Tag: time management

How some people do so much more with their time.

We all know people who do more than everyone else.

They do the family things and the home things.

They do the friends things, the travel things, the work things, and the wild things.

And miraculously, they seem to be enjoying it all.

Like cyborgs. Or Stepford Wives.

They are creating things that interest them.

They are volunteering for causes they care about.

They are having success in their career, running their own business or leading their family.

They do the networking activities you would like to do.

They exercise.

And they get to worship, too, God bless them.

Plus, they coach or chaperone or team parent for the activities their kids do.

You wonder How do they do it all?

How are they involved in so many things? How do they fit it all in? And how do they not Chernobyl like it’s 1986?

The answer is simple.

Capacity is a state of mind.

You decide how much you can handle, how much you can take on, how much you can fit in.

You decide how much you can do with your hours, days and weeks.

When you decide you are full and overwhelmed, you stop. (Presumably in the name of love.)

People who do more believe they have a capacity to do more.

They see spaces to add things.

They find time in their schedule to make things happen.

They see opportunities that are worth their time and their energy.

And they recognize that at some point, they will run out of time, energy and opportunity.

So they go now.

The scarcity of time is precisely what drives them to see more capacity in their everyday.

Now is the time.

Now is the opportunity.

Now is the alternative to never.

Key Takeaway

If you want to fill your life with meaning, action and contribution, adjust your mindset to create capacity. Because when you want to find the time for more, you will find it. Or you will optimize, prioritize, reduce or eliminate things to make room. There is more space and time in your continuum for the things you really want to do. Find it. Enjoy it. Do more with it. And make others wonder how you do it all.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media. And consider subscribing to Adam’s Good Newsletter.

The Power of 5 Minutes: Creating Big Impact In Small Moments.

Two weeks ago, my daughter Ava and I traveled an hour and a half to attend a Wisconsin high school sectional track meet in Neenah, Wisconsin. (Which is near Pinta and Santa Maria, Wisconsin.)

The meet was the last stop before the state championship meet. I coach 2 athletes who were competing that day in the shot put and discus. Both throwers, Terron ‘And On’ McCall and Luka ‘Ivanarock’ Ivancevic, finished in the top 3 of both events and qualified for the state meet last weekend in La Crosse. Which makes this story a prequel to the post I shared earlier this week about the state meet.

However, just before the shot put was set to start, after all of the throwers were fully warmed, hyped and ready to rock, a thunderstorm rolled in, like a Garth Brooks song, and forced a 1.5-hour delay in the competition. Boo.

This was double boo for me, because I had to leave the meet at 6pm, no matter where we were in the competition. It was my son Johann’s 18th birthday. And we had a family dinner celebration back in Milwaukee.

Terron and Luka, after taking 1st and 2nd in the shot put and second and third in the discus. They qualified for the state meet in both events. Fun Fact: behind Luka’s head, you can see part of the sign for Neenah’s school mascot: The Hot Pockets. Their school song is simply the Hot Pockets jingle.

When it was clear that I would miss the boys’ shot put competition, my daughter Ava and I left the shelter of the shiny new Neenah High School and headed for the parking lot to jump in our Expedition and hurry home from our northern expedition.

However, between the school and the parking lot, I spotted two familiar faces. One belonged to my college track teammate Scott Hammer. Hammer coaches at West Bend West High School, which is in our conference. So I see him regularly throughout the spring. His son Carson is a great 800-meter runner and qualified for the state meet in the 4 X 800-meter relay.

The other familiar face belonged to Josh White, another college track teammate, and one of my roommates for 3 years of college.

My University of Wisconsin track & field teammates Scott ‘Hammer’ Hammer and Josh ‘Slosh’ White. (In college, everyone had a nickname. Hammer’s was pretty obvious.)

It had been a few years since Josh and I had seen each other. Following huge smiles and hugs we quickly caught up. We said funny things to make each other laugh. We have a lot of funny history. I shared that Ava would be living just a block from our old off-campus house in Madison next year.

