The art of using time appropriately. In this episode Marcus discusses how we trade time for money generating activities, relationships and self. Affirmation: I am a master of my schedule!
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to The Whole Enchilada today. Really excited about the topic of conversation today which is time, not necessarily just time as it shows up on a calendar, specifically the art of using time appropriately. Now I think this is something that’s an ongoing conversation of how to time block, which what boards in your calendar, am I wasting time, can I multitask what was on your calendar first.
There’s thousands of books put together on how to properly use your time, and be more productive. And it’s interesting. This last week, around a week and a half ago, my wife and I were on a walk, discussing several things and one of the things that came up in topic was specifically how we want to use our time differently this coming year. And if you were able to listen to the last episode of the whole enchilada we talked about inspecting the reality is one of the things that we want to trade, our time or use our time differently in 2021, it starts with the inspection of how we use our time in the given year, in what ways did we use our time appropriately the yielded of the results we were looking for, as opposed to where did we not spend our time appropriately purposely or unpurposely, be what were those times sucks that sucked as in and by the time we pulled our face on the screen we realized it was four hours later when we intended to be there for four minutes, which I know you’re laughing right now because that’s happened to me, it’s happened to you. We’ve all fall victim to that dreaded screen time.
So today we’re gonna talk about a couple things, I want to share with you kind of what we determined in that conversation, as we were walking along the beautiful beaches of Maui, which is a great backdrop for these types of conversations of reflection and thought. We thought a lot about specifically how we spend time. And I think that spending time may be the wrong terminology, terminology is actually trading time. Spending time was just that we have a certain amount that we’re able to spend on something where I would suggest that instead of spending time, we’re trading time for something in return. Think about the, it’s probably been happening much longer, thinking about the early 1800s of all the trading posts that were going on in the US, as people were migrating from east to west, particularly these fur traders learned that they can go out, you know these beaver pelts come back and trade those beaver pelts for other things that either would help them build additional wealth or things they needed.
Other things were traded in those training posts as well, either on a small scale scale or big scale. But one of the things is that these people learned using the fur traders as an example is it probably started with the idea of just getting first for myself anyway. If I get a few extra of beaver pelts, I’ll be able to trade those for someone that has something that I need, because I have in excess of what I need. In over time they learned that that, well, if, if I’m able to trade for other things that I need, what am I just got really really good at this, and got a surplus of beaver pelts well beyond what I would need to be able to trade in excess of what what my current needs are and start building additional wealth.
Well, the idea of trading time. If we don’t have the ability to increase the amount of time that any of us have. We’ve only got 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But that doesn’t really limit us to increase, how to trade, time for the things that are most important to us because we thought about as we thought about this and really fleshed it out a little bit we identified that generally speaking, there are three categories which we trade, time for we trade, time for money generating activities, we trade, time for relationships. And we trade time for self. Now, these were the three categories money, relationships, and self, but within those categories there might be some additional sub categories so let’s break them down and talk about them for a minute. It was interesting as I went through this exercise to verify the validity of what we determined on that walk. I pulled up my own calendar and went through and started identifying every thing I had challenged or over the last 12 months and I categorized it was this a money generating activity. With this relationship, generating activity, or relationship nurturing activity or was this for me wasn’t something for for my personal self growth, or as we’re gonna see here for a minute was that self promotion or self sabotage which are the sub categories of self. It earache true as I went through every single thing on my calendar fit one of those categories, and I assumed that any, any time on my calendar that was not filled was actually serving one of those categories as well. Let’s break them down a little bit. Money generating activities. So any of those appointments lead generation business meetings leadership, business planning any of those conversations will all fall under money generating. If I was to break this down with a step further I’ve wanted to identify if I’ve got specific goals around an income goal and I’ve also got specific goals around the network, and passive income, it merits me to take the time to break that category down a little bit more to say okay if it’s a money generating activity. Is it purely to push active income or am I spending time building long term passive income and increasing my net worth. If I have goals around passive income and net income, it’s important that our trading time not only for active income, but I’m also treating time to think through how we generate future passive income, increasing net worth. The next one is relationships, this goes, the reason we just call it relationships, there’s a lot of key relationships in your world. So the question becomes, who are those relationships that you’re trying to nurture.
