Chapter 42. I’d Love to Control My Time, but I Don’t Know What to Say to People
Chapter 43. I Never Stick to My Time Management Plan
Conclusion: Be an Agent of Change in Your Time Management Revolution
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Your Time Management Revolution Starts Here!
Julie is quite well known in her field and is often sought to give lectures or develop programs for large organizations and corporations. Despite her services being in such high demand, she felt she had done a great job in setting office hours. She went into her office only from 8:30 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon, Monday through Friday, so that she could drop her kids off at school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon, and then take them to practices or games. She carried her smartphone with her at all times, so that she could always squeeze in a little work here and there — while waiting in a lobby, while standing in line at the grocery store, or after the kids went to bed. She could also sneak in a peek on the weekends while the kids were running around the yard or swimming.
One early evening at her son Ben’s baseball game, she felt her phone vibrate in her lap. She had just received an email from one of her best (i.e., a top-dollar account) clients, who had a question about an upcoming meeting. Julie felt she needed to respond to her client’s email immediately. Ben picked up a baseball bat in the dugout and tentatively walked toward the batter’s box as Julie began typing her quick response.
The next thing she knew, everyone in the bleachers around her jumped up and started whooping, hollering, and whistling. The crowd was going wild!
“Oh my gosh! What’s happening?” she thought as she typed frantically, as fast as her thumbs would allow.
She hit the send button and finally stood up to see what the ruckus was all about.
Julie had just missed her son’s first home run. She was crushed.
And so was he.
“If I can just get this one more promotion, we’ll be set …”
When I was a junior in college, I was introduced to “Dr. Say.” Now retired, he’d spent his career as an agent with a law enforcement bureau. He did occasional contract work for them now. A mutual friend told him that I was interested in going to work for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), and he agreed to meet with me to tell me about how to prepare for the application process, as well as the job ahead.
I was relieved to learn that my research about the application process had been quite accurate. (Keep in mind, this was in the days before the internet.) I knew what qualifications — both academic and physical — I needed to meet, and I was fully prepared to work toward them.
When we started talking about the job itself, I couldn’t contain my excitement. He shared a few examples of cases and the work involved. I was in heaven! This was exactly the kind of adrenaline-filled life I wanted to live. Move over, Adam-12, S.W.A.T., Cagney and Lacey, and Miami Vice. My lifelong dream of being an undercover cop or agent was on the verge of coming true! It was going to be my turn to bust criminals.
But then we started talking about life outside of the job. More accurately, we started talking about the lack of life. He told me to look around his condo. There were no pictures of people. There was very little decor. In my haste to pick his brain, I had neglected to realize that I was not in a happy environment.
Dr. Say asked me, “Do you know why I’m an old man sitting alone in a condo with no sounds, no life?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“It’s because I chose work over my family. I was afraid to say no or request an alternate assignment. I was too fearful to try to get a different job. My wife and kids made their choice, too. They left me because I was never there for them.”
I was stunned and speechless. To the casual observer, he’d lived an exciting life helping capture criminals. But behind the scenes, life was far from perfect.
Dr. Say did earn every promotion he sought and every raise he wanted. He worked his tail off to have a stellar career and make a better life for his family. The painful irony of it is that the price he paid was the very thing he cherished, his family.
What he shared with me had such a profound impact that he literally changed my life forever. At that time I had no plans to get married, but I knew that I wanted to have a personal life and happiness. To this day, I still think of him and how his decisions about time had affected his life.
This next example I’d like to share with you is directed toward entrepreneurs, but given the experiences shared with me by all the dedicated, hardworking, driven employees I’ve worked with, I know that everyone will relate.
When you go into business, you do so because you have a passion or a calling. You have figured out the love of your life — not the person, but that thing you love to do, that thing that makes you happy to wake up every morning. And you discover a way to make money doing it. Or maybe you didn’t have a passion, but you or someone you know came up with a grand plan — a surefire way to make a ton of money. In Tricia’s case, it was the former.
When Tricia started her eco-friendly soap business, she didn’t worry about productivity or staying organized day in and day out. She was primarily concerned about hustling after clients and generating enough revenue by the end of the month to pay the rent, pay the utilities, buy groceries, and maybe have a few bucks left to splurge on something fun. She quite often had thumb-twiddling time while she was waiting for the phone to ring, hoping the next caller would be her cash-cow client.
As Tricia learned the ropes and figured out what tasks she needed to complete in order to build her business and be more successful, she started to increase her contact base. Her reach was growing. People had heard about her. Customers started rolling in. Money finally arrived. She had tasted success and wanted more. She thought she’d figured out what she needed to do: I need to double up on what I’ve done to get here! She went into overdrive with networking, marketing, customer service, picking up even more clients, and making even more money.
Tricia, like the typical entrepreneur, never started the business saying, “These are the systems I’ll put in place in order to stay organized.” Or “These are the processes I’ll use in order to be productive and maximize my time throughout the day.” After all, how can you already have systems when you start out if you’re not sure what you’re supposed to be doing, and you don’t even have clients?
Her schedule got so insanely busy that she didn’t know which way was up. The line between her business life and personal life got so blurred that she didn’t remember when it had actually existed. Her day became so full of phone calls, emails, meetings, and to-do lists that on some days, she woke up and didn’t even know where to begin.
Tricia
