Do Your Best With Time

Here's another guest entry from my good friend and fraternity brother David Spiegel. If you know anything about the East Coast you'll get a sense for how his day went. If you ever struggle with managing time, some of this may sound familiar. As Dave says, we can't really manage time -- it's what we do with it that matters.

Now, let's hear what Dave has to share:

In a week where I have dedicated myself to regaining control over my time, I have come to realize that I am trying to accomplish something impossible. Time is time. Every day has exactly 1440 minutes to it and no matter what we do,we can not create any more of it.

So instead of creating more time we spend our energy trying to make better use of those precious minutes each day.We attempt to manage time.

Well guess what. We have no control over time. Time itself can not be managed. We can not speed it up or slow it down.

Do you know why a watched pot never boils? It's a time thing!

The only thing we can manage is ourselves and what we do with the time allotted each day.

Yesterday was a prime example. I had to be in New York. Without traffic, the trip from my driveway to mid-town where I wanted to be is roughly 18 minutes.I knew I would need about 30 minutes in the City and then blow right back to NJ.I carved out a 2 hour window mid day when I knew morning rush hour would be over and well before evening rush hour.It was a great plan.

Unfortunately that carved out 2 hours became 5.5 hours before I knew it. No big deal. I made adjustments . I had my phone with me and I could accomplish some things sitting in traffic.

Not really. At some point,my phone died. That was shortly after Susan was bit by a dog and had to get treated.Where was I ,her dutiful caring husband? 8 miles away sitting in traffic with no real means of being of any assistance. Truth be told she is fine and it was handled. The point being I could control neither the time or the situation. What I could control was myself and my response to all of this.

It is 4:10 in the morning on this June 12th How am I Doin' Friday. I am doing great as I prepare to make the best of the 1440 minutes allotted to me for the day.I have a seminar at 8:30 in the morning.I have a funeral at 11 , an hour south of the seminar which ends at 10.How long can a funeral possibly take?

Well ,as long as it needs to.Realistically, that may be the extent of what I can attend to today. I have no idea. I can plan to allocate another two hour window . I think by now we realize that will only end in frustration.That is why I am writing at 4 in the morning.One more accomplishment. One more item off of the agenda.By the way ,since I first sat down to write I have used up 34 minutes, approximately 2.5% of my day's total minutes.

I have a business partner in the UK whose work day started a short while ago. I will now jump on a call with him trying to recapture some of those precious minutes, or at least make better use of them.

All of this brings me to one remarkable conclusion. When I spend any amount of time worrying about not having enough time or how much time I am wasting, I am in fact creating my own stress and participating in an activity that I am so desperately trying to end. It can be a vicious cycle.

So I will do my best to do my best with the 1440 minutes I have for today. By the way,since I last checked I used up another 1%.

Have a Fantastic Day!

Shabbat Shalom!

David
Remember to say thank you....It pays dividends

Comments

One Kind of Choice

It is not always the answer, but surprisingly often it is: It's easier to hire a motivated worker than it is to motivate an unmotivated one. That's not the end of the story. It could be great hiring advice though. Whatever the technical skills are for people you are interviewing to hire, be sure to ask some questions about motivation that can't be answered with a yes or no. Questions like: When were you the most motivated in your life? What kinds of work motivate you? What's your approach to a work day when for one reason or another you don't feel very motivated? If you had been here for one week, what would we see that shows us how motivated you are? Start there, and follow-up with more questions. Give each candidate time to convince you whether or not they will bring motivation to your organization. You can teach people almost anything, but it's always easier if they are already motivated. -- doug smith

What to Blame

It's better to blame the product than it is to blame the customer because you cannot fix the customer. -- doug smith

Win The Game

It would be nice to win the game. But, do you ever feel like you're in a game that keeps shifting the rules and making it easy to make progress but impossible to win? You've probably noticed lots of game elements creeping into service. Points, incentives, expiring coupons followed by new expiring coupons, leader-boards...on an on a relentless attack on service comes from playing a game designed -- you guessed it -- to maximize profit. If the customer is happy, fine, but the point is to make money. Not to put too fine a point on it but that's a lousy point. What if there could be something better? What if customer service excellence became playing a game where the customer always wins and that makes you happy? You don't have to. "give away the store" to achieve a winning game for all of the players. Just stop stacking the rules against customers and watch how much more they will want to do business with you. -- doug smith

Strong Self-Esteem

How do the people on your team feel about themselves? How about you? How do you feel about yourself? Self-esteem matters. The way we see ourselves influences the work that we do. If you want healthy, vibrant, vital work from your team, why not make sure that the way that they think about themselves is strong? There are few things stronger than healthy self-esteem. To strengthen self-esteem among your team members: Appreciate good performance by providing specific compliments Spend time talking one-on-one with team members just to let them talk about what interests them Smile The list is longer than that of course, but start with those three things and you'll like the results. And that is good for YOUR self-esteem, isn't it? -- doug smith

Don't Jump!

I do it. You've probably done it, too. It gets us into trouble misinterpreting and reaching false conclusions. Slow down. Ease up from that jump. Stop that jump to conclusions and you'll avoid many big falls. -- doug smith

Side Hustle Blues?

As a leader, do you ever sing the side-hustle blues? That's when your team seems distracted because they're tired from working multiple jobs. When I worked in food service it was all around me: team members who were already wrestling with variable schedules and also juggling multiple jobs. Maybe because they enjoyed their other gigs -- like the musicians, actors, artists, and writers on the team. Or maybe because otherwise they couldn't make ends meet so there were the side-hustles in driving, delivering, retailing, and add-on food service shifts. People are wonderful and their potential is unlimited but their physical selves are not unlimited. Which can bring on the side hustle blues when people are tough to schedule, hard to motivate, and just plain tired. You'll never eliminate the gigs that team members enjoy, nor should you. Those are not the ones really sapping the energy as much as those that they are in only for the money. Employees won't need an only-for-t...

Focused Truth

Focused leaders have zero time for inauthentic messages. They tell the truth unconditionally and insist on the truth consistently. Be a leader who can handle the truth. Be a leader who tells the truth. -- doug smith

Try Not Lying

High performance leaders communicate without lying. That's harder than it sounds. So hard, that hardly anyone ever does it. -- doug smith

Keep Reading

How many books do you read each year? I'm not keeping score And as a full disclosure you should probably know that part of what I do is sell books and learning resources. Even if I didn't, though, I am a big believer in continuing to learn. Read. Experiment. Explore. Talk about it. Try things. Watch videos. Listen to audios. Keep learning. The world is changing so fast, how will you keep up? How do you get the training the need when you're not being offered the training you need? Keep reading. You don't have to read every book cover to cover to find great value in it. I used to think that if I started reading a book that I'd have to finish it. That got me slugging thru some poor material. Now I know that you can glean a lot from a book by scanning it, skimming it, reading what you need and leaving the rest for another time. I do still read books cover to cover (some more than once!) AND I read a lot of books for what is relevant to me right now. Howe...

It's More Than Talk

Every conversation is an opportunity to make someone's life better. Take the chance. -- doug smith

High Performance Leadership

Search This Blog