Living Your Own Life

“It is better to fail at your own life than to succeed at someone else’s.”
(Andre Gide)

One of the fundamental questions we need to ask ourselves is “Whose life am I living?”

Are you living your own life in accordance with your values, doing what you believe in and following your own vision? If you can honestly say “Yes” in answer to that question, then congratulations! — you are in a very exceptional position.

Most of the human race seems to spend its time trying to fulfil the expectation of other people — or what they imagine the expectations of other people are. We live in accordance with what we think our parents, our teachers, our colleagues, our lovers, our bosses, the government, the experts, even our own children, expect from us. Or we live in rebellion against them. Either way it’s what we think they want that is ruling us.

Since it’s very unlikely that our parents, teachers, colleagues, lovers, bosses, the government, the experts and our children would ever agree for one moment about what we should be doing, it’s not surprising that we have a tendency get confused, harassed and resentful. All these conflicting demands are simply more than we are capable of processing.

So why not forget about trying to please everybody else all of the time, and instead concentrate on living according to our own values all of the time? The clearer we are about what we believe in and what our real values are, the easier it will be to do this. And paradoxically we will probably become far better sons/daughters, pupils, colleagues, lovers, employees, citizens, learners and parents by doing so.

Exercise:

This exercise depends on catching yourself the next time you find yourself thinking “What ought I to be doing now?” You probably won’t find that you have to wait too long for this opportunity — about 30 seconds is my own average!

Realise that the real meaning of this question is “How can I fulfil other people’s expectations of me?”

Once you catch yourself asking this question, let it go and ask yourself a different question instead: “What is the next step in living my life?”

And then keep on asking it!

Identifying Our Long-Term Themes

I’ve written before (see Time to Think Again) about the long-term effects of decisions which we take for short-term reasons. I have always been fascinated too by the way in which our lives can take shape in the long-term in ways which are entirely unimagined by us in the short-term.

A few days ago I was thinking about how much my life has changed over the last fifteen years (fortunately almost entirely for the better). And I started to wonder how much of my present circumstances I could have forecast back in April 1992.

Some of it would be pretty easy. I am still married to the same person. My children have predictably got fifteen years older and have left home. I’m still living in the same house.

Some I might have hoped for but might have had a hard time believing could come true. So I have achieved a long-standing ambition of working for myself, and doing it successfully. Fifteen years ago, I knew I wanted to work for myself but had absolutely no idea about what I might do or how to go about it.

And some of it would be entirely unpredictable, even to the extent of never crossing my mind. I’d never heard of coaching. I’d never thought of writing as a possible career. I’d no idea of the potential of the internet. And, apart from my immediate family, I had not yet met any of the people who are currently most influential in my life.

If I’d sat down in April 1992 and written about how I would like my life to change over the next fifteen years, I would have said something like this:

• Freedom from having to work for other people
• More able to express my own individual talents
• To have achieved a successful business
• To be out of debt and free of money worries
• To be rewarded according to the effort I put in
• To be growing myself and helping other people to grow
• Be able to do what I want when I want to
• Have loads of supportive friends
• To feel in charge of my own life.

Fifteen years ago I would never have dreamed of actually sitting down and writing this list out, so all those things remained unexpressed. But looking back over the last fifteen years I can see how these themes all worked themselves out in my life, almost without my conscious control. And yes, I’ve achieved all of them.

And what do I want for the next fifteen years? More of the same, or something different? Hmm, I’ll have to think about that!

Exercise:

Have a look at your circumstances ten, fifteen or twenty years ago. How have they changed? What’s better and what’s worse about your life?

If you’d sat down that number of years ago and written out how you’d have liked your life to change between then and now, what would you have said? How far has it come true?

What do you want for the next period of years? More of the same or something different?

Maximise Your Learning Power

Have you ever had the experience of reading a chapter in a text book or a section in a report and finding at the end of it that you can hardly recall a word of what has been said?

Whether you want to learn about company’s finances, how to conjugate French verbs, the characteristics of Semillon grape varieties or any other subject, here’s how you can greatly increase your retention and make yourself much more open to further learning about the subject.

I’m assuming that you have some sort of interest in the subject you are studying (otherwise why are you studying it?) So you almost certainly have some idea about it already, even if it’s quite vague.

