A while back, I was in a coffee shop complaining to my mentor about my life — how I was working so hard in my business and still felt like there was nothing I could show for it. I told him how there are just so many things to do that it's impossible for me to complete them all. Then he asked me to show him my calendar. I looked at him puzzled and he responded: "Yes, I want to see just how hard you are working and see if there's any time left."
It turns out that I wasn't as busy as I thought. While I was feeling overwhelmed and busy, there were whole hours in my week that simply disappeared from my memory and I could not recall what I was doing. Other times, my entire day would disappear working on someone else's agenda or a shiny piece of new software I discovered in an online forum.
"First things first, Michael," my mentor said to me. He must've read the confused look on my face so he went on explaining and now I am sharing what I learned with you.
One of the key principles of working less and achieving more is identifying the activities that are the most important to you and will yield the highest impact on your goals. By focusing on your priorities — again, first things first — you will be less likely to get distracted by unimportant tasks.
When you identify your priorities and take a "First things first" approach, you will find the time to spend on the tasks that matter most. As a result, your CAS practice will grow and that "overwhelmed" feeling is less likely to exist. I know, because I've been there too, feeling like I'm working so hard but have little to show for it.
Don't limit yourself
One of the core reasons for building a high-value business such as a CAS practice is so you can have some freedom, in both time and money. So why limit yourself when you can actually work less and achieve more?
Think of it this way: In a diet, instead of saying you "can't" eat this or that, you eat the things that are the best for you first. Then, if you still have some space to maybe have an ice cream or sweet, go do it. It's not about limiting yourself to only eating the best things.
By identifying the must-dos and ensuring that priorities have been taken care of, the rest of the time can be spent enjoying life — which can not only benefit your CAS practice but also your personal life.
You can see in your time journal (
Willpower is hard and building a CAS practice often takes an entrepreneurial mind. But try to place rules on an entrepreneurial mind and you will be destined to fail. Back to my original point about the diet: If you can identify all of the things that are "good" for you — the tasks with the highest impact in business, healthiest for you, get you closer to your goal — do those first!
You will then essentially establish a system to approach tasks and time that'll guarantee your movement toward your goals without sacrificing my relentless need for freedom. What my mentor essentially was saying is, "Eat your vegetables and proteins first, and if you still have the stomach for that bit of ice cream, go have some."
Conclusion
Whether it's the vital numbers we track, the priorities we have to tackle this year, or the order in which some emails get sent out, we ask the question: "Which one of these things is the first thing?" and we slot them onto our calendars. We list them as "Priorities' for the year, "Themes" for the quarter, "Rocks" for the week, and "Top Ones" for the day. And if we have time left over? None of us has a problem taking that extended team lunch on Friday.
Remember, there are only 168 hours in a week. Take away eight hours of sleep a day and you are left with 112; take away that normal 40-hour work week, and you are left with only 72 hours to do the things that matter most. This means spending time with loved ones, hobbies, chores, dining out, and more. It is no wonder that modern human beings consistently feel overwhelmed and out of time, brewing the infamous "Someday I will …" statement.
You're not building a CAS practice to not have the time to do the things that matter. So, employ a "First things first" approach and live better!
