The Time Matrix

In today’s lesson, I want to talk about some strategies and systems that you can immediately implement so that you are not only efficient and effective, but you increase the speed at which you succeed. Let me ask you a question: today, in the 21st century, what do you think is the number one cause of failure and underperformance today amongst professionals? Now we know that our psychology, our expectancy factor, plays a critical role in this, but what I really want to talk about is that aside from psychology, operationally in the moment, in the day to day, why do people fail? And, it can only be traced back to this, poor time management, or what I call poor time strategization, in other words, the use of their time is dreadful. They are not doing things that are results driven, goal driven, that are moving them in the direction that they want.

Now, why does this happen? One of the reasons that I believe, as simple as it may sound, is that people today just do not understand how vitally pressured and important time management is, to the quality of their life and their productivity in business. So once again let’s ask the question, what is time and what does it really mean to you and I? Time is the capital, it is the currency of our lives, it is the stuff that makes up our lives, and what I found out is that when you and I strategically take advantage of it, and we invest it wisely, we can turn things around very, very rapidly. See, all leaders and achievers put an extremely high value on their time because they know it is the one thing they can’t get back in life. Time is non-refundable; when it is gone, it is gone.

So let me ask you a question, tell me if you agree with the statement, but if you and I, when we can’t effectively manage our time, we really can’t manage our lives, and if we can’t manage our lives we can’t effectively manage anything, be it our business, our relationship, our family, our health, our energy. So, time management is really life management. Time management allows you and I to get control of the activities and the circumstances of our lives so that we move it ultimately in the direction of where we want to go, because if you are a good time manager you are always asking questions. Is this the most valuable use of my time right now, and where am I spending my time? Is what I am doing, the goal in achieving activity, the result driven? And, if it isn’t, then stop doing it and do something of higher value. Does that make sense to you? Do you know what is interesting, is the whole concept of what I am talking about, time management, is kind of a play on words isn’t it, because you and I, we really can’t manage time, we can’t save time, we can’t stop the sands in the hourglass from falling right, time is immutable, it is fixed. When it is gone, it is gone. So what I found is what we really need to do, is not manage time, per say, we have to manage ourselves, we have to manage the action that we take, the moves that we make; we have to manage the activities within our time, so that everything that we do is purposeful in nature and ultimately leads us in the direction that we want to go. Now how do we do that today? We have to have successful systems for living; Systems for living that allow us to organize and manage the activities within our time and ways that create a feeling of control in us; systems for living that create congruent behaviour so that we expect to succeed; systems that create consistent action and follow through on the things that are most important to us. And I believe today people fail in the 21st century because they don’t have systems for living.

They don’t have systems that allow them to organize their level of activities and their business in a way so that they are in control, so they can discern and decipher what is more important from what is less important. I want to get your opinion on this, but today in the 21st century I would agree that life is happening pretty fast. Did you know that you make more life changing decisions in six months to a year than your grandparents did in a lifetime? So we are constantly being assaulted with information, technology, the speed of change is happening at blind speed today. I mean it is at a blinding rate. I mean we have interruptions, distractions, emails, text messages; we have other people’s demands, urgency, and distractions. All of this comes at us, does it make sense to you? If we don’t make some sort of system to organize it all, and really filter out the relevant from the irrelevant, we are going to drown in the minutia of interruptions, distractions urgency, and other people’s demands. So does that make sense? So how do we do this, what are the systems that you and I can immediately implement, to not only increase our effectiveness but increase the speed at which we succeed?

Well therein lies what I call the success leadership blue print. We need to have a formula, a blue print, a step-by-step process that you and I can follow, so that anything that we take on increases our effectiveness and our efficiency of what we do. We have to have a formula or step by step process that we follow, that creates inside of us a level of expectancy and control, so that we can gain control over the circumstances of the situations.

So let me give you this blue print right now, I think you are really going to like it, the first step in the leadership blueprint is to know your vision. Know your vision. You know there is a really good book out there today, it’s been on the best seller list since the beginning of time, it is called the Bible, and it says without a vision you and I perish. We all have to have a compelling vision, for every area of our lives, a vision that excites us, that gets us up early in the morning, and keeps us up late at night. As basic and simple as that sounds, so many people today don’t have clear, specific written goals for each area of their lives and all of the visions that really excite them.