Step One.
The first step takes place before you read the passage. I call it writing a blind draft. Write down everything you think you know about the subject without checking any of the facts. Write it all out with the fullest confidence as if you were the greatest living expert. Don’t be afraid to invent things. If you don’t know the figures, just make them up - using your best possible guestimate of course.

Step Two.
Once you’ve done Step One: Read the passage. Do the research. Take notes in the usual way.

Step Three.
The next step is to put away your notes. Then go back to your blind draft and edit it so it is as accurate as you can make it from memory. You may astonish yourself about how much clearer your understanding is now. But you may also find that there are many things you are still unclear about or facts you can’t remember.

Step Four.
Put your revised blind draft away and go back to your notes or to the original document. Then put your notes away and go back to revise the blind draft again.

What you will almost certainly find is that the to-and-fro process between your draft and the text you are studying has made your mind actively engage with the subject in a way which mere reading or note taking never succeeds in doing.

This method can be used for all sorts of things apart from reading. It works just as well at lectures and presentations. Do you want to remember the route to your holiday destination? Write out a blind draft. Do you want to remember your appointments for the coming week? Write out a blind draft. Do you want to be on top of your own finances? Write out a blind draft. Then do the research, revise your draft and repeat the process as many times as you need to.

Welcoming problems as friends

One of the most deeply entrenched habits of mind that virtually everyone has is to regard problems as adversaries to be overcome. This means that we often seem to spend most of our time battling problems. In fact the number of potential problems we have is virtually infinite, so we can always find some more to fight.

I would like to propose that we look at problems in a radically different way — as friends to be welcomed.

Why? Because problems and setbacks are usually the times that we learn the most valuable lessons and make the greatest growth. If we had a world in which everything was perfect we would never learn anything and have no impetus to grow — we would also be bored to tears!

I had a very powerful demonstration of this, which I would like to share with you. I was really struggling with my second book and finding it more and more difficult to write. I knew very well what the message was that I wanted to get over, but I was having a really hard time getting it down on paper. I was resisting writing and what I did succeed in writing seemed to be competely failing to get over the spirit and reality of what I wanted to convey.

I was battling and battling away at this problem, trying to find a way to overcome it. And then I finally realised that I was ignoring my own words in the book about treating problems as friends to be welcomed. What would happen if I treated this problem as a friend?

So I asked myself “If this resistance I am feeling to writing my book is in fact my mind giving me a strong message, what would that message be?”

The second I asked the question I realised that the reason I was resisting writing the book was because I was unhappy with the way I was writing it. I saw clearly that I wanted the book itself to be an example of everything that I was saying in the book. So it had to be written according to the principles I was teaching and had to show those principles at work in my own life at the same time.

So with two months and eleven days to go to the deadline for delivery of the book I decided to scrap everything I had written and start again!

This was a terrifying decision to make. But the effect of starting the book again from scratch and this time writing it the way I wanted to write it was like taking a cork out of a bottle. One week later I have written 26,814 words, just about half the total book! The effect of listening to what my resistance was saying instead of fighting it has been that I have written as much in seven days as I wrote in seven months before. A thirtyfold increase in productivity! And what’s more I was extremely happy with what I had written.

Exercise

Choose a problem that you have been battling for some time without success. Instead of thinking of ways of overcoming it, ask yourself: “If this problem is a friend with a message for me, what would that message be?” Then listen to the answer and be prepared to act on it!

Overcome Procrastination with Checklists

One of the reasons many of us have a tendency to procrastinate over big projects is that we always look at the project as a whole. For example we are given a major report to complete by the end of the month and it will take about five days’ intensive work to write. Every time we think about the report we get oppressed by the thought of all that hard work. And naturally this makes us reluctant to begin.

Even if we do begin the report we can’t claim to have succeeded until we have finished it. So however far we get with it we are still oppressed by the remaining work. And it’s only after we have struggled through the five days’ intensive work (or more likely thirty days’ procrastinating and two days’ frantic last-minute effort) that we can chalk up a success and cross that report off our list of current projects.

