To Lose is to Gain

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Proving the Law

I have made several mentions of the Law of Sacrifice over this week, but thought it might be a good idea to make that a little clearer. See, there are actually several versions of the Law of Sacrifice and although the message differs the overall theme is the same. At its essence, the Law of Sacrifice says that to get something you perceive of greater value, you must give up something of lesser value. The Law is universal and there is no way around it.

Yet every day there are people who look at Get Rich Quick schemes and buy all kinds of pills and programs to lose weight without making any lifestyle changes at all.

People are always looking for ways to “break” the Law of Sacrifice.

But you can’t actually break a law and that’s the problem. You can only prove it. For example, if you jump off the top of a tall building you will prove the Law of Gravity, not break it. It is the same with the Law of Sacrifice. No matter what you do to get around or break the law, in the end you will simply prove it.

Making the Trade

Let’s say, for example, that you find a scheme for getting rich quickly using a program that requires no investment from you but requires that you get money from others that they will lose permanently. You get rich and they get poorer. Yeah, you got rich quick, just like the advertisement said and you didn’t have to put out any money so where’s the Law of Sacrifice in that? Well, you just traded in your moral and ethical standards and your self-esteem to get rich. In other words, you decided that getting rich had greater value than maintaining high morals and ethics and more important than your self-image. You decided that getting rich was more important than preserving you.

You must lose in order to gain and you must make that choice. If I choose to watch TV, or browse the Internet, or any number of other activities other than ones that support my business making money, then I have placed a higher value on those trivial things over the success of my business.

This decision is not always made consciously and other factors weigh in. A big one is RESISTANCE, the intangible beast inside of us that seeks to sabotage any attempts to change anything in our lives. For a good reference on that, I highly recommend you read Do The Work by Steven Pressfield ($5 as a Kindle Book). This manifesto talks all about how to overcome resistance. In addition to resistance, fear enters in as well as lethargy. The result is that while we still make the decision, we are not as conscious about why we make the decision, so changing it becomes very difficult. Once we become aware of why we make the wrong choices, we can better develop systems to help prevent us from doing it again and make better choices going forward.

But in the end, you are gonna have to lose to gain, proving the Law of Sacrifice once again.

Action Plan

Identify at least one place in your life where the you are trying to avoid the Law of Sacrifice. Why? What trade off are you making? How can you make a better choice going forward?

The Myth of Doing It All

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Having It All Together … Right!

You can probably think back and remember someone who seemed to always have it together. They were involved in everything and always seemed to excel at everything they did. They never slowed down; they served on committees, organized events, raised 55 children and spent quality time with each of them, worked two full-time jobs, volunteered at the local shelter, raised money to fight some disease, wrote 100 books, and has the happiest spouse in the world. They seem to have it all and have it all together.

In reality, there are parts of their lives that are neglected. I exaggerated the description above intentionally because that’s what we often do when we think about those high achieving types. We draw a picture of what we think someone is like and we enhance it. We make them bigger than they are. Then we compare ourselves to them, imaging that they have everything in life and it’s perfect while our lives are hollow shells full of meaningless events and a cesspool of problems. It’s unfair!

Reality is Not Perfection

It’s also unreal. The truth is that people who seem to have it together are not living perfect lives. They may be accomplishing more than we are right now, but that’s not because they have it all together. It’s not because they are necessarily more talented than we are; in fact, often they may be less talented. And they have problems too, they just don’t share them around as much as some others do.

But what they really have that helps them succeed is an good understanding and effective application of the Law of Sacrifice. You must give up to go up. You have to let go of some things in order to have other better things.

That’s a scary prospect for many of us and perhaps even a little depressing. When we think about sacrifice or giving up, we picture big things. We can become a CEO but our family life is non-existent. Again, it’s that penchant for exaggeration. And it’s also good old resistance finding other reasons to keep us from making any changes.

Simplicity in Sacrifice

Sacrifice is actually pretty simple. You actually look at giving up lesser things in order to get greater things. You sacrifice a couple hours of television time every day in order to read a personal growth book. You sacrifice a few free evenings each week to work on a master’s degree. When you learn to sacrifice, what you are really doing is simply learning to

Say No to the Good So You Can Say Yes to the Best

My father excelled in the credit union business during his career. He was President and CEO of several credit unions over the span of many years and also was a high demand consultant to credit unions nationwide for many years after that. To get there, he had to spend long hours working, gave up evenings to earn a GED and then a degree. Yet, he was never an absentee husband or father. He coached Drum Corps and Little League. He took us on trips. He went to dance recitals for my sister. He had to sacrifice to reach the level he achieved, but the sacrifices were to give up lesser things to get those greater things. He did not give up one great thing to achieve another.

Yes, you have to sacrifice to get where you want to go. But the good news is that the choice is yours.

Action Plan

What little things are you willing to give up to reach your goals?
What systems can you put into place to make sure you don’t give up the wrong things?