Today, still today I can’t remember where I read it, I read it somewhere online, less than 2% of Americans have clear, specific goals and plans on how to achieve them and everybody else works for them. So it is important that you and I literally have a clear, specific written vision for that area of our lives, and let me explain why this is so critical: because neurologically in your brain, psychologically you have to understand a little bit about how your mind works, that today in this fast pace, busy, hectic society that we live in today, our senses are constantly being bombarded with 2 million bits and pieces of information. And actually according to most neuro-biologists, that 2 million number is conservative. A lot of other neuro-biologists think that it is much greater. But let’s just say it is 2 million bits and pieces of information, so think about that, every single second your senses get assaulted with 2 million bits and pieces of information. Now if you were to consciously take all that information you would go insane, it would be information overload. So what happens is this our unconscious mind filters out most of that information; we don’t even pay attention to it. Now think about this, out of 2 million bits and pieces of information coming at you moment by moment by moment, how much do you actually pay attention to? You know what it is, it is 134 bits. That’s a very small band of information that you notice and pay attention to. But here is what is interesting: when you write something down and you get clear and specific about what you want, you know why you want it, you captured on paper, you activate this part of your brain. If the unconscious mind, called the reticular cortex, and it works very much like a mechanism in a missile. It locks on that thing that you want, so anything that has anything to do with what it is that you want, many times this is unconscious, this is outside your conscious awareness, your unconscious mind, your reticular cortex starts to move you into that direction. It starts to coordinate your desire, your attitude, your belief, your values to be consistent with that, so you can achieve it, so you can actually make it happen.

Has this ever happened to you before? Have you ever gotten clear on something that you wanted, you don’t even write it down, but you just knew what you wanted, whether it is car, an outfit, a pair of shoes, and all of a sudden, once you got clear on what you wanted and you were specific you started to notice that car or that outfit and that pair of shoes is everywhere. Has that ever happened to you before? Of course we have all had this experience before. Here is my question to you, was that car, outfit, that pair of shoes, whatever it is that you want and that you started to notice, was it always out there? Yes, or no. of course it was, but you did not notice it because you did not activate this part of your brain, called the reticular cortex. And I am here to tell you that when you write something down, and you get a vision that excites you, for that area of your life it opens up a whole new awareness and a whole new reality. Think about it, think of your mind very much like a search engine, there is all this information on the world wide web. But if we go into Google and we type in wealth and abundance and that’s locked on from a reticular cortex in the search engine of our mind, whats going to show up on the screen of our reality, what we are going to notice, is everything that relates to that. So it is critical for you to get a vision for that area of your lives and write it down because that will drive you and it will activate this part of your brain, called the reticular cortex.

The other problem is this: I notice a lot of people, it seems so basic I understand that, but for lot of people that I meet there not clear on what it is they want. Would you agree that it is very difficult for you and me to hit a target on what it is that you want in life? If we are not clear on what it is we want and once we write that down, and we are clear and we are specific we have empowered ourselves. See, many times what people do, when I meet people who are frustrated or sometimes even depressed, not always but most of the time it is because they don’t have a vision that excites them, they don’t have a vision that drives them, they don’t know what they want, they don’t have a vision for their body, they don’t have a vision for their income, they don’t have a vision for their business or their marriage or their relationship. So it is almost as if they are vague, they are fuzzy, and unclear and what they usually talk about is what they don’t want. They talk about: well I don’t want to be in this relationship, I don’t want to be in this body anymore, I don’t want to do that anymore, but you have to understand how your mind works. Your unconscious mind can’t negate things; your conscious mind can, but your unconscious mind can’t negate things. So if I was to say to you right now, don’t think of the color blue, don’t think of the color blue, whatever you do, don’t think of the color blue, more than likely, maybe you picture the blue as the ocean, but more than likely where did your focus go? It goes to blue. We can’t think about what we don’t want to think about, without first having to think about it. There is something to think about!  Ha ha, Anyway, we are going to talk about hypnotic language in the next video preview. It can be very powerful in being able to influence people. But just know that your brain can’t negate things, so it is up to you to be clear and specific and write things down.

The starting point of activating your potential, the genesis in igniting your potential is desire,  is getting clear on what it is that you want. Motivation requires motive, so be clear and specific. That step number one, as basic as that is, a lot of people, that is 2 % of the American population, don’t have clear, specific written goals and visions for each area of their lives.

Let’s move into the next one, number two is know your purpose. Please remember this phrase “purpose” is always going to be stronger than our outcome, you and I can achieve any “what” in life if we get a strong enough “why”. If we get a strong enough purpose, purpose creates passion and passion creates inspiration and enthusiasm. See, would you agree that there is a big difference between being motivated and being inspired? Many times when people are being motivated they are achieving to be happy. They are working very hard and they are achieving to obtain some sort of happiness. But when you are inspired you are happily achieving. There is a big, big difference in purpose, in understanding your purpose, in understanding why do I want this, what will this give me and understanding the reason as to why you want it. See, I want it. I want your opinion on this, but if you write down 25 reasons as to why you absolutely have to have something, reasons that are consistent with your value, reasons that are consistent with who you want to be, what you want to be do or have in that area and you write down reason, after reason, after reason, would you agree that you have to ramp up your drive, that you have to ramp up your enthusiasm. There is no question about it. So writing down your purpose after you get clear and specific, write down purposefully: what will this give me, how does this make me feel if I had this for my life right now, what would it do for my self-esteem, what would it do for my family, what would it give me, what difference would this make in my life?