We then told Ava a story about the night we threw our first college house party, and how the cops showed up at our door at 4am, telling us there had been noise complaints.

But the noise complaints were not related to the party, which was long over, and very underagey. The loud noise was my roommates and I singing loudly, and repeatedly as we tried to leave the perfect answering machine message on our house answering machine. It’s fun to be around someone with whom you have so much shared history. It’s also fun to spend time with someone who remembers answering machines.

But of course, our time was short. Ava and I had a birthday dinner to get to. As we said our goodbyes, Josh said, ‘It was so good to see you. Even just 5 minutes together was awesome.’

We had to hurry back to Milwaukee for dinner and fun with Johann, the newest adult Albrecht!

As we pulled out of the parking lot and pointed the car south on I-41 towards Brew City, I kept thinking about what Josh said. ‘Even just 5 minutes together was awesome.’

He was right. And I am so thankful he said it. I asked Ava if she remembered what Josh had said before we left. She remembered it word for word, just as I had. We both reflected on the power of that statement.

Reminder

You don’t need a lot of time to catch up. You don’t need a lot of time to have a positive impact on someone. Or to make progress on a challenge, or to make something important happen. 5 minutes well spent can create magic.

In 5 minutes you can:

  • Catch up with an old friend
  • Make a new friend
  • Have a career-altering interaction
  • Make Minute Rice
  • Discover the key to unlocking a problem
  • Connect important dots
  • Make a big decision
  • Learn an important lesson
  • Have an aha moment (And write Take On Me.)
  • Start a flywheel spinning
  • Have a breakthrough
  • Say your are sorry
  • Tell someone you miss them
  • Ask for that thing you really want and get it.
  • Do that simple thing you have been putting off for too long
  • Get medical lab work done
  • Schedule your checkup
  • Call for help
  • Listen to 5 Minutes of Funk by Whodini

Key Takeaway

It only takes 5 minutes to do something that has a major impact on your life, career, or the lives of others. Meaningful reconnections, introductions, breakthroughs, discoveries and actions can happen in a flash. Never underestimate the power of these short blocks of time. Life and success are not built on hour-long blocks. They are built in meaningful moments. Take advantage of those small opportunities, and they can positively impact the rest of your life in big ways.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

Recognizing and Avoiding the Slow No.

You should always be aware of the slow no.

It’s the worst of the nos.

Worse than infernos, volcanoes and no-it-alls.

The slow no is the decision that is always going to be no. No matter how much support there is for a yes.

Decision makers will let you explore, research, propose, pile up work towards, and spend a lot of time diddling on things that are always going to finish with a no.

It’s a waste of time, energy, enthusiasm and hope. Like that romantic interest that you know is way out of your league, but they are really nice to you, and you start thinking there is a chance, when there is really no chance there is a chance.

What’s the best way to deal with the slow no?

Cut to the chase.

Ask if this is likely to end in a slow no.

Ask the decision-makers, if all the evidence seems to support a yes, will it still be a no because of politics, budget, bias, distance, favored-competitors, or other factors out of your control.

The slow no is likely to occur when:

  • You wonder why the decision maker hasn’t made a decision like this before
  • The cost seems out of line with the budget
  • It all seems too good to be true (like the whole Lance Armstrong thing)
  • The action would be out of character for the decision maker
  • You smell political factors or nepotism at play
  • They say you are facing 1 in a million odds, and you think they are saying there’s a chance
  • The decision maker puts the word pro in procrastination

The best thing you can do is hit fast forward and turn that slow no into a fast no. Or a know-now no.

You can also openly rescind your proposal or request.

When your change of heart is met with a shrug, you know it was a slow no.

That puts time back into your account. So you can use it more productively on something else. Or someone else.

Key Takeaway

Don’t lose time on a slow no. Sniff them out. Fast forward them to the final answer. And use your time on something more valuable.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

You have 1 month left to make things happen in 2024.

