OK, you’ve got your work day all scheduled out to the last minute. You’ve gotten rid of distractions. Now it’s just matter of getting to work and getting it done. Right?
If you said yes, think again.
“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work” Peter Drucker, management expert
“It’s not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised; the mosquito swatted” Marie O’Conner
You’re starting to get the message, aren’t you?
Yes, above we’re talking about motivation and the why of it all, but there’s even more. So let’s get into it.
Activity is not directly related to accomplishment. You’ve seen those people who run around with a lot of energy, like they’re afraid that if they slow down someone will scold them, “Hey! You aren’t working. Get moving!” Work for them simply means activity, usually at very high speed. But sometimes in order to do a job well one needs to slow down, way down.
In teaching critical thinking to students and clients, I often tell them that they need to use their gear box, say five gears. When reading, researching, problem solving, one first must know what to look for-the why. It’s putting questions to the problem at hand. You look for key points expressed in key words and phrases and when you hit them, down shift. It’s not so much about speed but results.
Results count. Just being busy does not directly equate with success. In my college classes, I’ve had students say, “But professor, I’ve worked real hard.” I tell them that effort may be rewarded in school but in the real world it’s results. Have you met the requirements? Beethoven had to work much harder than Mozart to get to a finished product. If success and achievement were merely based on effort there would be a lot of people listening to Beethoven’s incomplete scores to great applause.
But there’s more. You’ve got to manage your thinking, energy, behavior, and attitudes. Let’s deal with the last two.
School is basically about knowledge found in two key intelligences: logic / math and linguistics. But what about attitudes and skills? They often get ignored to the detriment of many students who graduate lacking critically in areas they’ll need in order to optimize success. Here we’re just going to focus on attitude or how to deal with one’s emotions or behavior. It’s been revealed time and again that controlling one’s behavior via proper attitude awareness is the cornerstone of success. Knowledge is a tool, but it fails without the ability to handle emotions during trying times: stress, anger, fear and so on. What’s a tool without being able to wield it with accuracy and strength on a consistent basis?
So you may have had a nice schedule going there, your day, days, weeks planed out in advance, but, as is said, life happens. What about all those days you didn’t get enough sleep? Or all the times you felt uninspired? Or dealing with issues related to spouse, children, friends? Financial issues? Or what about when your day doesn’t go as planned because of delays, technical issues, people not showing up? On and on it goes. Being able to get through these times is what the successful are all about.
Here’s an example to help clarify the point I’m trying to make. 450 men from Somerville, Massachusetts were followed over a 40-year period. Two-thirds had learning deficiencies. One-third were considered deficient in IQ. However, the majority were successful because of their superior EI or emotional intelligence-ability to control the self.
Here’s a more famous, if you will, example. Consider the pressure Abraham Lincoln was under during the Civil War. He was not well liked by many and received a lot of flack, to say the least. Some wanted him not only out of office but dead. So what did he do? This man who was not well versed in war worked sixteen hour days seven days a week studying, under great pressure, anxiety, and little sleep. But he pulled through, didn’t he? He was certainly motivated, no problem there. Maintaining a scheduling was the least of his worries. And even though he did not have a deficient IQ, it was his really his EI that saw him through the difficult times.
Now, you may not be saving a country, but what do you do if, say for instance, you want to write a book because by doing so it will get your business off the ground positioning you as an expert in your field. But you have a family, business to build, and you need time to eat and sleep. Well, here is not only where time management comes into play but self-control, most importantly.
Now, I can drive the point home more deeply by stating that the above it’s not simply some arbitrary, made-up example. It comes from a real life situation. Mine. But I was not only able to write the one book mentioned above, but four books in a little under three years while teaching three college classes, building a business, and running a family of five. Well I don’t run it, the family that is, my wife does, but I need to do my share. So it really comes down to much more than mere time management. Yes, certainly I had the nice schedule and mental acuity but there was more to it. Let me digress for a moment to drive the point home.
According to Donald Trump (even though you might not like him, you can’t deny his success), he advises that to be successful one needs to be focused and work fast. Now, I know I mentioned above that it’s not all about speed, but when speed is needed you’ve got to have it at hand. My wife often marvels at how quick I get things done around the house. How can I get something done in an hour that takes her all day? (her words, here) Truthfully, I hate cleaning the house. There are a thousand other things I’d rather be doing. Like sleeping. But my motivation to do other enjoyable things is just what I need to move and move fast.
But that’s cleaning the house, not my vocation. Regarding vocation, or something that you’d like to make your vocation, if you aren’t motivated, if you don’t burn with passion like a house-on-fire, then your chance of having the energy to work fast and well-focused is not there. My burning passion to write, get my business going, get my message out is a five-alarm fire. Therein you will find not only speed, but razor-sharp focus, and everything else needed to get the job done quickly and efficiently.
So now that you’ve got that schedule in place, attitude adjusted, and you’re motivated, what else is there?
How about your health? Got milk?
OK, actually you may want to avoid milk, for many reasons I won’t go into here. But you do need to take care of your physical being, for sure. You need regular exercise, your vegetables, fruits, vitamins and minerals, sleep and such. Personally, I don’t drink coffee, alcohol, soda, sport drinks, milk (there it is), but I do drink oxidized, high ph water, hit the gym and walk regularly, so forth and so on. I’m not so great on the sleep, but when I need to I catch up. Remember, not enough sleep on a regular basis can kill you. A friend of mine, a former model / actress turned reporter, was told by her doctor that if she didn’t get more sleep during one particularly busy reporting schedule it would eventually kill her. Advice well taken; she’s alive and well to prove it.
It’s also critical to have people who support you, who you can emotionally unwind with: spouse, friends, children, etc. Having such people around are great renew -ers. Find out what recharges your battery. You may have to go on long, quite walks, dance, get away for a while, whatever it takes.
Now I could have made this a standard time management article, but you don’t need me to tell you to invest in a planner, set intermediate dates, check for schedule conflicts, schedule flextime, group items together for better execution, shift priorities, and so on. No, you can get that 20%. I’ll deal with the 80% that matters.
Here’s to your well managed, impassioned, fast moving success.
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