Time Thieves: How to Steal it Back

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Re-setting Time

This past week was the time for most where we change our clocks to end Daylight Saving Time. I remembered it always, as many did, by the phrase “Spring Forward, Fall Back“. Of course, most of us don’t have to worry about it much anymore as our computers and smartphones will do it for us. That, and a few years ago I got one of those alarm clocks that automatically adjusts for Daylight Saving Time. After that, my only chore is to go re-set the ones that don’t automatically adjust.

The gist of it for us is that we theoretically “gained an hour” this weekend. Never mind that we really just get back the one we lost in the Spring, everyone looks at as gaining an hour.

So here’s a question for you:

how much more productive did that “extra hour” make you this weekend?

Since it occurs in the middle of the night, likely the only benefit most see from it is the extra hour of sleep (that you lost in the Spring). Some, like me, got up at the same time as always, usually around 5 a.m., and followed our normal routine. Being a weekend, many were taking time off from being really productive anyway; but even if we weren’t it is doubtful that the extra hour made us any more productive. It has more to do than just with the fact that the change occurs in the middle of the night.

Time is Not Important

Time is not what makes us productive. With each tick of the clock, time passes no matter what. Twenty-four hours and today becomes yesterday, tomorrow becomes today. That’s all any of us ever have; from the President of the United States to the most successful person in your organization to the least productive person you know. Everyone has 24 hours in a day. Yet, many times, our time is frittered away with things like

Constantly checking our Facebook page (this has become one of the biggest wasters around)
Playing games, either online, on a smartphone or tablet, or on a game box
Television (and most of it is trash)
Procrastinating
Going to meetings
Being somewhere else in our mind other than where we are
Running in multiple directions throughout the day

There is, of course, much more but that is a good start.

Your 110

A good friend of mine and a very wise person, Jeff Bigby of Awaken the Nation, shows the math of our time in his presentations. Jeff asks his workshop participants about how they spend their 110. See, Jeff points out the following formula on your weekly schedule:

There are 168 hours in a week
- We spend an average of 56 hours sleeping (assuming you are sleeping eight hours)
- We spend 40 hours working (or more, not including the commute)
- About two hours a day in meals for a total of 14 hours per week
- That leaves about 58 hours per week.
- Go to church? Let’s say two hours. That’s 56 left or 8 hours a day.

110 hours a week is manageable time

So, in that eight hours a day we have “administrative” things we have to do during the day, plus whatever else we want to do to. Reading, family time, devotional/meditation time, community service, watching television, etc. The point is that there is a part of your week you have limited control over. Most of us NEED eight hours of sleep a night. Most of us MUST work 8 hours a day for five days a week. Eating 3-5 regular meals a day is CRITICAL to good health (as is eating the right things)! So we have 110 hours a week over which we have almost total control!

So the issue is not time; it is how productively you are using that time. You cannot manage time, no matter how hard you try. So, what do you manage?

Manage YOU Not Time

I am no different from you on this. I waste time pretty much every day. But I have become aware of that and aware of my ability to make choices in changing that and examining my time wasters. If I can do that, I am extremely confident that you can too. Here’s some of the things I am doing to help bring that under control:

Prioritize and Categorize
Establish things into areas of must do, should do, nice to do for the week. Ideally, do this on Sunday night or Monday morning. Within each of those categorize them based on the part of your life they address; such as work project, family, health, etc. Within each category, number them based on importance. The importance is determined by time constraint, critical stage, or just your own personal plan.
The Daily Big Three
Each morning, or the night before, list the top three things you need to carry out that day. Take the top items of each category and place them on your list. Number those according to importance. There may be more than three, but the point is that you don’t go to bed tonight without accomplishing the Big Three. Place the bullfrogs at the top of the list; the things you procrasitate on or simply hate to do. Get them out of the way first thing and the rest of the day will be pleasant by comparison.
Self-Talk
It doesn’t matter what others say to us, it matters what we say to ourselves. Encourage yourself. Talk yourself up. Remember what you are made of. Many of your tasks will be things you don’t want to do, have often gone out of your way to avoid, and might even be incredibly boring. If you don’t talk yourself up, you will simply find another excuse.
Reward System
For each item accomplished, provide a reward of some type. It should be a reward that is quick, easy, and yet provides incentive. If you are a Facebook fanatic, each item completed earns you 15 minutes of Facebook time. Now, for that to be a real incentive has to mean that you aren’t getting Facebook time without accomplishing the task. If you are going to do it anyway, it’s no incentive.
Consequences
Sometimes one of the big three does not get accomplished due to something out of our control, but that’s a rarity. Either way, fault or not, provide a consequence for not completing one of the big three. Just like providing consequences for your kids, it has to be timely, connected, and reasonable. For example, I read about what person who uses the consequence that when he doesn’t accomplish his tasks he wakes himself up in the middle of the night to work for an hour or two. He values his sleep so much that it provides him incentive to manage himself better and avoid that consequence. Be careful, though; if you find yourself administering a consequence too much it starts to lose its impact. Change them up from time to time.
Analyze
At the end of the week, take a look back and see how things have gone. Did things go better or worse? Where could things have gone better? Why? How could you do it differently? What can you tell yourself to help make it better?

So this is a little system I use for me. How about you? How do you manage yourself daily? Got tips and tricks? Be a river and not a reservoir! Share them here

Mindset – Handling Fear Part II

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Ripping the Shirt Off of Fear

It’s July 10, 1999 and in Pasadena, California Team USA and China are battling for the Women’s World Cup Soccer Championship in the Rose Bowl. This is the largest attended women’s sports event in history. At the end of regulation play, the score is tied and it goes to overtime. In overtime, Brandi Chastain intently lines up for a penalty kick. She sets herself, runs up to the ball, and launches it into the upper right corner of the goal to score and in her now famous celebration pulls her shirt off in mid-field. A win and championship for Team USA!

Tell me, what do you think was going through her mind? Was Brandi thinking about how she was going to blow it?

Pointing to Success

Going back further, in one of the greatest sports moments of all time, George Herman “Babe” Ruth of the New York Yankees steps up to home plate in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. The score is tied 5-5 and the Chicago Cubs players on the bench have been riding the Babe mercilessly. As Ruth steps to the plate, he makes a gesture that many believe has him pointing to the center field wall after taking strike one from the pitcher, seemingly declaring his intention. He did it again after strike two. On the next pitch, the Babe mightily smacked the ball deep into center field and over the fence for a home run! It is estimated the ball traveled 490 feet! The Yankees went on to win the World Series in a four-game sweep.

Whether you believe the intent of the gesture or not, do you believe for one minute that Babe Ruth, who not only held the record for homeruns but also for strikeouts, focused on what would happen if he didn’t deliver?

The difference in success and failure is often a matter of how we handle our fears. Dr. Heidi Halvorson, co-author of the book Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing The World For Success and Influence, says that handling that fear effectively is often a matter of mindset. It’s all about where we focus our attention. According to Dr. Halvorson, we have a choice of one of two mindsets when faced with accomplishing a goal or meeting a deadline or performing during a critical moment. We can have a what she calls a Prevention Focus; where we concentrate on the negative aspects of the situation. The concentration is on NOT messing up. We do this in our daily lives and with others. When a parent tells a child who wants to help set the table,

“Okay, but this is our best dinnerware, don’t drop it!”

With instructions like that, you might as well trip the kid yourself. Or a manager tells an employee,

“it is very important that you don’t blow this account.“

Best example I can think of is the story Zig Ziglar tells of the 1982 football playoffs between the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers. With Dallas ahead and less than a minute left on the clock, Dallas implemented the Prevent Defense. Joe Montana dropped back and threw a pass deep into the end zone that appeared to be sailing for out of bounds when Dwight Clark jumped up and made a fingertip catch for San Francisco to win the game. Later, someone asked Cowboys owner Tex Schramm about what made the difference and he said,

“The Dallas Cowboys were determined NOT TO LOSE the game. The 49ers were determined to WIN the game and that made the difference!”