I want your opinion on this, about what’s the difference between work and play. What’s the difference between work and play? Maybe you would say work is what I got to do, play is something that I get to do. The only difference between work and play is that play is the emotion of the purpose that you associate with the activities. See, remember this phrase: doing things without understanding your purpose will drain you emotionally. When we don’t associate a high degree of importance to something, when we don’t think it is unique, when we don’t see a sense of enthusiasm, do we get bored, does it wear us out emotionally? Absolutely, but if you understand why this is important and it is consistent with your values, this is when you have purpose. It creates drive. Remember purpose creates enthusiasm.

Let’s go onto the next step. Number three is this: after you have your vision and you know your purpose, you know why you want it, the next thing is this, to know your time frame. Now this is key, the key here is to set a deadline, anytime you write down your vision, your goal and your objectives or whatever you want to call it, you want to set a specific deadline. Because the reason is this: the deadline acts as an unconscious forcing system, a lot of people said to me, what if I set a deadline and I don’t achieve it by the day? That’s ok, just set the deadline back. Let me share this phrase: there is no such thing as an unrealistic goal, only unrealistic deadlines. But a goal or an objective without a deadline, it is a wish, it is fantasy. I have studied this extensively: that when you write something down, and you write down a date as to when you want to achieve it by, your chances of achieving the goal increase geometrically. Here is another thing that I have suggested to my clients and I want to suggest it to you too: set three to six months deadlines. I believe that we should constantly be checking in with our goals. I have my clients writing down their goals every single day. I have them write down their top 12 or 13 goals or 10 goals on a blank sheet of paper every single morning. So they are always on the top of their mind, they are always thinking about goals. Because think about it, if you write down your goals every single morning, you wake up and it will take you 4 minutes to do. The first thing you do when you get up in the morning, as part of your ritual, is to write down your top 10 goals. What do you think your chances are going to be of achieving your goal when you are always thinking about it? It is said we become what we think about most of the time; the average person has sixty-five thousand thoughts in a day. You know what the problem is though, that person, the thoughts are the same thoughts that they had yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. But when you write something down and you get clear and you write down a specific deadline, it acts as a forcing system. So how do we do that, how do we specifically write down our goals, what’s the best way to do that? Well, I like to teach people formulas that I do and it changed my life, such a simple way to write down your goals so that you activate this unconscious forcing system with the deadline and you activate all your senses.

Let me ask you a question: do you ever notice when you focus on something, it affects how you feel? But have you noticed that not only when you focus on something, but how you focus on something, drastically affects the way how you feel? Absolutely. So let me teach you how I teach people to write down their goals, you want to write down your goal in this specific way: today is………, I am now here ……., I feel……. So, if you want to achieve a certain level of income, you want to write down the date that you would have achieved that level of income. So you would want to say: today is (date), I am now here looking at my bank account, I am now here receiving this award, I feel, this is key, I feel so proud. I feel so good, I feel so joyous, I feel so happy. And if you write that down, people will say oh come on what’s the big deal. Here is the key, remember we talked about how 95% of what we think, thought, and do throughout the day is going to be carried out and controlled by our unconscious mind. Do you remember I told you about how each mind has its own unique language? The language of the unconscious mind is what? Feeling! So if feeling influences the unconscious mind, and the unconscious mind does not know the difference between something that we vividly imagine and something that we actually experience, and neurologically we formed the identical connections in our mind, when we vividly imagine as to actually supposedly doing, then do we want to activate emotionally inside of us that feeling yes or no? Absolutely, it is critical, today is….., I am now here…, so you are thinking from the inner mind. You are seeing what you would see if you were already in the goal, if you were already in the vision, right? And then you would want to say I feel so ….., because what you are doing is you are training your mind and body to get ahead of the experience, does that make sense? You are training your mind and body to literally become a map into your future, rather than a blue print of your past. I am not trying to be overly technical and overly specific, but this is critical. When I have done this in my own life and I have done this with other people, the results are astounding. Try it on and see what you think.

Step number four is to know your plan. Now, a lot of times people get overwhelmed and they will say oh my god how do I create a plan? All a plan really is, it is a list of activities that you prioritize in order, and the way you plan anything, the way how you can develop a plan is you ask yourself this question, write this down if you are taking down notes or just remember it, what specifically has to happen for me to achieve this? And then you would say, ok if that has to happen what else has to happen? What else has to happen? What else has to happen? And there is a very specific simple step process that you can do to plan anything.

