Time is a fluid you can never hold on to.

Time…

Many have tried to describe it, scientists still struggle reconciling it in the laboratory, Einstein found that it could not be separated from the very space around us, yet none of us really have a handle on what it is.

We say that time is money, time is life, memory is going  back in time…

Most of us would rather even not face the realities Time places in front if us, yet routinely we:

• Waste Time
• Kill Time
• Save Time
• Spend Time
• Run out of Time…

That last one is the kicker.  We all eventually run out of time, almost as if we are walking around with a count-down timer above our heads that one day, maybe even today, will reach zero… and then?

We look at pictures of ourselves or our kids and see how quickly they or we have changed, and as we get older each moment  becomes a smaller part of our total memory, making the time we have left seem like it is passing ever faster. We remember our grandparents telling us how much we have grown each time they saw us… to us it seemed silly until we saw our own kids or grand-kids grow so very fast.

No understanding of achievement or success would be complete without a fairly decent discussion of time and what we know and don’t know about it.  We need to understand how we can get the most out of every moment, as some sage said: “To squeeze every drop out of each moment.”

As the picture above demonstrates, time is something we are forced to spend, that we can never ultimately save, and that goes by at the same rate for every person (my apologies to Einstein here, as we are not talking about the Theory of Relativity).  So how can we use our time effectively?

You may have heard the analogy that compares life to a box.  The box holds a certain total volume – that is the sum total of your time.  Events, the things we do, the moments or hours we spend are spherical balls which we can place in our box, each taking up some portion of our total time.  Big events such as “a semester in college” might be compared to bowling balls.  Smaller events such as “a week at the beach” might be compared to a baseball.  Perhaps spending a day at work could be compared to a marble.

Eventually we fill our box, but wait!  There is still spaces between those bowling balls and base-balls and marbles.  There are moments between various tasks that may go wasted.  What about the time you spend in your car going to and from work, do you use that time for anything? Or do you just listen to music or scream at the person who just cut you off in traffic?  Could you get some books on disk or MP3, or a course in something like a new language or a success strategy?  Those moments could be compared to BB’s (those tiny little copper balls used in pellet guns).  You could still put a whole bunch of those in that box.

But can we go further?  What about all the spaces between the BB’s, and Marbles, and Baseballs, and Bowling Balls?  Are there little bits of moments that go wasted where you could write down ideas on a note-pad, or just hug your wife or child for no reason at all – but just to tell them you love them?  The analogy of the box goes on to say we can put grains of sand in the box, and then finally fill the box with water to fill in all the rest of the space.

So we too should try to observe how we utilize our time and then how we may fill those moments with things that help us squeeze the most out of it – even if that is just sitting at the beach, holding the hand of the one you love and listening to the waves pound the shore.  That is living.

Remember, those moments will never occur again, they exist only in your memory and the mind of God.  If you let them go by without ever using them, they will still be spent, but they will be empty and wasted.

How might we use our time most effectively?  Here are a few ideas you can try to help you recapture the moments that, up to now, you have been wasting:

As mentioned before, get a notepad and short pen/pencil that you can carry with you to capture ideas. This also helps you get those ideas down before they simply disappear, never to be heard from again…

Get some form of planner, whether it be a phone app, a Day-Timer, a software tool, etc. and use it to track what you are doing so you can keep your tasks “Top-Of-Mind” and get them done.

Learn how to prioritize your tasks, learn the four “Ds”: Do, Delay, Delegate, Dump and apply them to the four quadrants of the “Priority Matrix” (see my earlier post about the priority matrix here).

Spend some time thinking deeply about what is most important to you, what you would do if you only had one day left to live – because you do only have one day left to live – Today.  You “might” have tomorrow, but you are not guaranteed it, you might die tonight, you simply have no knowledge of how long you live, so if you live as if you only have a day, one day you will be right.  And you will have done the things that mattered most instead of dying with regret.

Time requires our careful management, and despite the fact it does not act like any other resource we have, we still must treat it with the utmost respect for it is the raw material all of our life is made from.

David T. McKee

Sometimes you have to remind yourself when the race is over...

I was having a discussion today with someone on the Warrior Forum about knowing when a product or service we have created or are promoting is “good enough” and how much we should service we should “over-deliver”.  In fact part of the discussion centered around what “over-delivering” really means.

