Category: Time Management

It’s Time To Stop Doing Energy-Draining Activities

So many people believe that having to do things you don’t enjoy is simply a part of life. They’ve bought into a message that life isn’t about having everything the way you want it to be.
But the reason you became an entrepreneur is to have things the way you want them to be. You didn’t become an entrepreneur so you could spend the rest of your life putting up with things you don’t like.
Entrepreneurial freedom.
Being an entrepreneur means having the freedom to do what you love. But even still, business owners will make excuses for doing energy-draining activities by claiming that it’s just the nature of the business or the marketplace.
While it may very well have been that way in the 20th century, in the 21st century, with all the talent available either through relationship networks or electronic networks, you can find ways to extract yourself from situations and relationships that are irritating by finding the right person or system to take them over.
The point of being an entrepreneur is having the freedom to do what you love.Click To Tweet
Tell the truth.
Some people can numb themselves to the fact that an activity is irritating. The biggest obstacle that has to be overcome to eliminate your irritating, energy-draining activities is to tell the truth about what irritates you.
Once you’re honest with yourself about the activities you’re doing in your business that you find irritating, boring, and energy-draining, you can make a commitment to stop doing them. All the help in the world that you need to do that is available to you, but not until you tell the truth about it. The first person you have to sell on getting rid of the irritations in your life is yourself.
Identify your “irritating activities.”
When one of my clients first joined The Strategic Coach Program, he had a very fast growing business with an almost unlimited amount of opportunity, but he was doing an activity he didn’t like. One of his responsibilities was to do bidding on all of the jobs, and as they were growing so quickly, this used up an enormous amount of his time.
When I shared my model about the three types of activities that take up our time—Irritating, Okay, and Fascinating—there was a sudden realization on his part that this activity of doing the bidding, which he would do late at night and on weekends, was one he found really irritating and energy-draining. It was a breakthrough.
He told the truth about it and then he calculated how many hours he would get back if he stopped doing the bidding, and it was a huge incentive to eliminate this activity.
Gaining back time.
He put together a job description and, within the next 90 days, he had an applicant whose passion was the technique and technology of bidding.
At the end of the first year in the Program, he stood up and said, “I kept track of how much I got freed up from having someone take over this irritating activity, and in the first year, it was 1,000 hours.”
He said, “I felt totally freed up to have really great scouting missions out in the world and meet new people. Our whole planning for the expansion of our company jumped because I wasn’t tired. Every expansion before was forcing me into an activity that was more and more irritating. I didn’t know how much more of it I could take.”
In addition to improving his work life, his home life also improved—instead of working late, he was spending time with his family and friends. And everybody at the company found that he was so much more excited and pleasant to be around.
Not only is it not necessary to continue doing activities that drain your energy, but eliminating irritating activities from your life benefits you, your business, and everyone around you.


STOP DOING ACTIVITIES THAT IRRITATE YOU.

Discover a simple strategy for eliminating boredom and irritation, and increasing your energy and enjoyment in your work and life.
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Taking Time Off Can Increase Your Productivity And Better Your Company

Listen to the podcast below or subscribe to the Inside Strategic Coach podcast on iTunes.
Taking Time Off Can Increase Your Productivity And Better Your Company