Step number one is this capture or brainstorm. You just want to get it out all on paper, so you write down what specifically has to happen for me to achieve this goal. You just brainstorm every possible idea you can think of: I got to do this, I got to do this, I got to do this, what else has to happen? I need to do this? What else has to happen? I need to do this? So just get it out on paper and when you do this, what this is going to do is this is going to give you a tremendous sense of control. Because a lot of times if we are overwhelmed. The reason is, it is because we are over chunked in our mind; where we think about this activity and there is so much to do because we are trying to organize it and manage it in our head and brain and it creates a sense of just being overwhelmed. But I found that when you get it down on paper it gives you a tremendous sense of control.

All professionals think on paper, that planning is really the detailed form of thinking on paper. Planning gives you a sense of control over what you are doing because it forces you to be strategic, in anticipating and thinking ahead of what you need to do, and that leads me to step number two of planning. Step number one was capture, get it on paper, brainstorm it out. Step number two is that you prioritize, you ask yourself: out of all these steps what is most important? What’s the first thing that I need to do? What is the second thing that I need to do? You prioritize in order of importance. And then the step number three to planning is this, this is key: schedule it, schedule it, remember the phrase: what you schedule gets done. But if you don’t schedule it, chances are you are probably not going to do it. Let me say that again, what you schedule gets done, but if you don’t schedule it, you are probably not going to do it. So planning is critical. As a matter of fact, let me give you some questions that you can ask yourself, to really get you focused and concentrated on what is most important throughout the day. If you are taking notes you might want to write these down.

1. Question number one is this: What is the most extraordinary expression of myself today? What’s the most extraordinary expression of myself today, if I can be or do anything? What is the ultimate me today, what is the ideal version of myself today?
2. Question number two is: What specifically is most important for me to achieve today? What are my top most important, valuable priorities that I need to achieve today?
3. Question number three: What accomplishments would have the greatest impact on my business today, when I achieve them? What accomplishments would have the greatest impact on my business today, when I achieve them?
4. Question number four: How do I want to show up today to other people? How do I want to show up? What is my level of engagement? What’s my level of presence or enthusiasm? What is my demeanor like? How do I want to show up to other people today?
5. What emotions do I want to cultivate and feel throughout the day? What emotions do I want to cultivate and feel throughout the day?

Tell me if you agree with this statement: but maybe except with our connection with our Creator, is there anything more important than how you feel? How you feel is your life. So, the average person, I think I read this somewhere, there are about seven thousand different words to describe certain emotions, and the average person has less than twelve emotions that they have experience throughout the week, and half of those make them feel horrible, and I really believe that they have not make a conscious decision, to decide what emotions that they want to feel. Let me ask you this question. What emotions if you cultivated them and created them in your life would drive you to greater levels of success? What emotions, if you cultivated them and created them in your life, would drive you to greater levels of success? See I have a question for you, does how you feel affect what you do and how you do it? When you feel really good, when you feel enthusiastic, when you feel strong when you feel confident when you feel excited, does that affect your behaviour, yes or no? Does that affect how you communicate with other people? When you are relaxed, when you are feeling kind of enthusiastic, when your relaxed when you are indifferent, does that affect how people communicate with you? Can people sense neediness or desperation, can they sense if you are thinking in your mind, I hope I get this, I hope I get this, please make this happen? Can they pick it up non-verbally? Absolutely. So how you feel, feelings affect our behaviour, so when you ask yourself this question, wait a minute here, what kind of feelings do I want to cultivate or feel throughout my day? And you write those emotions down, and you put your attention there and you put your focus there, and you ask yourself this question: What would I have to pay attention to? What would I have to think about? What would I have to focus on? That’s going to create some enthusiasm, it is going to create some drive, it is going to create a different state of mind for you. And that leads me to step number five.

Step number five is knowing your obstacles. Know your obstacles. And most people don’t do this, most people don’t anticipate and think ahead of: What are the barriers that would prevent me from succeeding? As a matter a fact, you might want to write this question down or you might want to just remember it: If there is a thought, a feeling or behaviour, that is limiting me, that would preventing me from achieving this goal, what would it, or could it be? And then remember this or write it down: how I can create an environment that is conducive for me to achieve my goal? What can I do in my environment, what can I change in my environment, what can I create in my environment that would really give me an advantage on achieving that goal, that could be conducive for me to achieve that goal? Maybe it is cleaning and organizing your work space that gives you a sense of control.