You see, sometimes success oriented persons will try to please every customer to the point of giving away much of their time and products/services just because we have a mindset that we want to please them – but we really do them a disservice as well as to ourselves and our families.

I recently wrote a post about “Closure – 99 percent is not Done” but after you reach that 100 percent mark, once you have given a little bit more than you said (your “over-delivering”), then you need to say: “It is done.”

At that point, you need to manage your time, perhaps you charge a small fee for support, perhaps you write a FAQ for general questions and only respond to questions that have actual merit, or point out a true deficiency in your product or service where you have promised to deliver something that is not there.

You need to know when to draw the line, and say, “I have other obligations to myself, my family, my God, whatever.”  Because when you are Achievement Oriented, it is easy to consider every project, service, product, and area of your business as your baby – and it is! but sometimes we need to remind ourselves that in reality these things are THINGS.  As such, they do not actually deserve to exhaust us, and deplete us.  As in everything about being a Master Achiever, balance must always be sought for true success.

So by all means deliver products, services, performance above and beyond what you promise – but make sure you know where the finish line is, and when you cross it, be able to say to yourself and others: “I am done.”

David T. McKee

It's not done, until it is...

One of the areas that both Master Achievers, and those who are working to become a Master Achiever struggle with, is the area of closure. Closure is when a task, goal, or project is completed – both in time and in the mind of the one who is performing it.  It seems like a simple concept, but has been famously said before; the devil is in the details.

There are two extremes that a Master Achiever must avoid when setting about to perform a task or a goal – the first, the lazy mans excuse: “It’s 99 percent done, that’s good enough…”

No, if the job is not done, then you have not reached your stated objective – no matter how close it is, if you know in your heart that last little bit that should be completed to give a polished, professional result is not there – then you have failed in accomplishing the thing, at least to the most important person: you.

You see if you know in your heart that you have not really completed the task, then you will carry that with you, and the next time you have a task to do, you are more likely to subconsciously accept the notion of compromise.  You are more likely to give up earlier because you have established that pattern.  You are moving away from being a Master Achiever.

On the other hand, you can be a perfectionist – never fully believing that you are done, never completing the task because you keep tweaking.  This is the perfectionist conundrum: “I just need to do one more thing…”

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The perfectionist has gone too far into thinking that a task or goal needs more features, more polish, more bits of this or that, until too much time has gone by and the task or goal is no longer meaningful.

Both extremes are deadly to the Master Achiever because we all have times where we just feel like we have worked so hard that we cannot do another thing and want to throw in the towel, or we obsess over some minor thing and cannot seem to say “IT IS TRULY DONE!”

This requires balance, and takes practice and a good partner or mentor who can tell you that you are being lazy or you are obsessing over something.  Closure is when, in our own minds and hearts we know we have done our best, given our all, and have now closed the book on some task or project so we can move on to the next one.

And now, this post is done!

David T. McKee

What’s that?!

Yeah, we have all heard the buzz-word phrase:

“To succeed you need to think outside the box…”

with the idea being that “the box” represents our own self-imposed blinders that tell us “this is the way we have always done it…”.  And sure, that is a good thing, we do need to explore different ways of thinking about how to succeed in our lives and our businesses.

So why would I say we need to think inside the box?

Well, to be perfectly honest, I am talking about a different box.  The box I am talking about is the one that separates the things you do have control over, and the things you do not.  And to be even more honest, my pastor gave me this idea from his last sermon (see my about page if you want more info on that).

You see one of the areas where we waste much energy (and I am as guilty as anyone on this count) is that we tend to focus on things we really don’t have too much control over.  Let’s take the recent election for example.  How much control do you have over the election? Well, unless you had several hundred million dollars to spend on nationwide advertising, not much.  Sure, you got a vote, and you could coordinate your country voter registration, perhaps volunteer for your party, go door to door, write blog posts, etc.  There are many things you can do, but in the end you don’t really have much control over the outcome.

Regardless of what you thought about the outcome of the election, this is something that is basically outside of your box.  And, in fact, most things in life are outside your box.  You may have some influence on some of these things, but really there are just a few things you can say are actually inside of your box.

In fact, even the length of you life is not inside that box of yours…

So what is inside?  Well, perhaps the most important thing in the universe: Your Attitude.