And do you have specific time on your calendar to nurture those relationships. One thing I’ve done well in the past is making sure that I’ve got time scheduled for with my family. Also individually with my kids and also making sure that they know my calendars, something that’s been a focus of mine This last couple of months…
I feel like I’ve done fairly well on. But as I’ve reflected through other important relationships in my world. I’ve missed the mark an example of this is my parents are getting older. And I’m hoping to have a lot of time left for them but I don’t know that for certain, if I don’t have one calendar event. Specifically, and purposefully spending time or checking on my parents now I do it periodically. And I feel like I’ve got a great relationship with them, but it’s been reactively not purposely. The last one is self I think this one probably gets abused to the most, is what on your calendar. And if we’re going to break this self down into two categories the two categories that we came up with our self promotion, what are the things that are helping you grow that you enjoy that reduce your stress that build, build you as an individual versus self sabotage. What are the things that suck you away from progressing and moving forward, such as getting caught up in social media or Netflix knows how to get to where now we don’t have to tell Netflix to start the next episode. It just ultimately starts the next episode but assuming that you want to watch it in the next episode is playing before you can have time to get up and turn the TV off by not trying you’re stuck back in my trap to that, as I’m sure you have as well. So identifying how much time have I spent spent on self promotion versus self sabotage. When we’re calling around self promotion, I think it’s really interesting how many of us spend a significant amount of money and time getting coaches for our kids in different activities, piano lessons, like this is my house piano lessons, harp lessons violin lessons crawly dance. These are all things that I love that my kids are involved in. And I want to help that. But how many of us his parents are so willing to do that, to get our kids coach, and get them on a team and help them develop these habits, with us as adults we’ve given up on learning specific skills and hobbies and pay for coaching in those skills properties I really think it’s silly how many people I know, think it’s important for their kids to be taking lessons, if they’re not willing to take lessons to grow their own hobbies the desires. So for example, on, on my, my calendar. I’ve got all my Jiu Jitsu Muay Thai kickboxing kickboxing the things that I love doing that in, in my world, it kills two birds with one stone, because it reduces my stress, and also is a great physical exercise which I really enjoyed. So making sure you have those self promotion pieces on on your calendar as I went through and identify the things that I need to improve in trading time this coming year so if I identify the lead measures the most important things that I’m going to accomplish in 2021. My question now because I’ve got the game plan of what I want to accomplish. Now I gotta go make sure that I’m trading my time appropriately to get the lead measures done in such a way that it’s going to produce the results that I want. Here’s a couple thoughts as you build out your calendar for the following year, make sure that it matches your calendar matches your goals. One of my favorite things to do when someone comes to me and says, Hey, will you coach me on reaching my goals this year, and the very first thing I’m going to say to them is, show me what your goals are to pull out your calendar and not prep their calendar to show me what they think their calendar should look like, because I actually want to inspect What does the calendar look like in that bullet in their calendar does not reflect what what the goals they’ve identified for themselves. Then I will not bet on that person. However, even if the results are showing up that someone can pull up their calendar show me that they strategically trade a time or plan to trade time for the activities that they identified on their business plan or their personal plan, I will bet on that person. It’s more important to me to be working with someone that commits to the activities, and will grow their skill set around the activities than someone that’s really naturally good at the activities, but will not take the time to plan the activities that need to be done.
Whenever I’m looking at going through this process right now as I have to I start by deconstructing my calendar. The reason I call it deconstructing my calendar is over time, when I was younger in my business years, as I took on more responsibility, it was easy for me to say, if I’m going to create x more activities, than I didn’t need to just take those activities and find the blank spots on my calendar to add them well over time as you gain more responsibilities, more businesses more kids whatever that looks like it becomes harder and harder to find blank spots in your calendar to add those things to before I add anything to my calendar I go through a process of deconstructing my calendar all the way down to its bare bones and reprioritize, what is important to my long game now. And then I build my calendar back up in this order. The very first thing that goes on my calendar or my personal non negotiable now what is a personal non negotiable. It generally was revolves around family time and relationships and personal promotion myself promotion. So I’ll go through and make sure that date nights get date nights family nights family vacations, all of that plan to the best of my ability for the entire year. In some essence I’ll go as far as like actually booked the family vacations because you’ve probably followed trapped me on this as well as where you’re finally going on a trip in the fall, but as it comes into the fall you get really busy with working to push it out and in essence it never happens.
However, generally speaking, if you go to take the time to actually plan. The trip, find the tickets booked the hotel. It’s really hard to back out of it at that point, in some ways it’s the motivator helps you get more things done in anticipation about vacation so the first thing that goes on your calendar are where all your personal non negotiables for the year, specifically around what relationships need need your time and energy and.
What do you need to be balanced and this is particularly important for you as part of the whole enchilada network is a portrait to create balance across all aspects of life you’ve got to become a master of your schedule. The next thing that goes on my calendar is all my planning time when is the client going to hold myself accountable to these results. For me this is the key to five work to create for myself around my calendar. At the end of every year I Taiwan, two days where I do nothing, but really get clarity on what
It is important to me. Inspect reality, build a business plan, build a personal plan, deconstruct my calendar, put my calendar back together,
It’s generally a two day process for me to do that. Then on my calendar I take half a day, each month to come back in. Check my progress that gives me that yearly gameplan every Sunday afternoon I have a one hour meeting with myself to reflect back on that week, every day, at the end of the day I have a 15 minute bullet after the meeting with myself to check on the progress of. It’s a really simple cadence that’s the second thing that goes on my calendar. The third thing now that goes on my calendar is generally the thing that most people put on our calendar first is their business activities, particularly those lead measures those most important things that you must commit to for a lot of us that are the sales business that is your lead generation or relationship, nurturing process that belongs on your calendar, along with those specific appointments that you must go on to ensure success with your business plan. So generally speaking, a lot of us take the time to put those things on our calendar and try to fit family personal time around it with someone that’s controlling their destiny and living life on their terms, it’s actually the opposite of that where we’re going to put our personal non negotiables first. Then we’re going to move in to that planning time of accountability. And then we’re going to move into both business activities. I hope this conversation helped you look at your calendar differently. The question I would have you asked yourself today is, how are you trading time is the way you are trading time creating the results you want. If you don’t have clarity on that, I encourage you to pull up the last three months of your personal calendar and print it up and go through and identify everything on your calendar as. With this money generating time, active income passive income was this relationship. Time spent, or was this self Time, time spent with the time spent in self promotion or self sabotage in any of those blanks in your calendar that tend to be between appointments. The question I would ask you is that time was spent doing something, regardless of whether looking back in your calendar shows you that you spent time doing something. The question is how did you use that time, and I see. For most of us, that is where self sabotage actually creeps in the most. I’ve got a few minutes My phone is dying, I’m gonna pull up Facebook, and then also you’re rushing to your next appointment. So this is part of the process. One of the things I love right now one of the top people my organization is so focused on this skill set that almost every text message he sends me almost every conversation we have on every voicemail, he leaves free right now starts with. I am a master by schedule, and he’s going to say that it actually becomes a reality for him and for us to live the creed of the whole enchilada of living life to its fullest nominal terms, we have to become a master by the owner thanks for joining me today. Go to your calendar, the master calendar. And don’t forget, they’ll make it on your charts. See you next time.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download