So prevention focus centers on trying not to lose the game.

The opposite then is Promotion Focus. In this mindset, you are focused on what you have to gain when you are successful. “If I complete this project on time, our company will collect a big bonus from our customer.” Promotion Focus centers on the win, always opting for growth, willing to take the risk to see the reward, and quick to take action.

Promotion Focus people tend to have better and more consistent results than Prevention Focus people. You have a tendency toward one or the other but the good news is that it’s not born in you. It is something that has been learned, placed into your brain by the attitudes of people to whom you bonded, other people influential in your life, and combined with past experiences. So, if your tendency is towards the cautious, risk avoiding, and tentative nature of Prevention Focus, the good news is you can change. It is a matter of changing your mindset.

Start by imagining a change you wish to make or project you wish to start. List all the possible positive outcomes from successfully making that change or completing the project. Don’t downplay it, but also don’t go overboard. In most cases, you aren’t going to be a guest on The Ellen Degeneres Show because you completed a proposal package ahead of schedule for a client. But you will likely make a favorable impression on the client, which can lead to award of the project and potential future projects.

You may get referrals to other clients and generate a significant increase in business income and grow your business.
You may be able to hire staff and afford to take vacations.
You can build your reputation within the industry.
Your self-esteem goes up.

Imagine every possible positive outcome of making the change and WRITE IT DOWN! Then, every time you start feeling fearful, bring out the list and read it to yourself over and over again until you feel more in control.

Determine for yourself to Play to Win instead of Playing Not to Lose.

Action Plan

Take Dr. Halvorson’s FOCUS Diagnostic assessment to see whether you have a Prevention Focus or a Promotion Focus. Warning: be prepared to list about 12 attributes you would like to possess.
Think about one big thing you want to accomplish; it can be a current project or a dream, particularly if you have been feeling a lot of fear over it. Write down all the possible positive outcomes of accomplishing it and post it prominently. Set a start date.

How Fear Holds You Back – The Good and the Bad

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The Basis of Fear

According to Psychology Today, fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger. If we didn’t feel it, then we could not protect ourselves from legitimate danger. Life and death can hinge on our fear and our reactions to it. Our survival rate would be extremely low if not for the fear that helps us to regulate our behavior during moments of crisis. Fear is not our problem.

Natural Functioning of Fear

Our problem comes when the fear engine kicks into high gear, often due to past experience. Almost all fears we have of situations that are not life-threatening are what psychologists call “conditioned response“. Something happened somewhere in our past that now triggers a fear response in us. On a basic level, for example, an experience I had with a snake has led to a dislike and sometimes fear of snakes. I don’t shriek and run the other way, but I am also not likely to approach it. When I go camping with our Boy Scout troop and I happen to spot a snake, someone will invariably ask me what kind of snake it is. My response is always,

“I don’t know, I did not get that close!”

On another level, past experiences with risk situations that led to devastating results can create conditioned responses in us that lead to fear. People with Reactive Attachment Disorder develop an overwhelming fear of bonding relationships with people because of past experiences where trusted relationships betrayed them or took advantage of them or abused them. Others, on a lower-level, have a past romantic relationship that ended badly and avoid future romantic relationships. An employee encounters a boss who berated them or humiliated them when they came up with a creative idea and develops the fear of making a contribution.

Unnatural Fear

Even more so, our mind has a natural tendency to protect us in every situation, even to the point of creating scenarios that don’t even exist just to keep us from placing ourselves into potential danger, whether real or not. Fear and resistance build up. Every time we go to stretch ourselves – to push out of our comfort zone, to take a risk – we start to imagine all the things that will go wrong. We will be publicly humiliated. The newspapers will carry front page headlines documenting our failure. Our boss will fire us. Our family will disown us. Our friends will make fun of us. We will sit on the curb broke, destitute, with no future prospects and no hope. This one failure will destroy us!