Welcome to December. 2024 is now 11/12ths complete. Which means you have one month left to make progress on your life and yearly goals. If you are a procrastinator, you have already hit the snooze button 11 times, and it is now time to get up and go. (If you are an amateurcrastinator you are not as good a procrastinator. But I don’t know if that means you put things off more or less. #ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmm.)

December means you have one month left to:

Finish the year fitter, not fatter. The best way to a better body in 2025 is to start in 2024.

Revisit your New Year’s resolution. You likely left it somewhere in January.

Start a new habit. (Read Atomic Habits by James Clear to check the box on this and the next item. Plus it is half-price right now. You are welcome.)

Read a great book this year. (See above.)

Get in touch with that person or people you haven’t touched in too long.

Go to church. December is the best time to go anyway, for Christ’s sake. And for the bread and juice. And to try to get off the naughty list.

Donate to charity. (And get the tax benefits.)

Start that business. (I am working on starting an Excite Hustle with my son. We have talked about it for forever. But we are going to make it happen this month! An Excite Hustles is like a side hustle, but it excites you about doing work.)

Begin writing that book. Just start by writing down a simple outline of what you know about the topic, or a paragraph summarizing the plot, like Sir Mix-A-Plot. I write my books in a Google Doc. You don’t need anything fancy. Or schmancy.

Take that trip. Or schedule and book that vacation. It’s a great time to lock in your spring or summer travel and give yourself something to look forward to this winter. Unless you live somewhere vacationy already. In which case, pick another thing to do with your 12th month.

Do a million other things. Those first ten items were just examples. I don’t have time to write an exhaustive list of everything you could possibly do this month. Because we both have more important things to do. So let’s go, Geronimo!

Key Takeaway

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. You have to recognize the passage of time to make its scarcity useful. The last month of the year, the last day of the week and the last hours of the day create a valuable sense of urgency, signaling it’s go time. Remember, when you hit a deadline, the opportunities afforded by that unit of time are dead. Let that motivate you to go now. There’s no better time.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

You are about to get 111 hours free. Don’t waste them.

This week, you get an amazing gift. No, Ed McMahon won’t be showing up with a humongo check. You won’t have wise men pop in unannounced to drop off gold, fruitcake and myrrh. Instead, you will get the precious gift of time. Time away from work, or school, or even working at a school.

But you don’t just get 1 or 2 hours free. And not just 8 or 24 hours either.

You get a shipload of time.

In fact, you get 111 hours free!

The Math

If you are one of the many who don’t have to work or go to school Thursday through Sunday, your time off starts at 5pm on Wednesday and ends at 8am on Monday.

In between there are 111 hours for you to spend wisely.

You can use it on quality time with friends and family. There is plenty of time for talking, playing, singing, and laughing until liquids sprays our of your nose. And if your friends don’t make you laugh until you leak, you need better friends.

You can invest in your health. Walking, turkey trotting, hiking, or any other calorie burning activity before or after the meal is a great idea.

You can read. You can read a lot in 111 hours. In fact, you could probably read all 1032 blog posts I have written here at The Adam Albrecht Blog. You could read my book What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? Or you could read an important piece of literature, a valuable self improvement book, the biography of a wildly successful human or a tale of epic human adventure and triumph. But my blog will have more random pop culture references. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

You can schedule that health checkup, or that therapy session you know you need. You could enroll in a program to stop doing that thing you know you shouldn’t do no more, like Phil Collins said.

You can start working on that master project you have always dreamed of. Or that mini project you couldn’t seem to find time to do, Mickey.

You could plan a vacation. Or book a vacation. Or at least watch National Lampoon’s Vacation.

You could transfer money to savings. Or to that investment account. Or to me.

You could plan a dinner with people you love chewing the fat with.

You could schedule a Zoom with friends or family that you won’t see in real life this holiday. But not if they are no longer in real life. (Zoom hasn’t worked out that technology yet.)

You could plan impromptu in-person get-togethers, right now, over me.

You can play games. Board games. Card games. Football games. Reindeer games. We don’t game enough.