Why Multitasking Sucks…And Wastes Time

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Multitasking Comes to a Screeching Halt

About a year ago, I was driving my son and I home from a scout meeting. We turned through an intersection and proceeded a few hundred yards forward I looked down to change the radio station. At the same time, the car in front of me decided suddenly that they wanted to turn right into a parking lot and hit their brakes. Lots of noise later, they have a beat up rear-end and my car is totaled. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

A Do Everything World

We all do it. Folding laundry and watching TV. Driving and changing the radio station. Working on the laptop while talking to a co-worker on the phone. Sitting in a meeting and sending an email. Trying to do more than one thing at the same time because we don’t think there are enough hours in the day. It’s called Multitasking and it is the biggest time waster of all!

“Wait”, you might say, “multitasking is a critical part of functioning in work and life today! How can you say that it is a time waster?”

Because it is.

Your Bad Multitasking Self

The idea is that if we are multitasking then we are working on multiple things at the same time, juggling everything and keeping things going. But that’s not what happens. In most cases what happens is it simply means that you are doing multiple things badly.

It doesn’t help that multitasking is encourage by many employers today. First, many companies advertise jobs where they specifically state in the job requirements that they want someone who can effectively multitask. I guess my question is, how exactly do they measure that? Secondly, with layoffs and streamlining, employers tell the survivors they must learn to do more with less, which unfortunately includes less staff. But not less work. While they don’t explicitly say it, they expect you to pick up all the slack and still do it within the same time frames. So your choices at either to put in twice as much time or “multitask”.

The Case Against Multitasking

There are many reasons why multitasking simply doesn’t work. The reasons run from the logical and practical to the medical and psychological. We’ll cover just a few.

First, understand that what you are doing is not actually multitasking. It is actually just task-switching. What it reminds me of is Microsoft Windows operating system on computers. Early versions of Windows offered a way to jump between tasks. You could still only run one thing at a time, but you could jump between applications. That was called task-switching. It wasn’t until later versions where Windows would allow you to actually run multiple applications at the same time. What we do when we allegedly multitask is the first one – we are simply task-switching. Problem is, we aren’t a computer with an operating system designed to do that, so we have a lot more trouble than Windows did jumping from one task to another. And that’s saying something.

Other reasons:

Multitasking does not increase productivity, it decreases it. There is research to suggest that multitasking actually reduces productivity by as much as 40%.
Studies show that task-switching rapidly actually increases the time it takes to complete a task.
Task-switching slows you down because you have to re-align yourself each time you jump to the next task. That means reaction times are slower, so if you are performing any task that requires quick reaction and reflex your performance suffers greatly.
Evidence shows more mistakes are made when multitasking instead of focused work.
Multitasking is stressful. When multi-tasking in a fast-paced environment, your heart rate increases and stays higher longer than normal. There is also emotional stress caused by the fallout of mistakes and failure while multitasking.
We are designed to focus on one thing at a time. Again, lots of research to support this. Health Magazine cites a 2013 University of Utah study that found the better you thought you were at multitasking, the worse you actually were.

In summary, you suck at multitasking. And so do I and so does everyone else.

So, if you were doing something else while you were reading this, stop it until you finish.

Now leave your comments and thoughts.

Okay, now you’re done. Go back to that other thing.

Why You Waste 12 Hours a Day of Your Precious Time

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Too Much Time on Trivia

Spending a little time doing research on this, I wanted to find out what the top time wasters we use are. While opinions vary there are some items that popped up on pretty much everyone’s list and you probably know which ones. That said, let’s look at some of the top daily time wasters and how much time they take.

FACEBOOK
Is it any surprise that this shows up on the list? For many people, their world revolves around Facebook and similar social networks. On a Marketing Charts website article, they report that Americans 18-64 spend an average of 2-3.5 hours per day on social networks. The number slides higher depending on age group and other demographics. Interestingly, business owners spend more time on social networks than non-business owners. In many workplaces, they thought that they had managed this problem early on by blocking social networks. That worked until people got smartphones with Facebook apps. Let’s call it 3.5 hours a day.
EMAIL
Again, no big surprise. What do most people do first thing when they get to work or boot up their computer? Check their email. We check it again an hour later. And then again an hour after that. And again. And again. Many even check it just before they call it a day. It becomes really time-consuming when we receive mailings from a variety of sources with people who want some of our time and/or money. We gotta filter through all that and then read the “urgent” stuff. Another 3 hours per day.
TELEVISIONReally?! But it is so educational! (yes, that was sarcasm) Many will tell you that you should find an alternative, like the wonderful recording features on many systems today. But that just means you will watch it later. Either way you are wasting time. Not too long ago our TV went out and was out for a couple of weeks. We found other things to do. Most peaceful two weeks in a long time. Still wondering why I fixed it. Average of 5 hours per day.

Wow! Let’s stop there. Just in those three items we have 11.5 hours of time spent out of our day. All those things are useful but none of them are critical; if we spend any more than an hour total on any of them we are wasting time. And this does not take into account the time we spend on other things like instant messaging or texting, pointless meetings, various interruptions during the day, generally surfing the web, and procrastinating. But there is one that I think is the most critical, first because I think it is the source of most of the others and second because of the effect it has on us overall. And that time waster is multi-tasking. We will talk about that on Friday.

