Archive for Today Matters
How does today impact tomorrow’s success?
Posted by: | CommentsEveryone wants to have a good day, but not many people know what a good day looks like – much less how to create one. And even fewer people understand how the way you live today impacts your tomorrow.
Have you ever asked someone what he was doing and heard him respond, “Oh, I’m just killing time”? Have you ever really thought about that statement? A person might as well say, “I’m throwing away my life,” because, as Benjamin Franklin asserted, time is “the stuff life is made of.” Today is the only time we have within our grasp, yet many people let it slip through their fingers. They recognize neither today’s value nor its potential.
If we want to do something with our lives, then we must focus on today. That’s where tomorrow’s success lies. But how do you win today? How do you make today a great day instead of one that falls to pieces? Here’s the missing piece:
The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.
It all comes down to what you do today. Now I don’t mean your “to-do” list. Nor am I asking you to adopt a particular kind of calendar or computer program to manage your time. I’m focusing on something bigger. I want you to embrace what may be a whole new approach to life:
Make the decision once, then manage it daily.
There are only a handful of important decisions that people need to make in their entire lifetimes. Does that surprise you? Most people complicate life and get bogged down in decision-making. My goal has always been to make it as simple as possible. I’ve boiled the big decisions down to twelve things. Once I’ve made those twelve decisions, all I have to do is manage how I’ll follow through on them.
If you make decisions in those key areas once and for all – and then manage those decisions daily – you can create the kind of tomorrow you desire.
Successful people make right decisions early and manage those decisions daily.
Here are the twelve areas where I make decisions and then manage them on a day-to-day basis:
- Attitude: Today’s attitude gives me possibilities.
- Priorities: Today’s priorities give me focus.
- Health: Today’s health gives me strength.
- Family: Today’s family time gives me stability.
- Thinking: Today’s thinking gives me an advantage.
- Commitment: Today’s commitment gives me tenacity.
- Finances: Today’s financial decisions give me options.
- Faith: Today’s faith gives me peace.
- Relationships: Today’s relationships give me fulfillment.
- Generosity: Today’s generosity gives me significance.
- Values: Today’s values give me direction.
- Growth: Today’s growth gives me potential.
This post is adapted from my book Today Matters, which approaches each of those decisions in greater detail and offers practical advice on how to make them early and manage them daily.
What does your daily agenda say about you?
Posted by: | CommentsHow would you describe your life? Are you achieving what you desire? Are you accomplishing the things that are important to you? Do you consider yourself a success? How do your prospects look for the future?
If I could come to your house and spend just one day with you, I would be able to tell whether or not you will be successful. You could pick the day. If I got up with you in the morning and went through the day with you, watching you for 24 hours, I could tell in what direction your life is headed.
When I tell this to people at conferences, there’s always a strong reaction. Some people are surprised. Some get defensive because they think I would be making a snap judgment about them. A few get ticked off because they think my claim sounds arrogant. Others are intrigued and desire to know why I make such a statement.
Here is why: I believe that the secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda. If you make a few key decisions and then manage them well in your daily agenda, you will succeed.
You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. You see, success, doesn’t just suddenly occur one day in someone’s life. For that matter, neither does failure. Each is a process. Every day of your life is merely preparation for the next. What you become is the result of what you do today. In other words…
You are preparing for something.
The question is, What are you preparing for? Are you grooming yourself for success or failure? As my father used to tell me when I was growing up, “You can pay now, and play later, or you can play now and pay later. But either way, you are going to pay.” The idea was that you can play and take it easy and do what you want today, but if you do, your life will be harder later. However, if you work hard now, on the front end, then you will reap rewards in the future.
Think about it: What are you preparing for today? Success or failure? Does your daily agenda indicate that you make a habit of paying before you play? Answering these questions is a good predictor of what you will become tomorrow and in the future.
From Today Matters
Leading difficult people: Excited Eddie
Posted by: | CommentsI love spending time with enthusiastic people. I’m pretty high-energy myself. An enthusiastic follower can be a joy to work with. His excitement about his work has the potential to energize the entire team.
With one exception.
Let’s talk about Excited Eddie. He’s got loads of enthusiasm for his work, but only to a point. You see, his excitement only lasts for as long as the project is new. Eddie is a fantastic starter, but his ability to finish projects is lacking.