You could start planning your own business. (Not that that’s any of my business.)

You could start filling a notebook with everything you know about a specific topic. That’s a great way to start writing a book.

You could volunteer. Even if you are not in Knoxville.

In fact, you can do just about anything you please.

But please, please, please don’t do nothing, Sabrina.

You can do nothing anytime.

Key Takeaway

You are about to receive the most precious gift of all. The gift of time. 111 hours. A stately sum. Invest it any way you like. But whatever you do, don’t waste it. Because you will never get it back.

If you found something valuable or rewarding to do with your 111 hours, please shoot me a note to let me know what you did at 614-256-2850 or at adam@theweaponry.com. I am always looking for good ideas and success stories.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

5 Things you should always be working on for a happy, fulfilling life.

If you met a genie who could grant you 3 wishes do you know what you would ask for? I do. I would wish for happiness, fulfillment and a lifetime supply of cheese curd flavored Pringles. Unfortunately, when I was in 3rd grade, my friend Todd Brudos told me that genies are not real. They are just something lamp polish manufacturers made up to get you to polish your lamps.

So today, I no longer dream of genies. Instead, I now realize we must work for the things we want. And if you want happiness and fulfillment, the key is to figure out what brings you those things well before you are in hospice care or the electric chair.

Through my own research, trial and error, and a couple of lucky guesses I have discovered that there are 5 things to work on for a happy, fulfilled, and rewarding life.

Here they are, in a particular order.

5 Things You Should Always Be Working On.

1. Your Health: When you stop working on your health, your health stops working on you. Eat right. Sleep right. Exercise. Drop habits that are hard on your health. Keep your weight in the healthy-and-feels-good zone. See your doctor and dentist regularly. Get naked and do the uncomfortable exams when you are supposed to. (Although if your dentist asks you to get naked for an exam consider getting a second opinion first.) If you could use a little help with your mental health see someone there too.

2. Your Relationships: At the end of our days the only thing that will really matter is our relationships and the impact we have on each other. Develop more relationships. Develop better relationships. And see your people in real life. Live life like you want to have a packed house at your funeral. And not just because people want to make sure you are really dead.

3. Your Time Utilization: Time is your most valuable resource. And it’s constantly slip-sliding away. Make sure to use your time wisely, old owl. Do things now. Plan your days, weeks, and adventures in advance. Recognize the things that waste your time and eliminate them now. You’ll thank me later, when you have time.

4. Your Growth: Growth means getting better. Aim to get better every day in every way. Read and learn. Reflect on your experiences to gain wisdom. Surround yourself with great people who you can learn from and model. Develop great habits. Improve your listening skills. And your compassion. Become a better model of yourself every day. Even if you are already a supermodel.

5. Your Wealth: When you grow your wealth, your other opportunities grow too. So does your peace of mind, freedom, and the size of the duffel bag you need to carry all of your money when you leave the country. And like the old saying goes, ‘Mo Money, Mo Pringles’.

Key Takeaway

To make the most of your short time on Earth focus on what matters most. Take care of your health to maximize the quantity and quality of your life. Develop and maintain your relationships. Make great use of your time while you have time. Focus on growing your wealth to grow your opportunities, freedom and peace of mind. And get a little better every day.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

Are you creating Onion Days?

I had a pretty bad day on Saturday. I coach 8th-grade football on Saturday mornings. And we lost. Like nothing-went-right lost. Like The-Bad-News-Packers lost. Like that-TV-show-about-the-plane- crash-on-that-island lost.

Then I couldn’t get myself motivated to do anything productive the rest of the day. By Saturday night I felt like I not only lost the football game, but I lost the rest of the day as well. Unfortunately, when you lose a day you never get it back, Jack.

But on Sunday, I bounced like Flubber. Before I went to bed Sunday night, I reflected on my day. And I realized that my Sunday was as good as my Saturday was bad. I had created an Onion Day. A day with layer after layer after layer of good stuff.

My Onion Day.

