example for the stroll down memory lane that I’d like you to take.
Now it’s your turn!
I promise we won’t go too deep into self-assessments. (If you truly want to learn more about yourself and how you best operate, feel free to obtain a copy of my ROAD MAP to Get Organized book.) But it is important to acknowledge where you’ve been, what you’ve accomplished, and what you’d like to focus on.
You can take a shortcut and just answer the following questions mentally. But if you’d like deeper learning to happen, I highly encourage you to record your thoughts here in this book, in the activity guide download, on a digital device in the notes section, or in a separate journal.
BACKGROUND CHECK: WHAT’S YOUR COVER STORY?
There are no right or wrong answers; it’s simply interesting to know these things about yourself. So dive on in!
• What were you like as a kid?
• What are you like now as an adult?
• What are your hobbies, passions, and/or interests?
• What do you do for a living?
• What led you to decide to start your own business or take the job you currently hold?
• Do you see anything from your past and/or anything from your interests and hobbies that ties in with what you do now?
Who arrrrrrrrrrre you?
— Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
Again, there’s no right or wrong; it’s simply interesting to know these things about yourself and discover any patterns in your life. Sometimes we can discover that we’ve allowed the same types of challenges to repeatedly knock us off track. Knowing this helps us to become more aware and to avoid those downfalls in the future. And by answering the previous questions, we can discover what we love and what makes us tick, which — as we’ll learn in part 1 — will help us to make better decisions about how we’ll use our time.
• What hobbies, passions, or interests do you wish you had more time for?
• What are your accomplishments?
• Were the accomplishments you listed all personal, all business, or a combination?
If all the accomplishments you listed were personal, you might find that you tend to focus more on the personal part of your life, and you’ll have to kick up the amount of attention you pay to the business part of your life if you want to perform at a higher level there. If all the accomplishments you listed were business related, you might need to do the opposite and pay more attention to the personal part of your life.
This book will help you to decide how much time you want to devote to each. As I mentioned earlier (and will continue to do throughout this book), I’m a huge proponent of having a personal life. If you’re quite content being a workaholic and not having a personal life, no problema. But you probably wouldn’t have picked up this book if you were happy with that.
• What’s on your bucket list?
• What is your definition of a great life?
• Based on your definition, do you have a great life? If your answer is “Yes,” kick up your heels and give yourself a high five! If your answer is “Not yet,” how close are you to it?
Getting specific about the kind of life you want to have and the personal accomplishments you want to attain will help you to carefully guard your time. When you protect your time, you’ll be able to achieve the balance that you seek between work life and personal life.
That wasn’t so bad, right? It’s just a little exercise to get your brain juices flowing. While we shouldn’t dwell on the past, sometimes a little historical recon, combined with thoughts about the present path we’re on and future paths we might like to take, helps us to figure out what our next steps in life are.
Get ready to do some mind shifting. You’re about to embark upon a glorious mission: your Time Management Revolution. Godspeed!
Mind Management Is the Key to Time Management
1 It’s All in Your Head: End the Overwhelm by Adjusting Your Mind-Set
The fear of clients not returning for more business, the worry of running out of time for anything and everything, the urgency to burn the midnight oil in order to finish the next task on your never-ending to-do list…these things don’t work. That’s why you’re reading this.
As businesspeople who want to succeed, we can so easily get sucked into the mentality of “I must do this task or project for my job or business, or else I’ll lose out!” What if we turned the tables around and thought that way about our personal priorities? “I should spend time supporting my health or family or marriage, or else I’ll lose out!” Will saying yes to that “one more thing” for work support your priorities in life?
If you read nothing else in this book, but you understand this strategy, this concept — “I should spend time supporting my health or family or marriage, or else I’ll lose out!” — and live by it, know this:
You will be productive and have a life outside of your business or your job.
Time management.
Productivity.
Happiness.
Success.
Peace.
It’s all about mind-set and mind management.
It truly is…all in your head.
A MONSTER LESSON
Have you seen the movie Aliens lately? It’s the second movie in the franchise. Sigourney Weaver stars as Ellen Ripley and kicks some serious space-monster booty! Ripley wakes up after hurtling through space back toward her home planet, spending 57 years in a deep sleep after escaping from a nasty, slimy alien beast on a colony planet. After her recovery, the powers that be ask her to return to the planet with a crew of Marines because the current settlers on the planet have stopped responding. Hmmm…I wonder what happened to them.
Fast-forward to aliens with razor-sharp teeth, covered in slime, chomping down on one Marine at a time, until they’re down to just six people in command central. Bill Paxton’s character, Private Hudson, has been whining the entire time about everything that’s going wrong. “We’re gonna die!” “What are we gonna do?” “There’s no way out!”
Ripley takes a deep breath, looks around at everyone, and calmly says to Hudson, “Now I want you to get on a terminal and call