However even the longest and most difficult task only consists of a series of smaller tasks, which taken individually are easily achievable. So the way to overcome our natural tendency to procrastinate is to break a big task down into smaller tasks. The more we are resisting the project as a whole the smaller we should make the tasks.

The best way to do this is to write a checklist of the actions that need to be done. And always make the first item in the checklist “Write checklist”. That way you know you have an easy first step to give yourself a good start!

Usually with a checklist it’s best to confine yourself to the actions that you can do now. Planning the entire project may in itself be too threatening to allow you to get started. So write down the simple actions that you can take today to get the project moving.

So with the major report, I mentioned above your checklist might go something like this:

Write checklist
Jot down main headings of report
List people I need to contact
Check final completion date
Block off time in diary
Write checklist for action tomorrow

This has taken you a whole lot further than what we usually do when faced with a project like this, which is to sit around doing nothing except wonder how we are going to find enough time to get it done!

As soon as you have written the six lines contained in this checklist you can chalk up your first success by crossing off the first item “Write checklist”. By the time you have completed all six steps, none of which are difficult, I can promise you that the project will suddenly be looking much less threatening. In fact you might even be feeling optimistic about it and be raring to get moving on the steps contained in the second day’s list!

One point to note: Sometimes you may come to an item in your checklist which you haven’t made small enough with the result that you find yourself resisting it. If this happens simply break it down further with a sub-checklist. The secret of writing checklists is always to break things down until the next item you have to do is small enough for you to feel no resistance to doing it.

Time Freedom: The Black Cloud Hunt

The concept of “time freedom” is far preferable to that of “time management”. I define it as being the freedom to have a productive and useful life, the freedom to have fun and enjoy oneself, the freedom to be fulfilled and above all the freedom to be oneself.

As a first step towards time freedom, I suggest you use one of the tools I describe in “Do It Tomorrow” - the Current Initiative. This is a project which you do some work on first thing every day before starting on any other work. Why not make going on a “Black Cloud Hunt” into your Current Initiative for the next few weeks?

“Black Clouds” are all the things that are hovering over you in the shape of unresolved tasks and issues that you haven’t got round to facing up to yet. Get rid of these black clouds and you will experience a new sense of freedom and energy.

As an example, a while ago I became aware that I was beginning to feel restricted and tense. My sense of the abundance of time had vanished and in its place was an oppressive sense that time was in short supply. I could feel that a black cloud had taken up residence over my head!

Once I decided to examine what it was exactly that was making up this black cloud, I realised immediately that I had been putting off the preparations for a series of seminars that I was due to be giving a few weeks later. So I made preparing for these seminars the first thing I did every day in accordance with the Current Initiative method.

In fact it only took me two days to be completely up to date with the preparations, and I found my sense of freedom had to a large extent come back. But I also realised that there were several other black clouds, smaller ones, which were still keeping me from experiencing full freedom. So I started to tackle each black cloud one by one.

The interesting thing is that the more one does this, the less tolerant one is of anything that gets in the way of your freedom. Once you start on a “black cloud” hunt, don’t stop until you have weeded every last one out of your life.

Where is your time going?

Have you ever got to the end of a frantic day and wondered what you have actually achieved at the end of it all? In spite of the fact that you have rushed around all day you still haven’t done half the things you meant to. And you are hideously conscious of all the multitude of tasks that still remain to be done.

One good way of finding out where the time is going and at the same time gaining more control over it is a variation of the familiar time log recommended in most time management books.

Usually the time log is seen as a record of what you have done or are doing. So typically you might be asked to keep a record of everything you do for several days running or you might be asked to write down what you were doing every 15 minutes throughout the day. The results are then used for analysing how your time is being used.

The problem with these methods is that they are records of what you have already done, rather than being statements about what you are going to do. They therefore fail to address a basic problem — that poor time management is usually the result of acting on impulse rather than acting on decision.

One simple change can make the time log a much more powerful tool — instead of writing down what you have done, write down what you are about to do. In other words each time you complete one action, consciously choose what your next action is going to be and write it down.

It is very easy to keep this type of time log. The first step is to write down the time now, and then write down what you intend to do next, e.g.

09.32 Answer John’s email

When you have finished doing this item, write down the time and the next thing you are going to do, e.g.

