Tag: time management

Why the greatest success stories are created by the hour.

Every January we think about the year ahead. We set goals and resolutions and dream about how we are going to be different in 365 days. It’s a beautiful idea. But it doesn’t really work. Because while there is no shortage of goals, dreams or plans, results are harder to find than a squeezable pack of Charmin in 2020.

A major part of the problem is that a year is just too long. It gives you too much time to slack off. Think about the hare from the law firm of Tortoise & Hare. That bunny had too, too, too much time on his hands. In a one-minute race, the rabbit would have dominated. It was the perception that he had plenty of time for a comeback that ruined him.

The Solve

The best way to crush your goals like red pepper is to stop measuring your progress in years. Instead, focus on having great hours.

Start each day with your success list. Then block your activities on your calendar. Those time blocks are your building blocks for success. By stacking several great hours together daily, and doing that day after day, you will build great weeks, months, and years.

It all starts with the hour you are in right now. (Like Van Halen said.) Focus on making this hour great. Then, think about grading your hours every day. If you do what you intended to do with an hour, give it an excellent grade. If you didn’t do the work, workout, reading, rest, socializing, or play that you intended to do, that hour gets a poor grade.

The feedback is immediate. And motivating. Experiencing a bad hour will inspire you to respond with a much better next hour. Which means your comeback is always less than 60 minutes away. (Although L.L. Cool J won’t call it a comeback.)

There are 168 hours in every week. Which translates to a lot of opportunities for progress and happiness. Make them count. And you will turn your entire life into a success story.

Key Takeaway

Shorten your measurable units of success. The power in a great hour is instantly recognizable and controllable. An hour well spent provides a great return on your investment. Which has a compounding effect. Remember, great hours are the building blocks of a great life. And you will start to see the results in just 60 minutes.

*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.

How to make magic with just 10 minutes.

It’s remarkable what you can do with just 10 minutes. In fact, it only takes 10 minutes to kickstart your biggest, wildest ambitions. You can sketch out an initial plan for anything. And in doing so, you perform the most important work of the entire process.

Things You Can Do With Just 10 Minutes:

  • Outline a vision for that business you want to start.
  • Begin researching a career change.
  • Start writing a book, blog, or screenplay. (Or get crazy and write a screenless play.)
  • Book travel to that destination you’ve always dreamed of visiting.
  • Create your bucket list.
  • Hit Zillow to look for a new home.
  • Find a class you want to take to expand your skillz. (Remember what Napoleon Dynamite said about skillz.)
  • Start reading that book you’ve always meant to read.
  • Sign up to volunteer your time.
  • Introduce yourself to someone you want to meet.
  • Listen to 5 Minutes of Funk by Whodini, twice. (That’s my jam!)
  • Book tickets to an experience.
  • Start learning an instrument.
  • Complete 8 Minute Abs. Then watch a Chuck Woolery commercial break.

Key Takeaway

You can always find 10 minutes. And in those 10 minutes, you can do the most important work of all. You can begin. You can plan. You can sketch. You can outline the process. You can unfold the roadmap and detail the journey. And once you do, you’re sure to find 10 more minutes to take the next step.

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

The great value of scheduling your Saturdays and Sundays solid.

For most of us, the weekends are our free time. But when you consider that time is your most precious and un-renewable resource, wasting your free time comes at a very high cost. That’s why I employ time investment strategies to help me get the most out of my days.

Yesterday, was a Saturday on my part of the planet. And I only really had one must-do obligation. But I scheduled my entire day on a calendar so that I could get the greatest return on my free time. Here’s what it looked like.

Adam Albrecht’s Yesterday

6:30am Wake Up (I set my alarm for no later than 6:30am every Saturday, Sunday, Holiday and Vacation Day.)

6:45am Read Principles by Ray Dalio (It’s not about Victoria’s family or leaders of high schools)

7:45am Take Ava to driving lessons (I dropped my little girl off to drive around in a car for 2 hours with a dude I had never met. She said the strangest part was that he was listening to sports talk radio. And commercials about erectile disfunction came on at least 3 times during her drive. #awkward )

8:10am: Eat Breakfast (3 eggs)

8:30am: Finish Planning My Day (This is when I finished out my calendar)

9:15am: Clean Bedroom/Bathroom and Laundry (Every Saturday morning I make sure to clean up the stuff I didn’t put away properly during the week. Don’t give me too much credit for the laundry. That’s mostly to-and-from laundry room stuff. Dawn doesn’t trust me to do much more.)