You see where it goes. The more we focus on it, the more our fears run away with the perception of what will happen. Many like to reassure people by saying that FEAR is simply

False Evidence Appearing Real

While not entirely accurate, it’s a good start towards working on our fears. When we understand that often our fear is based on situations that are imagined, we can begin to put them into perspective. Once we regain perspective, it becomes easier to work past the fear and take the risks we need to take to succeed in life. So the key is not to conquer fear, because we can’t. Fear is a natural part of our body’s system and we cannot get rid of it. What we can do is learn to manage it, to work with it, and work beyond it.

In the posts the rest of the week, we will examine ways in which we can manage our fears and be productive.

Action Plan

What are some ways you deal with fear now? Post your comments here so you may be able to help others.

Are You Wasting You? Finding Purpose in the Unique You

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Find the Unique Sweet Spot

How do you get to the point where you can truly embrace the weirdness, or uniqueness if you prefer, that is you? This is a real solid challenge. We know it is because you and I can look around us and see people who have no clue even that they are unique, let alone what that uniqueness is. It is demonstrated in the way they jump on the latest fad as if they were missing the bus. They line up for hours to buy the very latest iPhone or gadget, gotta wear the latest fashion, toss down the most recent popular drink, or try the latest adventure.

When I was in college I applied for a job as a bartender at a local bar. When I told the manager I had no formal training, he waved aside with his hand in the air, and simply told me

“read Playboy every month and learn the featured drinks. That’s what these guys are gonna come in and ask for if they don’t want a beer!“

That’s a great example of how the majority of people simply will allow themselves to be led around, told what to like, what to drink, what to feel, and what to do. But you and I don’t desire to be that way; if you did you would have quit reading this several minutes ago. So how do we escape the trap of being like everyone else and be who we really are? Even more to the point, how do we do it in such a way that we add value to others and make a living and a life doing it?

Unique Awareness

Being unique, being weird, requires a special awareness of yourself that most others don’t have. It means you need to spend time identifying and understanding your gifts, unlocking your passion behind them, and reflecting how to best use those gifts to add value to others. See, we are all born with gifts that were bestowed upon us to be used to provide something unique in this world; something that only we can do. That gift is designed to be used for a special purpose. There is at least one someone waiting for us to come along and share that gift with them to make a difference in the world. Some of us will directly influence a small number of people, maybe even one. Some, like Zig Ziglar, John Maxwell, or Tony Robbins may affect thousands or millions. The point isn’t how many but how you will influence them. So, identifying those gifts and learning to maximize them is the first step in preparing yourself to make that impact. That’s your purpose.

Applying Your Purpose

Once you have identified your gifts, it is imperative that you learn more about them and how to optimize them. You also need to learn the various ways in which your gifts can be used. The emphasis here needs to be on ways to use your gifts that benefit others. God did not give you a gift to use only on yourself; he blessed you so you can be a blessing to others. You must find that one way to use your gifts that allows you to provide maximum benefit. It will based, at least partially, on background and life experiences. We do not go through life randomly, even if we did not navigate it. Every job, every experience, no matter how unrelated, prepared us for that one way that we will have the most influence. Don’t de-value what you have done in the past just because it does not relate directly to what you want to do now. It was preparation. It was shaping you and molding you into what you are to become.

Now the real hard work begins. You have to do the work of actually applying it. You have to spend time EVERY DAY developing and honing those gifts. This is the start of a perpetual journey of growth. It never stops until you have reached the point of not being able to learn anything anymore. I mentioned in a previous post about Teddy Roosevelt that when he died they found under his pillow a self-improvement book he had been reading. Teddy knew that your entire life is a growth journey to challenge yourself to become more than you were yesterday.

Be a 1%er

That sounds overwhelming, but you can break it down into an easily manageable system. Focus simply on growing yourself by 1% a day. Committing yourself to being a 1%er means that over time you grow exponentially one day building on the next and at the end one year you have grown yourself OVER 365%! Remember that: become a 1%er.