Let me ask you a question: Have you ever noticed that there are certain environments that can trigger us to feel a certain ways or certain people can trigger us to feel a certain way? Or maybe it is a certain time of the day where we have lost our edge, we lost that passion, we lost that enthusiasm, we are stuck. Have you ever been there before? And it is kind of difficult to get back into that zone, that optimal state of mind. Have you ever been there before? Well, I want to give a very outrageous way to unstick yourself, in a sense, and this is based on classic neuro-linguistics. I call this distraction, disruption, and scrambling techniques and it is based on the whole mind-body connection.

Basically what the mind-body connection is: you feel what you think and you think what you feel. Sometimes it is very difficult to think ourselves back into creativity or think ourselves back into confidence, enthusiasm or drive or focus. Because we are in a lousy state of mind, we are stuck there. So anything that you can do to distract yourself, to jolt yourself, to disrupt whatever is going on inside your head as crazy as it sounds it works. And one of the things I taught my clients to do, is if they are feeling stuck or they feel they are going to procrastinate or they are not creative, they can’t get back there and they don’t know why they feel tired, I would have them jump up and down and say I am happy, I am happy, I am happy. And as crazy as it sounds, people will look at you and they will say you are crazy, you are crazy, you are crazy, but here is my point, my point is this: as outrageous as that is, it works! Because what it will do is it will change your state of mind, because it jolts you out of a certain frame of mind.

See whenever you think a thought, you make a chemical in your mind, and that chemical makes you feel equal to how you are thinking. But when you engage your body and you do something radical like that, it jolts you, it distracts you out of that patterned way of thinking. It is classic neuro-linguistics, it is so simple, but it works. Try it on for size. The next time you are feeling kind of tired and you are feeling that you kind of don’t want to do it, jump up and down and try that. I promise you it will work.

I also find that many times what we can do is, there are certain times we are more susceptible to certain urges in our environment. I will give you an example from my own life. When I use to be heavy and overweight I would find that I would eat, even when I wasn’t hungry, and I would eat because I was stressed; the other term for it is grazing. But I found, right when I got off work, the urge for me to over-eat, the urge for me to eat something was incredibly high. So I had a 2-minute window. These are crucial moments when that urge was high and what I did was set my running shoes right next to the door I throw my bag to the side and change real fast and I got out of the house. And by doing what it did was at that crucial moment, it changed my focus. It distracted my focus and I felt different. Please remember this: that what you think about, you are going to feel. Whatever you put your attention on, whatever is going on inside your head, a lot of this is unconscious, you are going to feel and experience in your body. So these distraction techniques are critical. So step number five is to create an environment that is conducive to changing, and noticing in advance, if there is a thought, a feeling, a limiting behaviour, or bad habit that would prevent me from following through, that will cause me to procrastinate, what can I do to jolt myself? What can I do very quickly to disrupt that, scramble it, or distract myself? And as silly as it may sound, it works.

Step number six is this, this is the key: get in the zone. What do I mean by getting in the zone? This means operating from a posture and psychology of optimal performance. Now we touched on this earlier, but this is based again on the mind-body connection, and the mind-body connection is based on this: What you think about you feel and what you feel influences your thought process. Let me explain my point here, When you experience something in your mind or you make a thought do you feel it in the reservoir of your body, absolutely, now when you feel something in the reservoir of your body, does that in turn influence the images that you make in your mind or does it affect your thought life, yes or no? Absolutely, so every time you think a thought you make it chemical. And that chemical in your body causes you to think equal to how you are feeling. So, what can happen is we get into this loop of thinking and feeling and feeling and thinking and thinking and feeling, and what can happen is that feelings can literally become a means of thinking for us. For example, do you ever notice that when you are anxious or worried, does that affect your perspective on life? Yeah. When you are anxious and worried do you ever notice that your problems in life seem overwhelming and daunting? But conversely when you feel confident, when you feel enthusiastic, when you feel alive, vibrant and strong do you notice that your problems just don’t feel as challenging? Absolutely. So, how you feel affects what you do. So one of the ways you can change the way you feel very quickly is to change your posture, I mean this is so simple, this is so third grade.

If I say to you that there is a person behind this wall, but you can’t see them, they are incredibly successful, they are a multi-millionaire, they are passionate, it is just one of those people when you meet them you like them. They are real, they are successful, and they are transparent. You can’t see them but if I say I will give you a thousand dollars if you can describe accurately how they carry themselves, you can’t see them but can you take a pretty good guess on how they carry themselves, yes or no? Of course you could, I mean where are their shoulders? Their shoulders are up, there posture is leaning-in more. What is their face like? Are they more animated, is there a level of passion, is there a level of presence? Now how do you know this, because “we” do this every single day. So it is critical to understand, it is critical to evaluate and say how am I showing up today, what’s my level of engagement on a scale of zero to ten? And if you change the way you use your posture, I call  these patterns of posture, it will radically affect the way you feel. See, remember this phrase: It is so much easier to act your way into feeling, than to feel your way into acting. Isn’t that really true? Sometimes it is difficult to get ourselves into a resourceful state of mind.  But if we change our posture, do me a favor right now,  do you remember a time when you felt proud, strong and confident? And do me a favor, stand the way you were standing back then, breathe the way you were breathing back then, and kind of put the look on your face, that you had back then, when you felt really strong, proud and confident. Just notice how that posture may be different than you were before.