9:50am: Pick up Ava and run to the library. (Ava was alive. And her arms were tired from all the 10-and-2ing. We dropped off Chronicles of Narnia books and picked up 3 science project kits for the kids. Yep, we are those parents.)

10:15am: Yardwork (The kids picked up sticks and I mowed the lawn for the first time this spring. It felt good to get back in the saddle of my John Deere lawn tractor. #shethinksmytractorssexy)

12:00pm: Magnus’ Lacrosse game (First game ever. Only 4 practices to prepare. They won 6-1.)

2:00pm: Eat lunch

2:30pm Nap (I scheduled this)

3:00pm Work on T-shirt Business (I love making t-shirts. And I have bigger plans in the works. Which I worked on at 3pm yesterday.)

3:30pm Organize next steps on my book (I have written a manuscript for my first book. And I needed to focus on what needs to happen next.)

4:00pm Plan next steps for Tucker Hill Properties (The property investment business Dawn and I started has some serious work in the works right now.)

4:30pm Go to the gym with Ava and Johann (My kids and I lift weights together 4 times per week.)

6:15pm Dinner (I eat. It helps me stay alive)

7:00pm Walk with Dawn (We take a regular 1.5 to 5-mile walk-and-talk. It’s good for marriage.)

8:00pm Family Game Night (Mexican Dominoes)

9:00pm Reading (This is the only thing on the calendar that didn’t happen. Because game night went until after 10pm. Then I worked on a puzzle for 20 minutes instead. Because I am a party animal.)

The Result

By scheduling my Saturday full and putting it into my Google calendar I made the most of my day. I prioritized my activities, which were a combination of work, play, togetherness, exercise, and responsibility. And aside from my evening reading, my day went exactly as planned. The time felt well invested and purposeful. And I moved a lot of my important trains forward.

Key Takeaway

Schedule your free time. By making a specific plan for your evenings, weekends, and vacations you will make the most of your ever-dwindling time. It is a great way to feel productive. Yet it lets you bake in your perfect combination of work and play. Plus, by utilizing a time-blocking calendar you face the reality of how much can actually be accomplished in a day. No overestimating. No underestimating. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish this up. I have a lot of other things to do today.

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

Don’t spend your whole life busy and not make progress.

Being busy is not the same as being productive. In fact, busyness is like Fool’s Gold. It looks like business to the uniformed. But it is easy to be busy without getting ahead. In fact, you can spend your whole career extremely busy but not make any progress. The same thing can happen in your personal life too.

The 80-20 rule says that 80 percent of the results come from just 20 percent of the work. (And that 80-year olds seen with 20-year olds have money coming out of the wazoo.) In other words, if you are spending your time on the wrong things you could get little to no results. 

Earlier in my career, when I was with a very large advertising agency, the majority of my time was sucked up with meetings. And meetings about meetings. And to the uninformed, it looked like we were all super busy beavers. But very little wood was actually chewed. And we weren’t building any damn dams.

Today, as an entrepreneur, I see a direct link between how I spend my time and the value that time creates. The goal of any business is to make money. And if you are spending time on anything that ultimately is not helping your organization make more money, you are wasting your time.

Your wasted time and wasted motions at work hurt your career. Because they rob you of time that could be used for self-improvement, networking or creating value for your organization. Those are the 3 keys to making your company more successful, rising within your organization, and earning more for yourself.

If you find yourself in meetings that are not adding value, do one of the following:

  1. Change the meeting. Take the initiative to alter the meeting to make it more valuable to your organization and the people in it.
  2. Shorten the meeting. Help fast forward to the information that needs to be shared or decision that needs to be made, and be done. Often we take a lot of time to do what could be done in just a few minutes. 
  3. Pull the cord. Just like riding the bus, you can pull the cord and ask to get out of the meeting at any time. Be polite, but clear that you don’t feel it is a valuable use of your time. If you feel that way, it is likely that others do too.
  4. Text someone outside the meeting to pull the fire alarm. That works every time.

Key Takeaway

Time is your most precious commodity. Evaluate the way you are spending your time. Look for inefficient and ineffective uses, then eliminate them. Don’t let others waste your time. The opportunity cost is too high with this non-renewable resource.

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

The most valuable construction material in the world arrives at midnight.

Do you know what the most valuable construction material is? In case you are no Bob The Builder and haven’t partied at The Home Depot since before the pandemic, here’s a quick refresher on some of the more popular materials:

  • Lumber
  • Brick
  • Concrete
  • Steel
  • Glass (If your house is made of this don’t throw Mick Jagger)
  • Bamboo
  • Corn (Mitchell, South Dakota only)
  • Plastic
  • Aluminum
  • Adobe

But the most valuable construction material of all, is time. You can use time, like blocks, bricks and legos to create anything you can think of. We all get a delivery of 1,440 shiny new minutes every day. They arrive at your doorstep at midnight.

