serve. A Mayo Clinic report even suggests that learning to say NO is healthy, allowing you to be at your best for others.

The key is you are naturally not going to say NO to everything. You are, however, going to say NO when the activity is not the best use of your time, talents, and abilities. You will say YES where the opportunities to serve allow you to provide maximum value. As John Maxwell says, you must learn to

Say NO to the good so you can say YES to the best!

Years ago, I was asked by my church to serve as the church treasurer. A high profile role and I was lured by the promise that such a position would bring me to the forefront of the lay leadership within the church. Now, I will likely never be known as a financial wizard. My wife, Sherry, balances the checkbook and handles accounts. She is good at that. I am not and don’t really want to be. Despite all that, I said yes.

Big mistake. Because of my lack of skill, it took way too long to complete any of the responsibilities of the role. Balancing accounts became an all-nighter. This was not made easier by my general distaste for doing any of it anyway. So my motivation waned, the job suffered, and eventually I left the role by mutual agreement. I said yes to the wrong thing. It was not the best use of my skills and abilities and did not allow me to provide maximum value to the church, so we all suffered as a result.

Employ the secret. Say NO. Expect the best out of yourself and refuse to be placed where you cannot give it.

Do yourself and others a big favor and employ the strongest time management tool you have: you ability to make a choice.

Say NO to the good so you can say YES to the best.