09.32 Answer John’s email
09.46 Tidy desk

If you get any interruptions, put them in the log with a start and finish time and indent them, e.g.

09.32 Answer John’s email
         (09.40 Phone call from Linda 09.51)
09.57 Tidy desk

Keeping a log this way will go a long way towards helping you to act out of decision rather than impulse. Because you are writing down what you are going to do before you do it, you have to ask yourself the question — conciously or unconciously — “what am I going to do next?”. This is a major step forward in gaining control of your life. Remember time management is not really about managing time at all — it is about managing your attention.

Exercise

Try keeping a log like this for an entire day, starting from the time you get up, and review it just before you go to bed. Look to see how well you used your time during the day. Did you do the things that were of most value to you? How much were you interrupted? What lessons have you learned that you could put to use tomorrow? Did the day run better than it does when you don’t use a time log?

Action versus Activity

One of the most basic distinctions to make in our lives is the difference between action and activity.

Action is what achieves our goals, moves our business and personal lives forward, produces what we want out of life and actually gets the job done. It is immensely rewarding but is also very likely to be difficult and challenging.

Activity is all the things we fill our lives with in order to avoid taking action. Strangely enough activity often looks better than action to our colleagues or even to ourselves. If you are an executive or run your own business then productive, focused thinking must be one of your action priorities. Unfortunately thinking often appears to be “lazy”, compared to making phone calls, dealing with email, attending meetings and generally rushing around.

You can be pretty sure you have fallen into the activity trap if:

a) You never have time to think. (Thinking is your number one top priority ACTION)

b) You work through lunch and don’t have a definite finish time in the evening. (Lack of proper breaks reduces your working efficiency)

c) You don’t have time for exercise. (Lack of exercise reduces your working efficiency and shortens your life span)

d) You don’t have time for a personal life. (If your personal life isn’t a top priority for you, what chance the rest of your priorities make any sense?)

e) You never have time to do the things you really want to do. (What’s the point of all that work then?)

f) You are constantly doing things which anyone else could do. (You should be concentrating on the things only you can do).

The best weapon in your war against activity is the Stop Doing list. Be ruthless in making out a list of activities which you are no longer going to do. And keep expanding it. Most businesses (and lives) thrive best when they concentrate on a few core objectives, rather than spreading their energies over too wide a field. Time is like money. When you budget it you should be going through a process of deciding what projects to fully fund. If you are not going to fully fund a project, then it should not be done at all.

Exercise

Monitor yourself throughout a working day and keep asking yourself the question “Why am I doing this?”. There is only one acceptable answer: “Because it is an action which will take this business forward.”

Unacceptable answers include:

“My secretary doesn’t know how to type up these records”,

“I promised Joe I’d do this and I don’t want to let him down”,

“If you want anything done you’ve got to do it yourself”,

“I don’t see how I can get out of it”,

“I know it’s a waste of time but my boss expects me to do it”,

“I’ve never got around to handing it over”,

“We’ve always done it that way”,

“I’m putting off getting on with that report”,

“It’s important to be seen to be busy/interested/sociable/caring/etc.”,

“I’ve always been interested in [something entirely irrelevant]”,

“I like doing it”,

“It might be useful sometime”.

I’m sure you won’t have too much trouble adding to that list.

If you get an unacceptable answer, immediately put the activity on your Stop Doing list. And start taking the necessary action to stop doing it!

Celeritas

Have you ever wondered why it is that some people have the greatest difficulty just staying on top of everyday life, while other people seem to be capable of doing the most amazing amount in a very short period of time? It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with techniques, more like a fundamental capability to make the most of every moment.

Most of my life I’ve been firmly in the first category. One of the most upsetting things about the second category, the achievers, is that they seem not just to be able to get much more out of work but they seem to be able cram many more enjoyable activities into their leisure time as well. That just isn’t fair!

One of my great heroes as a schoolboy was Julius Caesar, and the more I’ve learned about him since the more remarkable he seems. One doesn’t have to approve of his methods or political ambitions to be amazed at the amount he achieved. During his lifetime he was renowned for his celeritas, a Latin word meaning “speed” or “quickness”. Time and time again he would act so quickly that his opponents were caught completely unawares.