What I want you to do, without changing any aspect of your body, adjust your posture. Holding that posture right now, eyes going upward to the sky, ok yeah, doing that right now I want you to try and get afraid, try to feel depressed, try to feel fear, try to feel anxious or worried when your posture is engaged like this, And you can’t do it, because what happens is your posture is sending a different signal to your brain based on the mind-body connection. Simple as it may sounds it works. Do athletes know this, yes or no? Do performers know this, yes or no? Do real professionals know how to engage their bodies in a way that turns on circuits in their mind, yes or no? Isn’t our life as important as theirs is? Watch your posture.

The next thing is to change your psychology. This is based on this, remember I give you that formula, T x E = R.  Thought times emotions becomes our reality. People that get what they want are very good at putting their attention on what they want and off of what they don’t want. My teacher taught me this, way back when, he said once you realize that what you think about habitually starts to show up in your life continuously, you just get real “careful” about what you think about. You don’t allow your thoughts and your attention to go to things that you don’t want to experience.  So, the best way to describe it is like this: your emotions follow your thoughts just assuredly as baby ducks follow their mother. So it is critical to always be aware of: What am I thinking about, what am I focusing on, what am I putting my attention on, and is this constructive or is it destructive to the quality of my life? Remember this phrase: all wisdom is avoiding thoughts that can weaken you. It’s avoiding thoughts that are negative; it’s avoiding things that you don’t want to think about.   Because as Emerson said, “the ancestor to every action is a thought.”

So now that we are in the zone, we are in this optimal state of mind. We need to take immediate action, do something, do anything. I remember years ago, learning that you never leave the site of a goal without taking a step towards its ultimate fulfillment. So we want to take immediate action in our plan for achieving our goal. You have to realize, remember that phrase in physics, the law of physics, a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Any action that you take, even if it feels small, even if it seems little, will create momentum, and the hardest part about creating momentum is  getting it started. So when you take action, when you make a phone call, when you send an email, you reach out to somebody, you get moving, you get that energy and you get momentum. You get what we call the “big mo”, and it starts to move you in the direction that you ultimately want, and then after you take action you always want to be continously measuring your progress, which is the final step.

Remember this phrase: You cannot effectively manage what you are not consistently measuring. One of the reasons is that constant measurement gives you feedback. It allows you to collaborate and change your approach and understanding.  It answers the question tactically, Is what I am doing moving me in the direction that I wanted? If it isn’t, let me change my approach. When you are constantly measuring precisely, acutely, discerning, decisively: Are you getting closer to your goal? Are you getting further away? It allows you, also, not to only measure, but it gives you a sense of progress. You can notice whether or not what you are doing is working and if it isn’t you can change your approach, but when you are constantly measuring, it allows you to kind of score yourself. You can see the progress that you are making, so it is critical for you to constantly be measuring. If you are constantly measuring, more than likely, you are effectively managing your progress. So this is the leadership blue print, these are the steps that we have. But after we have these formulas, these steps, it is critical for you and me to understand where we are spending our time, and how much of our time we are actually spending there. Because let me ask you, have you ever have a day or maybe a week, where you have worked incredibly hard, you have been spending all this time, all this effort, all this energy and you look back at your results, your look back at your rewards, you look back even on your pay check and you say, is this it? Is this all there is? Why does that happen? And it happens because decisions and priorities, decisions and priorities my friend. See I want your opinion on this, is it fair to say, ultimately, the results that we get in our life are really going to come down to the actions that we take? The actions that we take are really going to come down to the decisions that we make in the moment. And the decisions that we make are going to come down to the priorities that we set in that moment. So really the key to all time management and strategy is our ability to set priorities on our time. But, for you and I to effectively set priorities on our time, we first have to understand where we are spending our time, how much of our time we are spending there, and what we are doing with our time. Once again, we can’t save time. We can’t manage time. What we really have to do is get control of the circumstances or the activities within our time. What we have to do is to take inventory of how much time we are spending there and this is going to tie in brilliantly to what we want to talk about right now: Something that we call the time matrix, so let’s move into the time matrix.