Each minute is perfectly sized for human use. They enable you to create great things. To build your dreams. To construct the life you want to live. To make memories and relationships.

Your daily delivery of minutes can be used to build businesses. They can be used to write a book, a movie or a blog post. They can create quality time with others. They can be used for self-improvement, to build intelligence and construct confidence. They can be used to build homes. And they can even be volunteered to good causes.

The most interesting thing about your daily delivery of minutes is that if you use them you get to keep them forever. But if you don’t use them, they disappear at midnight.

Key Takeaway

Use your minutes today.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message please share it with them. It will only take a minute.

How to choose between two good ways to spend your time.

The world is full of good things. At any given time there are hundreds, if not thousands of worthwhile activities for you to partake in. In fact, life is a giant a la carte menu of enjoyable ways to spend your time. So, how do we choose, if we are not choosey moms? Because everyone knows what choosey mom’s choose. #ExtraCrunchy

Priorities

The key to determining how to spend your time is establishing your priorities. Your priorities serve as a tiebreaker between two good ways to spend your time and energy. When you are forced to choose, always invest in the activity that aligns with your priorities.

(If you are pressed for time, you can stop reading this post here. Because you have already discovered the main point of this post. Everything that comes after this is simply time away from your priorities. But if you are like Richard Gere in An Officer And A Gentleman, and have nowhere else to go, by all means, please keep reading.)

Morning Time

Every morning I have to decide between sleeping longer, and getting up and jumping into my pre-determined activities. I always choose to get up and get going. Because I schedule my most important activities to start just 10 minutes after my alarm detonates. By important, I mean my self-improvement activities. I always start my day with exercise, reading, or writing. Because those activities align with my priorities. Even when my bed is very comfortable.

If I get one or more of my self-improvement activities in before breakfast, even if my breakfast gives me food poisoning, I will have made progress that day. (Ok, now I’m a little apprehensive about eating breakfast…)

Declaring Your Priorities

If you don’t have your priorities determined, do that now, before you do anything else. Because they will help you determine everything else.

This post is not intended to teach you how to choose your priorities. But since we’re here, here’s the simplified process:

  • Think about the end of your life.
  • When your completed life story is told, what’s the story morning glory?
  • What did you do?
  • What impressive accomplishments will you be remembered for?
  • Whatever you come up with, those are your priorities.
  • To determine the priority of all priorities, narrow your accomplishments down to just one in an Ultimate Accomplishment Royal Rumble.  The last accomplishment standing is your Ultimate Priority.
  • Your Ultimate Priority should drive all time management decisions for the rest of your life.

Key Takeaway

Time is your most valuable and scarcest resource. To determine how and where to spend it, know your priorities. And invest as much time and energy into your priorities as possible. Even when the alternative is attractive. Because life is like the Playboy Mansion, and there will always be attractive alternatives. But the more time you spend with the attractive alternatives, and not your priorities, the less likely the story at the end of your days will be the story you wish was written.

If you liked this post and want to read more like this, I recommend reading this post on the book The One Thing.

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What not to do with your extra time right now.

When I was in 6th grade I went to the Lake of The Ozarks in Missouri. It was long before Jason Bateman made it look both scary and binge-able. I lived in Columbia, Missouri at the time, and my friend Matt had a family lake house in the LOTO. Matt and his family invited me to come down to the lake for a summer weekend. Which at the time felt as big and exciting as going to Cancun. Except I could speak the language, and drink the water.

I remember 4 things from that weekend:

  1. ‘Glory Days’ by Bruce Springsteen was brand new and we listened to that song over and over all weekend long. I had a sneaking suspicion that the Boss Man was trying to tell me that my glory days as a 12-year old kid would soon pass me by.
  2. I saw a monster truck in the middle of the lake. The giant tires held so much air that the truck floated. It was tooling around the lake just like a boat. Except it was a monster truck. That was some real hillbilly shiznit.
  3. My friend’s sister Lisa and her friend Brooke asked me if I would jump in the lake and fetch the inner tube that was floating away from the dock. I gladly dove in, swam to the tube, and brought it back to the dock. When I climbed out of the water feeling 6th grade-heroic, they expressed their extreme gratitude. Then they added, ‘We didn’t want to go get it because we just saw a huge water moccasin swim under the dock.’