The flip side of this was that he would sometimes act compulsively or rashly and get himself into difficulties as a result. But no one was better than he was at getting himself out of the difficulties again — by the effectiveness and speed of the measures he took to extricate himself.

You can use this principle of celeritas in your own life. To do so, simply practise working a little bit faster than you usually do. And move a little bit faster than you usually do.

This is remarkably effective, because if you move faster than normal you don’t give yourself time to think all your normal procrastinating thoughts. If you are moving fast, you don’t think “I’ll do that later” or “I really don’t want to do that” — you just do it!

Try it for a short period to start with. Set a timer for 20 minutes and just go all out to do as much work of any kind that you can in that 20 minutes. Don’t spend time thinking what to do next. Just get on with whatever comes to hand.

You may be very surprised at how much you achieve. And you may also be very surprised to find that instead of being tiring, it is very energising to act in this way.

Keeping Going

Here’s an old rule that I came across many years ago… and it still works!

The rule is “When you take a break, always take it in the middle of a task, not at the end.”

This is exactly the opposite of the way we usually work. We work away at something until we come to a “natural break” or an end point and then stop. The problem with this is that it is often very difficult to get going again. The five-minute tea break become half an hour and when we finally drag ourselves back to our desks it is with a great lack of enthusiasm. We have to make a huge effort to even pick up the next bit of paper. (If this description doesn’t ring any bells with you, then don’t bother to read the rest of this post!)

Stopping at a natural break is almost always the worst thing we can do. Why? Because our mind registers that we have finished. And once our mind registers something as finished it likes it to stay that way. Starting something new is hard work.

But if you always take your breaks in the middle of something, your mind will be raring to get going again. It has registered what you are doing as incomplete and your mind hates incompletions. And often you will find that, after the break is over and you start work again, your mind has progressed in the meantime.

When you come to the end of something it is very natural to say to yourself “Thank goodness that’s over! Let’s take a break!” But instead try saying “I’ll just start the next thing first”. Very often you will find that you have finished a whole series of “next things” before you actually get round to that break!

A Rest from the Diet

I have decided to consolidate my diet as I’m finding that to lose weight I have to use too many rules. So what I am going to do for the rest of this month is keep the target weight at my present weight and allow my body to adjust to this weight. Hopefully by the time the month is up, I will need far less rules.

The Work Fast

Here’s an exercise which I sometimes used to give to those of my clients who had problems with interruptions at work.

You have very likely at some time in your life tried a food fast. Many nutritionists recommend these for clearing toxins out of the body. Another type of fast you may have come across is the week-long reading fast that Julia Cameron gives as one of the exercises in her book “The Artist’s Way” (I lasted three days!). There are many other types of fast that you can try (chocolate, tv, alcohol, shopping, etc.). One of the main purposes of a fast is to show us how addicted we are to certain patterns of behaviour, and to open our minds (and bodies) to the possibility of new and more productive patterns.

So how about a work fast?

The idea behind a work fast is that you take a day off from work but spend the day in your normal place of work. While you are there you are not allowed to take part in any of the activities that are part of your standard working day. To keep yourself occupied take along a novel or two, a few magazines, some puzzles, anything that is not work related.

You are not allowed to:

a) switch on your computer.

b) answer the telephone or make calls

c) look at the mail

d) read anything work related

e) tidy your desk or sort out files

f) talk to colleagues except during official work breaks

g) do anything else work related.

You must remain at your desk at all times except during official work breaks.

If anyone interrupts you or asks you to do something, you tell them that you are working on an important project at the moment (true!) and can’t talk to them now.

So what you are doing is remaining at your work place but fending off all the interruptions and calls on your time that normally impinge on you all day long. Enjoy the challenge!

Once you’ve completed your fast and discovered that it is actually possible to sit at your workplace and successfully avoid all the things you normally spend your time on, you can start putting this to use. So you have an important project that you keep getting distracted from? The answer’s simple — declare a work fast. Only this time the rule is that you are not allowed to do any activities EXCEPT the important project. By using a one or two half-day work fasts a week, you can make sure that your most important projects get the focused attention they deserve.

Plan backwards!