If  we can’t manage time, we can’t stop the sands in the hour glass from falling because time is fixed, it is immutable. It passes by at a constant rate. Therefore, what we have to do is not attempt to manage time, we have to manage ourselves. We have to manage the moves and the actions that we take, the activities that take up our time, so that everything we do is strategic and purposeful, ultimately leading us in the direction that we want to go. Now, why is this important to you and me? What is the payoff of effective time utilization, and time stratigization.  Think about this for a moment. What kind of difference would it make in your life if you had an extra 2 hours per day? You literally could increase your productivity conservatively by 35%, and that’s a very conservative number. You felt a greater sense of control over your business and your environment, your self-esteem and yourself self efficacy increased drastically and you were able to reduce the stress in your day by 50%. And not only that, but you are also a much more pleasant person to be around, because you didn’t stress out allot. Your kids and spouse are going to absolutely love you! So with just the free time alone, honestly what would you do with an extra 2 hours per day? Over the course of the year that translates into three extra months, what would you do with all of that time? For you and I to get more time the first thing we have to do is free it up. We have to discover where we are spending our time, what specifically are we doing with our time. Are we investing it or are we squandering it? What are the activities that are taking up our time right now, and what are the consequence of those activities? And remember this, all leaders can focus and concentrate the most important activities that are fulfilling them and giving them the greatest return on their time. And I think that there are three activities that really make up our time, these are the three activities that really make up what we do throughout the day: there are the essential activities, there are the non-essential activities, and then there are growth activities.

Let me explain these very quickly, essential activities are critical, vital. They are results driven, they have positive consequences for the quality of our lives and our business. Non-essential activities are just that, they are non-essential. They are somewhat unnecessary and needless, they don’t really have any short term or long term benefits, they might feel good for the moment, but they are not really moving us in the direction of our ultimate visions and goals. Finally, there are growth activities, these are things that have significant long and short term consequences to the quality of our business, and our lives. If you are in business, these are things that you can do such as marketing, advertising, sales-optimization, lead generation, re-engineering your business model.  Focusing and executing on these kinds of activities can literally triple your income. They have long and short-term positive consequences to the quality of our business and lives.

Another way we can evaluate our time, is based on a model called urgency verses importance. In other words, what do we do? Do we do things that are urgent? Should we do things that are in our face, that demand attention right now? Or do we do things that are important? Or do we do some sort of variation of these two, which ties in brilliantly to the time matrix, which is really what I want to talk about. The time matrix is going to reveal to us where we are spending our time right now, and that is absolutely critical, because a lot of people are in the dark, about where they are spending their time, how they are spending their time, and how much time they are actually spending there. So if you want to look at the matrix here, each of these boxes represent what we actually do throughout the day and will actually fall into one of these quadrants. So this will give us absolute clarity on where we are spending our time and how much time we are actually spending there.

So let’s move into these quadrants. Quadrant one, right here, is doing things that we do throughout the day that are not urgent and that are not important, I call these tension relieving activities, these are things that we do that feel good at the moment but they don’t really have any long or short term consequences, positive consequences for the quality of our lives, this could be watching television, reading magazines, idle conversations, surfing the internet, text messaging things like that, things that feel good for the moment, but they are not really moving us in the direction of our goals. A lot of people will do these things; I call this the quadrant of escape. Because a lot of people, they indulge in these kind of activities to get out of stress. In other words, they are stressed out, they have worked a hard day, they just want to check out, and they just want to escape. So many times they will do things to distract themselves, to just check out. These are mind-numbing activities, and what I found is, a little bit of this is ok, I mean who doesn’t like to watch a television show now and again, or go to the movies or read a magazine, I like to do that, a little bit of that is ok.

Would you agree though that if we are spending a disporportionate amount of our time escaping? You and I really can’t have a level of passion, a level of enthusiasm, a quality of life that were proud of and we are certainly not going to be productive. Think of it like this, if most of our time is spent escaping, if we are living vicariously through a television set, doing things to get out of stress and distract oureself, this actually robs us of the real fulfillment life has to offer.  See, one of the things that I have learned about personal effectiveness, and just joy and fulfillment, is that as people we tend to feel most fulfilled when we are doing things, when we are actively engaged as opposed to being passive. In other words, when all of your senses are engaged and you are an active participant in something, where you are using mental, intellectual, and creative faculties and all of your circuits are turned on, and you can actively see and observe the progress that you are making, you feel a tremendous sense of fulfillment and joy to your life.  Does that makes sense? So, these are things that we do that are not important and are not urgent and they don’t really have any long or short-term positive consequences to the quality of our lives.