For decades, I’ve taken 155 days off every year.
Taking time off to this degree, particularly as an entrepreneur, is almost unheard of in North America. But I’ve found that it’s not only a benefit to me in my non-work life, it’s also made me more effective professionally and been of enormous benefit to my team members and my organization.
Stop the burnout.
There’s a sort of bragging that takes place in the entrepreneurial world related to how much time one spends working. Entrepreneurs wear busyness as a badge of honor, and there’s contempt for entrepreneurs who need to take vacation time. You’ll hear people say, “Well, my work is my free time” or “I don’t really work; I just play.” Many entrepreneurs don’t draw a line at all when it comes to taking time off.
In my experience, this makes entrepreneurs one-dimensional. I can’t help but wonder what their relationships and their general appreciation of life is like when they do nothing but work. There are so many other aspects of life besides work to experience and explore.
Not only that, but the quality of their work and enjoyment of their work suffers when they’re burnt out. Free time isn’t just a reward for hard work; it’s a necessary prerequisite for doing good work. Taking time to rejuvenate renews your energy and creativity. And taking a number of days off the table for free time leaves fewer days for working, which has the effect of making you more productive when you’re at work.
“You don’t know how strong your team is until they can’t phone you.” —Dan SullivanClick To Tweet
Another negative aspect of an entrepreneur’s work addiction is the effect it has on their organizations. It often leads to an expectation that everyone who works for the company will also have very little free time.
This leads to a high burnout rate for team members. They feel oppressed because they can’t have personal lives, and it’s expected that they’ll always come in early, work late, and work weekends. This makes them defensive, makes them dull, and makes it so that there’s a very high turnover rate, because you can’t have a life when you work for a company with a workaholic philosophy.
The opposite happens when an entrepreneur allows themselves the freedom of taking time off. Then, their team members also have the freedom to have a life, and this makes them more productive during workdays. Taking free time helps both you and your team members avoid burnout.
Making the most of your workdays.
Because it’s a rule that I only work 210 days a year, I can never say, “Well, this project is going to take longer, so I’ll cancel this scheduled day off.”
What this means is that during every one of those 210 days, I’m getting as much done as possible. I’m much more focused because I have fewer days during which to get things done.
A big part of this is looking outside of myself for ways to get results. I’m always looking at who on my team can take something off my plate. This is also how teamwork constantly gets expanded.
The Self-Managing Company solution.
So that I’m not thinking about working when I’m taking time off, I have to trust that my team knows what they’re doing.
On days when I’m not working, team members at the company are fully responsible for making decisions, because there’s no contact between me and anyone at the office.
I’ve passed up on great opportunities that have come up while I’m taking time off, and I’ve done it without hesitation because I know that the team members who are working that day are developing opportunities themselves, and that I make enough opportunities during the 210 days a year that are my workdays.
Allowing myself to take 155 days off every year has benefited my health, my relationships, my productivity, my company, and the lives of all of the people who work at my company.
All entrepreneurs have the opportunity to benefit in the same way. All they need to do is grant themselves the freedom of taking time off.


Greater productivity = greater success.

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For Entrepreneurs, Money CAN Buy Happiness

Listen to the podcast below or subscribe to the Inside Strategic Coach podcast on iTunes.
For Entrepreneurs, Money CAN Buy Happiness


No matter what you do or how much money you make, the question arises: Can money buy happiness?
The answer is that yes, it can—if you use your money to buy back your time.
Everything is abundant.
Almost everything has gotten cheaper. What you’d get paid for an hour of your time today can pay for a lot more than what an hour of your time could pay for 25 years ago.
This applies to everything from electronics to cars to vacations. The efficiencies being built into massive cooperation in the marketplace are making it easier, faster, and cheaper to provide products and services.
As a result, things don’t have the same impact on our happiness that they did when there was more scarcity. Material goods and luxuries that used to be a source of happiness don’t have the same effect on us.
Buying time.
But there is one way of using your money that can make you happier than any other way, and that is to buy back your time. You do this by taking an activity you don’t like doing or that’s keeping you from doing a more stimulating and rewarding activity, and pay someone else to do that activity. When you use your money to free yourself up to do something you like better, that’s how you buy happiness.
This is what I’ve observed in coaching more than 6,000 entrepreneurs. When you spend money so you can do something you’re much more interested in, or that’s much more enjoyable, you’ll be happy with the use of that money. In a very simple way, you’re using that money to buy happiness.
“The freedom of time is becoming the most desirable reason to use your money.” – Dan SullivanClick To Tweet
Increasing happiness for everyone.
There are things that entrepreneurs might not like doing but that are crucial to their businesses. Yet this doesn’t mean they have to do those activities themselves. It means the time spent doing those activities has to be bought by delegating them to someone else. Remember, though, that no matter how much you don’t like the activity, there’s someone out there who would love doing it as much as you love doing the activities you find the most fascinating.
My response to my daily life as an entrepreneur is an emotional one before it’s an intellectual one. I give myself 100 percent freedom to say exactly what I like and don’t like, and this has led me to deciding to spend as much time as possible in the activities I want to be in, using my money to pay people who love doing the activities I don’t like doing.
When you do this, that’s buying a lot of happiness, not only for yourself, but for every person in your company who’s getting paid to do something they love.


Greater productivity = greater success.

Learn how the top coach to entrepreneurs achieves his most productive workday.
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