The deeper I go into this series of blogs on "itudes" the more it reveals to me.
Longitude follows Latitude as night follows day and nothing is truly positioned without knowing the accurate longitude. This is calculated by the position of the sun and a chronometer – a very accurate timepiece. (actually all of this is done today using satellites and the global positioning system which is built into your mobile phone so indeed big brother watches you, or at least your phone)
But I digress.
This timepiece measures the passing of the minutes and seconds incredibly accurately allowing us to work out our longitude based on the stars or the sun’s position and the known latitude and the time.
What you may ask does that have to do with a business? Well it is this
You have many resources that are at your disposal. If you lose money you make more, If you lose a customer or a supplier you go and replace them, If you lose a team member you recruit someone new. Pretty much anything is replaceable except one thing: Time. To bring all of this to the point What I have learned is that we need to manage time aggressively because every wasted second is lost. And it is never coming back.
So the time that you invest in your business should be the right amount and should be of the right quality. It needs to be used to its best advantage for the business to produce the result you laid out in your business plan. Phrases like manage your time for greatest productivity or Give the greatest amount of time to the most profitable ideas are bandied about a lot but are meaningless until you grasp how precious time is.
The average Irish life is just 28,835 days long. Assuming we do all the normal things like sleep and eat etc the number of days we work is about 3500 in 8 hour lumps so it is spread over 10000 days The only way you can add time to the working week is to take it away from somewhere else. Sleep? Recreation? Time spent with people who matter? That is the choice you make every day – unconsciously. So bring that decision into your awareness and Value the moments.
We get to just under 3000 days to do those things that are of value to us. How many of those have I already used up? Shouldn’t our business serve to extend that number of days?
So to get to the nugget of this blog I suggest measure everything on the scale of important and urgent. Whatever is both gets first priority and put everything into the appropriate timeslot and only fill 4 days a week the 5th will fill up all by itself with no help from you.
A few final thoughts:
- If you invest 24 7 365 for 5 years in your business one of the rewards you are likely to get is a heart attack before you are 40. So while you must have commitment Drive ambition and all of that it is about the quality of the time you invest in the business not the quantity. I am still saying 120% commitment but I am also suggesting put in the hours in such a way as to give yourself real quality of life.
- The business is there to serve you. To provide you and your loved ones with a quality in your lives not to be an end in itself or an escape from life
- Finally Segment your life. Put boundaries on your working life and mark the longitude of where you are towards your life goals as well as your business goals every day.
- Allow this to create a focus and having noted the latitude we talked about last time note your progress. Then you know you are navigating closer and closer to the goal you have chosen. I hope that goal is a happy success filled life.