One of the most effective ways of planning is to imagine yourself in the future as having achieved the goal. Then, looking back, describe how you got there. Imagining yourself in the future looking back is far more effective than the way we usually plan, which is to look at the goal from the present and try to work out what steps we could take. This is treating the goal as a problem to be solved. While looking back at it from the standpoint of the future treats it as an achievement that we can describe.

Something you may not know is that many authors write the back cover of their book first. Once they’ve written out what the book is about and described why someone would want to buy it, all they’ve got to do is fill the gap between the covers with words!

A similar method is often used by software developers. The first thing they do is write the advertisement describing all the wonderful new features of the software and why it is better than anything anyone else has to offer. Then they have a clear picture of the software and can start writing the program to provide those features.

To achieve a major goal, first write a rough description of 1) what it will be like when you’ve reached your goal 2) how you reached it and 3) where you are now in relation to it.

Then at regular intervals (at least daily to start off with) come back to it and revise it. Flesh it out more and more each time. As you start to develop the goal, the plan and your present progress, your mind engages fully with the process. You may well amaze yourself with the insights that you start to get and the progress you are making towards the goal.

The process of continous revision which I am describing here is a very powerful one. It takes full advantage of the psychological effect known as maturation. This basically states that when you come back to something at regular intervals, you will be further advanced after the interval than you were before it. In other words your mind continues to process the information after you have ceased to work on it consciously. Most of us have experienced this effect by following the advice of our music or language teachers that the way to success is “little and often” rather than huge efforts just before the next lesson. If you’ve ever tried to write a report or an essay the day before the deadline, you’ll know it’s a much harder task than writing it bit by bit over a number of days or weeks.

Applying this to goal setting and planning, we can actually begin to live the process on paper. The wordprocessor is a great invention and makes this type of continuous revision extremely easy.

Dieting: Re-zeroing

My set of electronic bathroom scales has died. It kept giving error messages and the weighings became increasingly inconsistent, so I decided to buy a new set. Now I am the proud possessor of a WeightWatchers 8962U LCD Precision Electronic Scale. It’s much more legible than my old set and also gives the weights to the nearest quarter pound.

Using a new weighing machine means that it’s best to re-zero, so I’m starting again from this morning’s weight (1.25 lbs above yesterday’s weight on the old machine) with zero rules. I’ve also decided that it’s a good opportunity to go back to the previous method of a steady loss of one pound a week, rather than the Ratchet Effect which I’ve been using recently. What I’ve realised is that the Ratchet Effect doesn’t just ratchet the weight down - it also ratchets the number of rules up. I should of course have realised at the start that it would have this effect, but mathematics was never my strong point!

Since I’m now moving in quarter pound intervals instead of half pound intervals, I need to change the target weight four times a week. Since I’ve started on a Thursday, I will plot the quarter-pound drops on Saturdays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

I’m going to keep the new rule I introduced of “Single Course only” on the list of rules as it seems to work well.

(Full details of the diet I am following can be found here.)

Interview by Lea Woodward

There’s an audio file of a 35 minute interview with me by Lea Woodward on her website “Success Rocks”. The audio quality isn’t very high unfortunately but as result the file is quite small and downloads quickly.

In the interview I answer the following questions:

1. What do you do as a “Time Freedom” coach? And how did you get into this?

2. Do you agree that the very successful people in the world base their lives around activity/productivity rather than time?

3. Do you think we should all get rid of watches/clocks?

4. Would you suggest that placing a value on things that have to be done… not as in prioritizing but attaching a value to a task might give you more reason to complete it? And how would you suggest going about that?

5. With regards to your weight loss approach – what aspects of your approach do you think others in the same situation (e.g. weight loss or other health goal) would find useful?

6. What are your top 3 tips for somebody who struggles to complete tasks due to “poor time management”?

Diet Progress

I couldn’t believe my eyes this morning when I weighed in and found that I was 2 lbs below my target weight for the day. That means that since I introduced the Ratchet Effect on March 10th I have lost 6 lbs. That’s nearly 2 lbs per week. Although I am eating much less than I used to in my pre-diet days, I have not been feeling particularly hungry. That seems to me to mean that my body is adjusting quite well to my weight loss.

Work At or Work On?

One of the most most important distinctions we can make about our work is the distinction between “working at” our business and “working on” our business. What is the difference between them?