The next quadrant over is where we do things, that are urgent, in our face, demanding our attention but are not important. And I call this the quadrant of error, because this is where we are mistaken, this is where in we get seduced. We get to doing these things because they are demanding our attention, and our focus right now in the moment, and they are urgent. And many times what happens to us, because we live in this world of constant stimulation, constant interruptions, constant distractions, many times what we do is we get tricked into doing something just because we want to get it done. We want completion on it, right? But many times we do that at the expense of something that is more important, remember this phrase: Doing one thing means not doing everything else. Doing one thing means not doing everything else! You and I can only get control over our lives to the degree that we stop doing things that are no longer of importance, why? Because there is only so much time throughout the day There are only 24 hours in a day, and if you decide to react to something and do something that is urgent, but is not really important, that is taking precious, vital time away from you, where you could be doing something that is results driven. See, many times we react to things. We constantly react and respond because it is constantly in our face. Let me give you an example of doing things that are urgent but are not really important: Answering emails 25 times a day because you want to know what’s going on, answering phone calls that aren’t scheduled, responding to interruptions, distractions, text messaging, instant messaging alerts. Anything that you react to that is breaking your flow and creativity and is distracting your focus and concentration from what you really should be focused on, that’s not goal achieving, that is not results driven, is an urgent activity, and so the only way that we are going to get control of our lives is to discover, what are things that are urgent but that are not really important. And some people will say to me, yes but it is my job, I have to respond, I have to react, it is my job, it is what I am paid to do. I understand that but there are better strategies, there is better ways that you can schedule your time and block off that time, so that you are single-handedly focused on that activity. See, don’t you find that when you are just focused on one activity, when you schedule a time to make calls back at the end of the day, or you schedule time just to create or to plan, or to do those things, you are more productive.  The reason is  because your brain is exclusively focused and concentrated on that one activity. Does that make sense? See, many times we spend too much time reacting because we are saying yes too often.  Whenever you feel you are reacting when you have all these demands placed on you and people are interrupting you, and you are constantly reacting and responding. You are going to feel out of control. And if we feel out of control is that going to affect our productivity, yes or no? Not only if we are out of control, what emotions are we going to feel? You guessed it: stress. So we want to stop reacting, we want to get clear on what those activities are, so we can stop doing them and reallocate our time to this quadrant right here, which I will show you in a minute, so we can start doing things of higher productivity and higher fulfillment.

The next quadrant over is where we do things that are now urgent and important. I call this the quadrant of essential, because these are activities that have significant consequences, positive consequences to the quality of our business and our lives and now they must be done, there is a deadline right around the corner and we have to get this done.  This is where a lot of people feel a high degree of stress and anxiety because they waited too long, they either are spending too much time escaping or spending too much time reacting, and now they are under the gun. There is a deadline, they have to get this done, these are things that are critical to getting the deal, critical to earning the revenue to making the sales, things have to get done right now, but the reason is, is that we spent too much time in the quadrant of escape and error. And as I said, doing one thing means not doing everything else. We only can get control of our day if we understand where we are spending our time. But the reason we are under the gun, the reason why we are spending time in the quadrant of essential, doing things that are urgent and important, is because we didn’t spend enough of our time in the quadrant of the extraordinary!

This is where you are doing things that are important, but they are not urgent yet, you have time to breathe.  You have a buffer, you have time to spare. These are things like planning, these are growth related activities, these are things that we do in advance, that can have significant long and short-term positive consequences to the quality of your life. These are things like personal planning, spending time with your family, exercising every single day, you have time to breathe. Does this make sense? Can you see how these different quadrants really reveal to us how we are spending our time?
I want to ask you some questions to give you an idea of where you are spending your time right now:

•

Question number 1, how much time do you spend in each quadrant?

•

Question number 2, what specifically are you doing in each quadrant?

I can tell you if you are bored right now, or you are not fulfilled, I guarantee you it is because you spend a lot of time escaping. You spend a disproportionate amount of your time escaping rather than doing things that are active, where you are actively engaged. If you are not producing at the level that you want, I guarantee you it is because you are spending a lot of your time in the quadrant of error. You are reacting, you are spending  a lot of time moving.  You have moved a lot, you are busy, but you haven’t really achieved anything of significance or importance. Or are you under a lot of stress, are you constantly under the gun, are you constantly in stress, because you have deadlines right around the corner that you have to get done? Or do you live a life of mastery, do you have time to breathe, are you relaxed, are you diligent, vigilant, a planner, strategizing?  Are you constantly doing things that are of higher value, doing high growth related activities, constantly creating? Can you see how this controls the quality of our lives and our productivity?   The third question is:

•

What can I do instead?

What I learned years ago is this, you and I, we can’t stop doing something, we have to start doing something else that is more fulfilling and rewarding. So what can you do instead, and how can you reallocate most of your time doing things that are important to the quality of your life, but they are not urgent yet, you have time to breathe. Can you see now, that understanding this, it will give you control and it will make you more effective at what you do.