Just like Fearful Fred and Slumped Susan, you need to lead Excited Eddie in a way that works with his personality. If you understand, listen to, and lead him appropriately, you can harness his startup enthusiasm and help him to finish well.
Understanding Excited Eddie:
- Behavior: High Enthusiasm
- Motivated by: New Challenges
- Strength: Starts Strong
- Weakness: Seldom Finishes
Listening to Excited Eddie:
- Privately sit down and listen to Eddie’s exciting startup stories.
- Ask him for the “rest of the story.”
- Take into account how his emotion may cause him to exaggerate.
- Let him see what he lost by not seeing things through.
- If he desires to finish well, develop a game plan.
Leading Excited Eddie:
- Give him a new challenge.
- Keep him focused.
- Reward him for finishing well.
- If he’s a good starter, assign a steady and detailed person to assist him.
Growth plan:
Read Today Matters together.
Do you lead an Excited Eddie? Or are you personally more likely to start strong than to finish strong? Through guidance and effective rewards, you can channel Eddie’s enthusiasm so that it carries his work through to completion.
Don’t manage your time; manage your life!
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Image courtesy of photobucket
Here’s an important announcement: There is no such thing as time management.
Think about it; the term is an oxymoron. Time cannot be managed. It cannot be controlled in any way. Everyone gets the same number of hours and minutes every day. Nobody—no matter how shrewd—can save minutes from one day to spend on another. No scientist—no matter how smart—is capable of creating new minutes. Even with all his wealth, someone like Bill Gates can’t buy additional hours for his day. And even though people talk about trying to “find time,” they need to quit looking. There isn’t any extra lying around. Twenty-four hours is the best any of us is going to get.
You can’t manage your time. So what can you do? Manage yourself! Nothing separates successful people from unsuccessful people more than how they use their time. Successful people understand that time is the most precious commodity on earth. And that we all have an equal amount, packed into identical suitcases. So even though everyone’s suitcase is the same size, they get a higher return on the contents of theirs. Why? They know what to pack.
Essayist Henry David Thoreau wrote, “It is not enough to be busy. The question is, ‘What are we busy about?’” How do you judge whether something is worthy of your time and attention? For years I used this formula to help me know the importance of a task so that I can manage myself effectively. It’s a three step process:
1. Rate the task in terms of Importance.
- Critical = 5 points
- Necessary = 4 points
- Important = 3 points
- Helpful = 2 points
- Marginal = 1 point
2. Determine the task’s urgency.
- This month = 5 points
- Next month = 4 points
- This quarter = 3 points
- Next quarter = 2 points
- End of year = 1 point
3. Multiply the rate of importance times the rate of urgency.
- Example: 5 (critical) x 4 (next month) = 20.
After assigning each task a new number, make a new to-do list. This time list everything from highest to lowest task management score. THAT’S how you plan your day.
How you spend your time is an important question not only for you but for your team. People tend to take their cues from the leader when it comes to time management—so make sure there’s a match between your actions, your business priorities, and your team’s activities.
The 3 R’s of Decision-making
Posted by: | CommentsThis past week on Twitter, I’ve been sharing some of my favorite quotes on priorities and time management. Important topics for every generation, priorities and time management seem to become more and more crucial every decade.
Today, in the age of the smartphone and social media, even technology has joined the fight for our most precious commodity: TIME.
A few decades ago, I came up with three critical questions on priorities. They still serve me well today, and I hope they’re valuable to you.
Before any decision on where to invest my time, this is what I ask myself:
- What is REQUIRED of me? Any realistic assessment of priorities in any area of life must start with a realistic assessment of what you must do. For you to be a good spouse or parent, what is required of you? To satisfy your employer, what must you do? If you lead others, then what must you personally do that cannot be delegated to anyone else?
- What gives me the greatest RETURN? As you progress in your career, you begin to discover that some activities yield a much higher return for the effort than others. After determining requirements, focus on choices with a high return on investment (ROI).
- What gives me the greatest REWARD? If you do only what you must, along with what is effective, then you will probably be highly productive. But you may not be content. I think it’s also important to consider what gives you personal satisfaction.
Note: These questions are meant to be asked IN ORDER. Many of us would love to skip down to #3 and focus on the most rewarding/fun/exciting activities. But no one can be successful who doesn’t possess the discipline to take care of the first two areas before adding the third.
The time that you have on this earth is precious – every minute of it. As Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
~Adapted from Today Matters