Get Time Back

Knowledge is great, but action is better. How can we manage this a little better?

If Facebook is not part of your work, then you should invoke a no social networking rule during the work day. Chances are your company does not permit it and even doing it on your smartphone during business hours violates company policy. Besides that, it’s just not right. If you simply must, check it during lunch elsewhere.
If Facebook IS a part of your work, as it is for many small businesses and entrepreneurs, then block time out for it on the schedule in both the morning and afternoon, each one with a 30-minute limit.
Do not, I repeat DO NOT, check your email first thing in the morning. Save it until mid-morning after you have had the opportunity to eat a few frogs. Create a tagging system for marking emails. When you view your inbox, scan the messages and quickly and use your tagging system to mark them as urgent, critical, important, or not important. Urgent emails you respond to immediately, critical emails within a few hours, important emails by the end of the day, and not important emails either get filed or deleted. That allows you to get through it within 30 minutes each time, likely even less. Another thing: nothing stays in the inbox. Act on it, file it, or delete it.
This one is easy. Make TV time earned. Works for children, it will work for you. Half-hour segments of TV time is earned by meeting objectives or goals. Or do it by program if you wish. Either way, the idea is that you don’t watch TV unless you have earned it by accomplishment. Better yet, just keep it off and find something else to entertain you. Delegate the time to personal growth. Read a book or watch a webinar. Remember the caveat

Really successful people have large libraries and small televisions.

No matter whether you work for a large or small company, are a business owner, network marketer, run a charity, or manage a household; getting things done is a matter of managing the things that can waste your time. Knowing what they are and developing systems to handle them in definitive periods of time will go a long way towards making your day more productive and helping you find time for things you enjoy.

Action Plan

Buy a journal or notebook and document your time from the moment you wake up until you go to bed. Do this for at least three days but preferably a week. Include everything, no matter how insignificant it might seem. What you want is a good idea of how you are spending ALL your time.
Total up the time you spend per day on non-critical things like the activities above. Remember, social networking is not essential unless you use it to market yourself or your business IS social networking.
Create time limits and block out time on the schedule for those activities. Make sure that the beginning of the day is spent doing critical activities for the day, especially the ones you don’t really want to do or procrastinate on (eating the bullfrogs).
Follow the new schedule for 3-5 days and again document your activities. How much free time did you discover? Were you more productive and effective?

Three Ways to See the Value of Your Time

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Time Wasting

You are wasting time.

We all do to an extent, but the more successful people minimize wasted time and know how to get the most out of the same 24 hours daily that you and I have. Yes, many work long hours, that is true. Yes, many work weekends as well, that also is true. However, there are lots of people who work long hours including weekends and don’t get near as much done. It’s a matter of getting more value from your time because you understand the value of your time.

In my postings on social networks today, I shared a quote from M. Scott Peck. Peck was a psychiatrist and also an author. His most famous book is The Road Less Traveled. A lot of what he wrote about over the years was fulfillment and he was a big advocate of leading a disciplined life. He also believed in understanding your worth. The quote I shared today was

Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until your value your time, you won’t do anything valuable with it.

Understanding the value of our time begins with understanding the value of those things, including us, that take up that time. Here are a few considerations to help you understand the value of your time:

My friend Kevin McCarthy developed the concept of the On-Purpose Person (you can buy the book on Amazon). The foundation behind it is that we have to determine what our purpose is and once we understand that we have to plan our actions to make sure they are in alignment with our purpose. In other words, you must be On-Purpose. Kevin uses a light switch as an avatar to remind you to evaluate whether what you are doing is on purpose or off purpose. While sometimes off-purpose can be a good thing, what we look to do is make more of our actions on-purpose. So, in other words, when you understand your purpose, you attach value to yourself and your time. Being On-Purpose is making sure that you are doing something valuable with that time.
If you lean more towards the pragmatic, you can do the math. If you calculate out the dollar value of your time, then you understand better how much that time is costing you each time you waste it. There are lots of internet sites to show you how to calculate it out, but the simplest one I found was on The Simple Dollar. You figure out your take home pay from last year and subtract out all expenses associated with working, such as child care, transportation costs, etc. Divide that by the actual number of hours you devote to working each year, including commuting time and all. That gives you an actual dollar value per hour. So everytime you look at an activity, evaluate it by how much it is costing you using that figure. You may find yourself leaving out a lot more less productive uses of you time.
Be both sides of the customer/business relationship. As a customer, how do you feel when service in the restaurant is slow, when the doctor makes you sit 30 minutes in the waiting room, when the repair shop doesn’t have your car ready when promised, when someone promises to deliver something to you by a certain time and then doesn’t come through. You probably, if you are like most, display anything from displeasure to outright rage. Someone has not valued your time and you WILL NOT TOLERATE IT. But you do the same to yourself. When you choose to put off productive tasks, to pick activities that look busy but actually don’t get you any closer to your goals or tasks, or simply choose to do something entirely unproductive, then you are treating yourself like that restaurant did, like the doctor’s office, like the repair shop, or the dozens of others who may have let you down today. Insist on quality productive time out of yourself and believe in the value of your time.