On Time Management. On the 19 different directions you are pulled in. On Buffett’s Rule on the Most Successful People.
Excitement is a choice, a feeling we get to generate ourselves. You’re either excited for your work or you’re not. You’re either excited for your relationship or you’re not. You’re either stoked for brunch or you’re stoked for making your own damn brunch that’s better! Excitement is up to us. As Derek Sivers says, “It’s either ‘Hell, yes!’ Or a definitive ’No.’” There’s nothing wrong with no. Say no more often and you’ll be happier. (Who’d have thought that /no/ makes you happier?!)
People today complain that they have nothing to look forward to, nothing to get excited about. Please. You’re alive. You’re here. Still the greatest time in world history to be alive — even in 2020! If the worst thing that happens to you today is that you have to wear an n95 for a little while, you’re doing great!
You’re surrounded by awesome stuff at your fingertips. You can learn anything for free on YouTube. You can skill up your excitement. You can skill up your innovation. You can skill up your creativity. You can skill up your ambition. You can start your own start-up for damn near free! You can play 19 hours of Xbox video games straight! If you’re really lucky, you get to go to school! (Yes, really: you are lucky to go to school. No, I wouldn’t have said that if I was 12. But it turns out that 12 year olds actually want to go to a building to learn vs. learn exclusively online. They want to be near their friends.)
We generate our own excitement. We generate our own enthusiasms. We generate our own movement, which morphs into momentum. And we are all about momentum. As the Great Marcus Buckingham states, *people are momentum*. We are mass + direction / velocity. We are beings going places.
That’s precisely what we are. And if we feel like we’re not going places, we feel stuck, hampered, stymied, bored. That’s how a lot of people feel today: stuck, stymied, & bored. They’re not hungry — they’re bored. It’s rather ironic when we’re surrounded by entertainment on demand. Every movie, every TV show, every sporting event in history is available on demand by pressing a few buttons , and we’re bored! Still, excitement, like any other emotion, is on us. We just need to be more intentional about our day.
I know it is weird, but how do you want to feel today? What activities, what actions, what intentions will get you those feelings? Did you take the time to discover it? To ask? What cancellations, what no’s, what ain’-happening-today’s do you gotta throw down to help foment positive feelings for yourself and toward others?
“The most successful people say ‘No’ the most.”
— Warren Buffett
Here’s how we earn our sanity back.
We live in a people-pleasing culture. We’re all about Yes. We feel bad when we say No, which is totally the wrong feeling. That’s dumb, misplaced guilt acting up there. That’s why you can’t trust your feelings 100%. Just because you feel something doesn’t make it true. Too many yeses are destructive. Life cannot be all about yes 100% of the time.
You gotta say no.
You Gotta say no for your health. You gotta say no for your relationships. You gotta say no for your money. You gotta say no to & for your kid. You gotta say no to your doggies. You gotta say no for your job. And you gotta say no for your sanity. We don’t earn sanity by saying Yes to each and every request made of us. No! *We earn sanity by cutting out the unessential*!
Most things, most requests, much of what’s in your outlook calendar today, 90% of all meetings *are not essential*. You just have to decide what’s essential and what’s non-essential for you.
We apparently have no trouble at all differentiating between “essential vs. non-essential” employees, yet we have tremendous difficulty differentiating between essential vs. non-essential activities day-to-day. Especially if you’re an Executive or Entrepreneur!
What’s truly essential in business.
In business, there are really only 2 or 3 things that drive sales revenue. Everything else is essentially unessential because EVERYTHING revolves around sales first. It’s called the *Sales Engine* for a reason. Everything else happens after we sell. Without sales revenue, there is no HR, there is no finance, there is no accounting because there is no sales revenue to account for, no real marketing, no product development, there is certainly no R & D, no Ops, nope. None of it exists without us first driving sales revenue. (The other departments hate it when you state it, because they know it is true! Sales cures all! Sales trumps all! Don’t like it? Then, get out there and sell with us! Come grow the company with us! Let’s see how you do.)
The 19 different directions you are pulled in.
If you’re too stressed, if you’re overwhelmed, if you’re pulled in 19 different directions simultaneously, who’s fault is that? The kids’? The doggies’? The spouse’s? The boss’s? The firm’s? Traffic’s? The parents’? The in-laws’s? Trump’s? Biden’s? CNN’s? Fox News’s? MSNBC’s? The 2020 election cycle’s? The COVID’s? The local news’s fault? Pick one. Pick them all.
“Our inputs become our outlook.”
— Zig Ziglar
It’s so funny how quick we are to blame external things when we’re the ones who allow all these external B.S. things inside to bother us! Our inputs become our outputs rather quickly. As the Great Zig Ziglar said, “Our inputs become our outlook.” True. AI output is only as good as the datasets we put in, just like in any relational database. Why would we expect any difference? And we wonder why we can’t get anything essential done? When our days revolve around external distraction, when these are our priorities, then we don’t get anything worthwhile done. Duh. 😩
This is why we have to be more intentional with our days, with our limited time here to create, to innovate, to collaborate. We have less time than we think.
On Time Management
Time management is a funny thing. People sell books and courses and classes on it as if people really don’t know how to manage their days. People get lost. People let others dictate their personal + professional schedules, which puzzles me when AI can do it for you.
People abdicate responsibility for their schedule, which is SO Strange! Why would you do that!? What sort of example is that for the kids? For your colleagues!? For your own directs!? What does that say about you if you push off your schedule to someone else!?
“Hey, I can’t even handle my own time, so why don’t you handle it for me!?” Why not own your time? If you don’t own your time, someone else will, and you won’t like where they set your priorities. *Own. Your. Time.*
Here’s better: you do it for yourself and for the kids. And the doggies. And the colleagues. And the friends. Even the in-laws.
Take your time back. Say no more often.
It’s yours. Take it back.
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