I woke up early to write and publish a blog post about the importance of planting yourself in soil that enables you to thrive.

Then my family and I went to the 9am church service. (God knows that service helps you get the most out of your morning.)

We took the slow Sunday drive home along Lake Michigan, avoiding the usual interstate route. It’s the automotive version of stopping to smell the roses. Although you can’t actually smell roses at 25 miles per hour.

I cleaned out a significant part of our basement that had become cluttered with random stuff during the renovation we did on our home over the past year.

I watched some of the Patriots -Bengals game, and watched my Pats look like a real team again for the first time since Tom Brady left to spend more time looking at himself in the mirror.

I helped my son Johann think through a writing and research project for an AP class he is taking.

I took a long walk with my wife Dawn, son Magnus and dog Lola along Lake Michigan. Which looks like an ocean, but is unsalted and shark-free.

I picked up fun food for dinner for the family, because I was too hungry to wait for the ribs Dawn was planning to make for our Sunday dinner. (And apparently, a commercial I watched during the football game worked on me.)

I broke down game footage from our team’s ugly loss so we could coach the team on how to do things better next time. (If they don’t do better I will cry myself to sleep every Saturday night until November.)

I talked to my daughter Ava on the phone on the last day of her 18th year and caught up on her day at college.

I worked out, like LFMAO would say.

The Reflection

I looked back at my day. And I realized that I had a near-perfect Onion Day.

  • I created
  • I churched
  • I meandered
  • I familied
  • I worked
  • I taught
  • I explored
  • I treated
  • I coached
  • I connected
  • I exercised

It was a great Onion Day, a great way to bounce, and a great example of time well spent.

Key Takeaway

The best days are Onion Days. Those are the days when you layer in as many of your favorite and most important activities. Know what your perfect Onion Day entails. Then work to create as many of them as you can. That’s how you build a great and rewarding life without regrets.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

Happy Leap Day! Seize the bonus day by starting something new.

Happy Leap Day! February 29th is your lucky day. In fact, it’s luckier than a 5-leaf clover. And it’s rarer than a mooing steak. In fact, it is so rare that it only happens every 4 years. Like the Olympics, a Presidential election, or a J-Lo wedding.

Opportunity Day!

However, it is not the rarity of Leap Day that matters. It’s the opportunity. Today is a bonus day! Which means that today is the perfect day to do something extra. Like Michael Jackson said, today, ‘You got to be startin’ somethin. Or finishing somethin’. Or working hard on somethin’.

Take a few minutes to think about those things you can never seem to find the time to start, plan or complete. Take a leap and get rolling today.

Possible Leap Day Activities:

  • Exercise
  • Take a hike
  • Play a Game
  • Start a blog, vlog, slog, or drink Glogg
  • Start a business
  • Pick up a new hobby, or re-engage in an old hobby (like Holly)
  • Create a podcast
  • Play an instrument
  • Create a product
  • Start a book (reading or writing)
  • Paint
  • Marie Kondo your house
  • Volunteer, or sign up to volunteer
  • Go to church (or find a place of worship to go to this week)
  • Start a meetup
  • Join a club or worthy organization
  • Ask someone to be your mentor.
  • Call someone you haven’t talked to for too long
  • Find a Dentist
  • Find a Doctor
  • Find a nurse
  • Find a lady with an alligator purse
  • Start your taxes
  • Plan a vacation
  • Organize a girls’ night, or a guys’ night, or a Michael Knight
  • Make a career or life plan
  • Do something more you, because no one knows you better than you

Bonus Time Is Start Time

Me in my office. That leaf is what the original Adam was wearing when he got in trouble with God.

I started planning my own business, The Weaponry, during a little bonus time like you have today. Now we have been in business for nearly 8 years. We have 2 offices and clients from Quebec to California.

I started this blog during a little bit of free time. This is post number 966.

The pink and red countries are where my blog has been read. Crazy, right?

During the last leap year in 2020, I used the bonus free time provided by the COVID-19 lockdown to write my first book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say?