Number 4 On Cove 4

But it was the 4th memory from that trip that I have thought about most often over the past 3 decades.

One day me, Matt, Lisa, Brooke and several older kids went out on the family’s water ski boat. After all the older kids had skied, Matt’s cousin, who was in his early 20s, asked if I wanted to go waterskiing. I said no. I explained that I had never gone before and that I didn’t want to waste everyone else’s time.

He responded by saying, ‘Hey man, don’t worry about that. We’re just out here killing time.’ He said it as if killing time was a good thing. A necessary thing to do to get rid of all this pesky time we all have to deal with.

I understood what he meant. But I couldn’t get past what he actually said. Killing time seemed crazy to me, even then. Killing time sounded as rational as burning money. Or eating veal.

Time For Time

Today, during the global lockdown created by the COVID-19 crisis, you may find yourself with a surplus of time. And you could be tempted to just kill it. But don’t. Don’t waste it. And don’t pass it either.

Time Scarcity

Time is the scarcest of all resources. In fact, one of the most impactful things I’ve read over the past 2 months was So Much Quarantine. So Little Time. by my friend Drew Hawkins. He details how he and his wife are extremely time-challenged right now as they both work from home, while simultaneously caring for their 1 and 3-year old children. They are spinning plates like a carnival act. For Drew and Megan free time is harder to find than live sports. Almost all of their time is multi-tasking. And that time is working as hard as any time ever has in the history of time.

Key Takeaway

If you are lucky enough to have time right now, for Drew and Megan’s sake, don’t kill it. Cherish it. Use it. Employ it. Value it. Make the most of it. Time is a gift. It’s the most valuable thing you will ever have. Except for maybe toilet paper.

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

The business lesson I didn’t know my 7th grade teacher taught me.

In 7th grade I had a social studies teacher named Mr. Wilson. I think his first name was Roger. Although Brian, Russell and Annandnancy all sound right as prefixes to Wilson. So it may have been one of those.

I remember Mr. Wilson as a portly, middle aged white man. But it wouldn’t surprise me if I discovered that he was the same age I am now. Because when you are 12 years old you think all adults are old.

Like most teachers, Mr. Wilson had go-to phrases that enabled us to do some hilarious impressions of him when he wasn’t around. We did hilarious impressions of all of our teachers. It’s probably why I never wanted to be a teacher.

The Sound Bite

Several times in every class, while we were supposed to be working on our assignments Mr. Wilson would bellow out,  ‘T-O-T.!’  He was not announcing his craving for tater tots (at least I don’t think so). It was an acronym for Time On Task. When my friend Marcus Chioffi (rhymes with coffee) and I would hear T.O.T. we would snicker at how much Mr. Wilson sounded like our impression of Mr. Wilson.

Fast Forward 3 Decades.

Today I own my own advertising and idea agency called The Weaponry. And I find myself thinking about T.O.T. a lot. As I reflect on what has worked for me throughout my career and my entrepreneurial journey, I keep coming back to T.O.T.

Time To Make It Real

We all have dreams, goals and wishes. But we tend to spend far too little time working on them to force them into reality. The amount of time you actually spend working on a task is the key determinant of success in that area. There simply is no substitute for the focused work. It is why Time On Task is the key to progress.

Key Takeaway

If you want to be an entrepreneur, or achieve any lofty goal, you have to spend Time On Task. Focus your time. Block your time. Invest your time. Block out distractions. And do the work. It’s the only way to make great things happen. Just like Mr. Wilson said.

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

How to protect the time you need to achieve your greatest goals.

When I was a student-athlete at the University of Wisconsin my schedule was booked solid. I was at class every day by 8:55am. Classes lasted until 2pm. At 2:30pm I was at track practice. I left practice at 6pm and went to dinner. I ate at the Sports Buffet until they kicked me out at 7pm. By 7:20pm I was at Helen C. White Library studying in the quiet section (seriously). By 10:30pm I was taking the Drunk Bus home.

Focus Pocus

During this time I had something magical working for me: large chunks of time with completely focused effort. First I was totally focused on my classes. Then track practice. Then on eating (which felt like a job because I was the smallest discus thrower in the Big Ten Conference). And finally, on studying.

All 4 of these time blocks helped me focus my undivided attention on my largest life goals. Plus, there were no smart phones back then to distract me with an Instagram feed full of hilarious Pro Wrestling fails. (@Wrestlebotch)

Scheduling Focused Time

Today, I am revisiting the focused scheduling I employed as a student-athlete. As as result, I hope to achieve the same level of productivity, growth and progress I enjoyed two decades ago. That’s why I have time-blocked my calendar to help create deep focus on my most important tasks. The tasks that will help me achieve my long-term goals.