• Your attitude determines how you Perceive everything around you: and your perception of things profoundly affects what actions you take, what words you speak, and what feelings you allow into your life – and that directs the intentions you send out.
• Your attitude determines how you Plan your next move: Okay, so you have come up against a mountain and there is no way around it… now you need a plan on what to do next.  You have no control over the mountain, but you have control over what plan you will make!
• Your attitude determines what Priorities you will make: If you have a poor attitude you tend to prioritize those things that give you an immediate “high” instead of the things that will make a lasting and important change.

In short, attitude determines how you will react to the things you cannot control, and what you will do: will you stop dead, will you map your way around, or will you power through difficulties and unexpected challenges?  If you are alive and are planning on setting goals, you will face these things.

So you need to think inside your “box” so that you can have the kind of sustained attitude that allows you to move forward.  Your sustained attitude is one of the most important aspects of goal achievement, because while it is easy and fun to “imagine” yourself achieving a goal – it is the sustained attitude that will carry you through the tough times.  Goals are funny things that have a way of making you face your own insecurities and weaknesses.  If you don’t face them head on with an attitude of “whatever it takes” – then you are bound to fail.

So start thinking inside your box – to become a Master Achiever you need to take control fully of those things you are in control of.

- David T. McKee

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Note: This is copy-righted content, Copyright  2008, David T. McKee

Earl Nightingale said that “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal.” Because he was instrumental in the realization of my success through the many books and tapes he produced (and that my successful father encouraged me to read and listen to), I wanted to dedicate this first of the Achieve Master series of articles.

In this article we will continue to look at the part of Mr. Nightingales quote “the progressive realization…”

So…how do you break down a goal into a set of steps or tasks that you can begin doing immediately so you are always moving towards that goal?

I the last article we mentioned “Backwards Planning”. This is essentially breaking down a goal into individual steps or tasks by starting from the goal and working backwards to your current state.

To help you understand this process, think back to the last thing that you were intensely interested in. It needs to be something that got you going in the morning, and kept you awake at night thinking about, something that grabbed your attention every time anything remotely to do with it falls into your field of vision. Something that forces you to research it on the web or go to the library and check out books…

That should be the way you feel about your worthy goal, because you need to research it, and you need to understand everything about it, you need to mingle with other like minded people. At this point you may even want to seek out a mentor (more on that in another later article). You certainly need to know how others were successful doing what you want to do (or at least something similar). The fact is, to do a backwards break down of your goal into steps; you are going to have to understand as many details of it as you can. Start by imagining yourself already having achieved the stated goal.

In our earlier example of Jack Sprat and Joe Smith, both who claimed a goal of wanting to be a captain of a dinner cruise yacht, Mr. Smith actually decided to look into how yachts were constructed, how they were sailed, how dinner cruises were run, how to get chefs onto the boat to cook, etc. In other words he broke down his goal as best he could and then got to work. As he learned more about the various bit and pieces of his goal, he further broke them down. Sometimes, the things Mr. Smith thought were tasks turned out to be very large, they were actually more like “mini-goals” or “sub-goals”. They could not be done in a simple one day task, so they needed to be broken down further. This is what Mr. Smith did, revising his “map” from where he was to his goal.

And every day he got closer, every day the path to the goal got clearer, until one day Joe Smith was “Captain Joe Smith” happily serving his guests as he plied the inter-coastal water ways…and as he began planning his next achievement.

Unfortunately, Jack Sprat just kept dreaming about being a yacht captain, and after a few years, lost interest in the dream. He moved on to other things with equal success.

You see, full immersion into your goal will keep your interest long enough to achieve it. Dreaming about your goal is important, but not enough to keep the dream alive! You need to put those dreams on paper, you need to think about them, research them, noodle them in you mind. You need to see yourself already having achieved the goal.

You must discover how to break your worthy goals down into tasks, put those tasks into some sort of priority, and then do them in order. You must constantly update your tasks and your roadmap to your goal as you learn more about it. This can all be done on paper (and has been done this way for countless centuries) by the most successful people on earth. Today’s technology makes it even easier to track and update your success plans.

–David T. McKee

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Note: This is copy-righted content, Copyright  2009, David T. McKee