“Working at” our business at first sight seems to be what our business is all about. It’s dealing with clients, answering correspondence, sending out invoices, paying bills, writing materials, and doing all the hundred and one other things that we think of as our work.

“Working on” our business is quite different. It’s taking a step back and looking at it from outside. Looking at where the business is going,making strategic decisions, deciding what new initiatives to take.

The problem for most of us is that we get so immersed in the routine “busy work” of our businesses that we seldom or never give time to thinking strategically. But if you want your business, or whatever it is that you are involved in, to take off then it is essential that you schedule regular time to work ON your business.

A good book to read which cover this subject (and plenty more) is Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited.

Keep Chipping Away

We’ve all I’m sure read articles and books about how to achieve major goals. Usually they talk about such things as breaking them down into steps and setting deadlines. This is all good advice, but to my mind they miss the most important factor in reaching a goal —- which is simply to keep on working at it.

When I say “keep on working at it” I mean that you need to schedule a certain amount of time every day to work on that goal. If you ever started to learn the piano as a child I expect you remember your tutor saying to you that it’s far more important to practise a sensible amount every day than to miss it for days and then try to catch up in one huge session. Exactly the same applies to working at goals — whatever they are.

Almost every problem in human life will respond to regular concentrated attention. As Liane Cardes wrote: “Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”

Forget doing it right. Results won’t come from waiting until you can do the job perfectly. It’s working at it that will bring results. So if you are a painter, paint. If you are a writer, write. If you are a poet, write poems. Don’t wait around for inspiration — inspiration is something that comes when you are working not when you are waiting around.

Remember the artist’s prayer (and apply it to any area of life): “Dear God, if I provide the quantity, you will provide the quality”.

Simplify!

One of the problems about learning techniques to use our time more productively is that if we’re not careful we find ourselves using our new skills to take on more and more commitments. So we end up feeling just as overwhelmed as before… it’s just that we have a bigger and better overwhelm than we used to have!

So let’s have a look at one of the most basic time management principles… which is to take on only those things which take us towards our life goals. This takes constant vigilance.

Most time management systems teach that we should prioritize what we do. And on the surface that sounds like good advice. But think about it for a moment. Let’s apply that principle to cleaning your house. You decide that the priorities for cleaning your house are the living room, the dining room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedrooms, the closets, the loft, the cellar and the garage in that order. What is going to happen? You end up with very untidy closets, loft, cellar and garage… that’s what! And that’s how most of us run our lives (and clean our houses).

There are two ways of getting round this:

a. Regard all your house as of equal priority for cleaning and clean each part in turn. That way you may not have quite such a sparkling living room, but you don’t have the drain of knowing about all the horrors that lurk beneath the surface.

b. Realise that cleaning the house is an unprofitable use of your time and pay someone to do it for you.

So the real question is not “What priority is this?” but “Should I be doing this at all?”

If the answer is “Yes”, then the task must be given the necessary time to carry it out. If the answer is “No”, then don’t do it!

The Best Time Management Tool

What do you think is the best time management tool? One which can free up acres of time for you to use as you like… one which can reduce the pressure on you… one which very few people use effectively?

There’s no doubt about the answer in my mind. It’s the ability to say NO.

Most of us take on far too many things, and then we wonder why our lives are filled with rush from one day to another. We can’t say no to our boss, we can’t say no to our friends, we can’t say no to our family, and worst of all we can’t say no to ourselves!

The problem is that our natural tendency is to say Yes because we want to please. We then usually spend a lot of time regretting taking on yet another thing.

So why don’t we try reversing this and make it our natural tendency to say No to any request. If someone asks you to do something make it your first reaction to say NO. If you then decide you really would like to do it that’s fine, but the important thing is to get out of the habit of saying Yes before you are really sure you want to do it.

You can make a game of this. See how many Noes you can collect during a day.And don’t forget to include yourself among the people you say No to!

When you say No it is best not to offer any excuse for doing so. Otherwise you will simply find that you end up defending your excuse, and when it’s been demolished it is then even more difficult to say No. Just make a firm statement on the lines of: “I’m sorry I’d like to help, but I can’t fit that into my priorities at the moment.” And if you are challenged further, just repeat it.