The Time Blocks On My Calendar Now Include:

  • An hour of blocked writing time every morning starting at 6am.
  • 2 hours of totally focused work on my most important tasks from 10am to Noon.
  • A regular 1-hour lunch, starting at noon every day (which also helps keep my energy high, as I wrote about in 5 Things I do to keep my work energy high.).
  • 1 hour of total focus on my most important issues in the afternoon from 2pm-3pm.
  • Dedicated open time for meetings, calls and emails to start and end the day.
  • A 30-minute planning session every Sunday night when I can plan my most important tasks for the week. Tasks that will help me achieve my long term goals.

The One Thing
Make this the next book you read.  Then let me know how much you loved it by writing me at  adam@theweaponry.com.

I loved how my calendar blocks helped me in college. But a book I am reading has influenced me to reintroduce this useful scheduling technique again. In fact, The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan may be the most powerful book I have read in the past 3 years. It teaches you a system that always leads you to the one, most important thing that you should be doing at any given time, in order to help you achieve your loftiest goals. A critical part of the program is creating calendar blocks that are reserved exclusively for your total focus on your most important activities. Spoiler Alert: The one thing you should be doing at any given time never involves WrestleBotch. #PriortitiesVsDistraction

Key Takeaway

It is not enough to have goals. You need to put in the work required to achieve them. That’s why it is so important to block large chunks of time on your calendar that allow you to completely focus on your most important tasks, every day. Add a chunk of focused time for planning on Sunday evenings, and it will ensure that you make demonstrable progress each and every week. Remember, scheduling your time costs nothing. But the dividends it pays by helping you achieve your goals could be enjoyed for generations.

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

The most important day for highly successful people.

Time is the world’s most precious resource. That’s why great success requires great time management. In fact, knowing how to properly budget and invest your time is even more important to your ultimate success than budgeting and investing your money.

When I began planning to launch The Weaponry, my advertising and ideas agency, there was a tremendous amount of work to be done. I knew that how I spent my time during that first year would determine the fate of my startup. As I neared the end of each work week I noticed something interesting about my progress. I repeatedly saw how the activities on one particular day were making all the difference.

The Most Important Day

There are at least 7 different opinions on which day is the most important. Elton John thinks it is Saturday. Mick Jagger is a Tuesday guy. The Mamas and Papas all say Monday, repeatedly. However, 3 years into my entrepreneurial journey I know Paul McCartney was right. That’s why I can state wth great confidence that the most important day for achieving great things is yesterday.

853de2b8224c681079a3a66111bd97ec
McCartney was McRight.

Yesterday

All of your success comes from what you did yesterday. The relationships you developed yesterday strengthen your support system today. The progress you made yesterday becomes momentum today. The exercise you performed yesterday creates today’s strength, endurance and health. The time you invested yesterday becomes the time you saved today.

The reading you did yesterday creates the knowledge you have today.  The travel you did yesterday becomes today’s memories and experience. Your preparation yesterday makes you ready today.

Yesterday At Work

As a business owner I know that today’s workload comes from yesterday’s business development efforts. As a professional ideator I know that my creativity springs from what I absorbed yesterday. As a capable human, I know that my confidence grows based on both the successes and failures I experienced yesterday. And the eviction notice I didn’t get comes from the rent I paid yesterday.

IMG_8840
Reflecting on yesterday.

Gratefulness

One of the things I am most grateful for are those activities I had the foresight and energy to do yesterday. The workout I completed. The process I created. The book I read. The research I performed. The relationship I fostered. In the moment procrastination often feels like the easier route. Which is why it is so valuable to view the moment as if it were yesterday.

Chinese Proverb

There is a great Chinese proverb I think about often.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.  -Chinese proverb

background beautiful blossom calm waters

The truth is that in less than 24 hours today will be yesterday. And when the clock strikes midnight you will either be smarter, stronger and more prepared, or you will be in the exact same position you are in today.

Key Takeaway

Big success is a result of the accumulation of small actions. The To-Do list you complete today will become tomorrow’s momentum. That momentum will help you power past barriers that would have previously stopped you.

Today will soon be gone. Tomorrow is a mystery. But yesterday is your library, your museum, your toolbox and your bonding agent. Yesterday is where the wind in your sails comes from. And the winds of yesterday determine both the direction and the speed at which you travel today.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this story, please share it with them. And if you want to see where this ship heads next, consider subscribing to this blog. Tomorrow you’ll be glad you did.