Today, will use some of my bonus time to work on my next book currently titled, Adam Albrecht’s Next Book. Catchy, I know.

The 3 Big Bs

My business, blog, and book represent the 3 biggest elective projects of my life. And they were all birthed during bonus time. It was time that I used wisely.

Now it’s your turn to do something meaningful. Don’t miss the opportunity today is offering You.

Key Takeaway

Time is your more precious resource. Use it wisely. Alchemize it into magic. And when you get a bonus day or a bonus hour, take advantage of it. Otherwise, when you come to the end of your time, you will wish you had.

Which begs the question: What will you do with your Leap Day?

Note: Happy Leap Day Birthday to my friend Jeff Hilimire, who turns 12 today.

IMG_20191105_143236
Jeff ‘The Leap Day’ Hilimire, shows us how big he was when he was born.

The most important work you do is invisible.

We often think of work as visible. Showy. Demonstrable. That used to be the case. For most of history, until the latter half of the 1900s, most work was easy to see. It was blue-collar and physical. And it drove a lot of sales of Bengay.

But today, machines do much of the physical work. This means that much of the important work you do is not seen. Because it happens in your head.

Today nearly 40% of jobs are classified as managers, officials or professionals. Roughly the same percentage are service jobs. While I am no mathemetician, I think that means that 80% of jobs require you to think. Like Aretha Franklin said. Because today, most work is mental.  

It is easy to tell when a manual laborer is not laboring. The person on the construction crew leaning on the shovel is both conspicuous and maddening. But when your work is not easily visible, you must bring your own mental discipline to stay on task. Focus is the key to mental productivity. Thinking work requires you to defend your focused time to get the thinking things done.

Focus is critical to strategizing and organizing in your head. Focus is needed to then translate those ideas to your coworkers, customers and partners for alignment and execution. Real focus. Not just focus pocus. 

The work performed by your mental machinery is the most valuable type of work there is today. The better you are at this work the more valuable you are to your team, and the more value you create for others.

Key Takeaway

Get good at your own inner workings. Master the work that no one else can see. Create structure and space to think and strategize. Organize the world in your head so you can organize the organization in the real world. This means both finding the quiet to do the work, and the discipline to be diligent about the work you must do to make a difference.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

A simple rule of thumb to get the most out of your people.

When I was a kid I loved the movie Smokey and The Bandit. I was into trucks and Trans Ams. So a movie about those two vehicles racing across America, starring Burt Reynolds and his mustache, was an obvious Oscar winner to me.

I also loved the theme song from the movie, East Bound and Down by Jerry Reed. My favorite line from the song is the classic, ‘We’ve got a long way to go, and a short time to get there.’

Those lyrics still play in my head today. Because as a business owner, and both a football and track and field coach, I have big goals for my teams to accomplish. And I have a short time to make them happen.

Getting The Most Out Of Your People

To get the most out of your people there is a simple exercise to help you budget the time and energy you spend with each of the members of your team.

Grab a sheet of paper. (Yes, they still make paper.) On the left side write down a list of those you manage or coach in order from most productive to least productive. Your productivity rock stars will be at the top. Your ‘Why-are-they-still-here’ person is at the bottom.

Then, to the right of that, create a list, in order, of how much time you spend managing or coaching each of the people you lead.

Now, you are going to draw a good old-fashioned straight line connecting the names on the left list to the same name on the right list.

If you are drawing straight lines, and the lines don’t cross, you are budgeting your time appropriately. If your lines Christopher Cross, you spend too little time with your most talented people, and too much time with your least talented people. It is time to re-budget.

Key Takeaway

Maximize the return on your time invested in your team. This means the most productive people should get the most time and attention. The least productive people should get the least of your time. This rewards good behavior from your best people. And it ensures that your time and energy are invested where they will get the greatest return. Spending more time with your less productive team members sends the wrong signal to your great talent. And it is a waste of time. With rare exceptions, the least productive team members will always generate the least results.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.