No Weaknesses

And let’s make this a little easier: STOP WORKING ON YOUR WEAKNESSES. Conventional wisdom has always told us to identify our strengths and weaknesses and then work to improve our weaknesses. It is non-productive to focus on our weaknesses because if we work hard we can at best become mediocre at them; while at the same time we neglect our strengths and won’t prepared to get the most out of them. Focus instead on your strengths and your gifts. Overcome your weaknesses by finding others whose have strength where you are weak and team up with them to meet your goals.

The I in Team

That leads to the last point of this, which is what John Maxwell always reminds us of

One is too small a number to accomplish anything!

We are meant to be dependent upon others and work together to achieve great things. None of us is as smart as all of us. So while building upon your gifts you should also be building your team. Find people who have character you desire and are ready to buy into the vision of what you want to accomplish. Walk the path together and share the journey and share the treasures. Start it by being truly unique.

And remember, UNIQUE and UNITE both begin with UNI, meaning one. By developing your uniqueness and finding unique others, you can UNITE together to have a singular impact on this world.

A journey like that is worth starting today!

Follow your passion, not your pension – Denis Waitley

Action Plan

Start identifying your unique gifts. There are lots of tools to help you here. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and DISC are a good start, but look to other less scientific tools as well, such as Stand-Out by Marcus Buckingham and StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. I am also a big fan of the Fascination Advantage Test by Sally Hogshead. I have tried them all and find these three to highly accurate and consistent. You may have to purchase a book for the access code to some of these, but it is well worth it.
Think back to ways you have used those gifts in the past. Which times did you find yourself getting the greatest results? The greatest joy? When did you get lost in the moment while using your gifts? This will help you identify how you should use them.
Plan and schedule your daily growth of those gifts. Remember the 1%.

Too Much You? Extreme Unique

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YOU Overboard

Is it possible to be too much you? Is it possible to embrace your uniqueness – your weirdness – to such an extent to where your repel instead of attact?

Extreme Unique Personalities

In High School, I had a friend who was definitely unique and definitely embraced his weirdness. His appearance even caught your attention. He had brillo-like hair, similar to the actor who played Jesus in the movie Godspell. When he got on a roll, his eyes had this wide-open, almost wild look to them. He was funny and made a point to do crazy things. Campaigning for class president in our senior year, he drove his moped into the gym and around the floor and then parked it next to the stage so he could take the podium for his campaign speech. The audience loved it and he was overwhelmingly elected class president.

Too extreme?

Depends on your circumstance.

In an audience of high school seniors, it was perfect. Not so popular with the basketball coach since he just drove a vehicle around on his freshly refinished hardwood basketball court.

In the Central Florida area, there used to be car dealer named Art Grindle. He would air commercials on local television showing some of the cars he had on sale, he would show a poster with the price of the car on it, get excited, and the scream “I’ll cut the price in half!” while he enthusiastically tore the poster down the middle. Sometimes he would jump up on the car or car roof and do the same thing. He made that mistake one time with a convertible. You guessed it, fell right through the roof! The driver bailed out and ran and Art just stood there sticking out of the roof and exclaimed “Look! There’s a hole in the roof! I’ll cut the price in half!‘

Too weird?

Well, in used car circles some use the mantra of “anything that moves metal”. Art was eventually elected to our state senate and served there for ten years. In preparation for that, he toned down his on-air antics a bit. Whether that helped him or hurt him is hard to say.

When Unique is Too Unique

I think you gauge whether your weirdness is too much based on several factors.

Your audience
Your purpose
The circumstance

I have seen many who choose to be unique or just plain weird and take it to the extreme. They go for the polar opposite for no other reason than to stand out and be seen as weird or extreme. This is self-serving; it typically has no other viable purpose than to attract attention. When the focus is on you instead of on what you do and perhaps the different way in which you do it, then it’s not serving your purpose of making you stand out from the crowd; instead it makes you a pariah.

I am in no way suggesting manipulating people by forcing behavior. Of course, I think going to the extreme just to go to the extreme is a little manipulative as well.

The idea here is to simply recognize how you ARE different and instead of hiding it celebrating it. You still have to provide something of value to your client and you still have to perform when the time comes.

What do you think? Is it possible to be too weird? How do you know when you’ve gone too far?