How to Stop Lying To Yourself

One of the things that separates us from “having the time we want” is that we constantly, blatantly, and unapologetically lie to ourselves about our scheduling abilities and our priorities. It’s like we’re all a bunch of pathological liars – present company included – I don’t deny I do it myself.

We even have a sanitized word for it – “rationalization.” It’s a cleaned up word that means, “You’re lying to yourself about how the situation really is.” And it kills your time, it slaughters your schedule, and smashes your plans to tiny little bits.

(Hmm … maybe I shouldn’t write blog entries right after a really intense workout …)

But in all seriousness, we do lie to ourselves – and that lying is our excuse for not taking action. For example, when you say “I don’t have the time to …”, that’s almost certainly a lie. I don’t know you personally, but from my decades of walking this earth and observing other people, I know that nobody operates at 100% efficiency.

You don’t have time, you say? Well, let me ask you …

• Do you watch television?
• Do you oversleep?
• Do you engage in conversations with people that are little more than small talk?
• Do you surf the web aimlessly, looking for something entertaining?
• Do you read anything that’s not of long-term real value?
• Do you procrastinate?

In reality, we waste time every day. We can say we don’t have the time to learn more about marketing for our business, yet we watch 10 hours of television a week, or we go out partying on the weekends. We can say we don’t have the time to hit the gym, but we have the time to go out for lunch …

I think you’re seeing a pattern here. There’s a world of difference between “I don’t have the time,” and “I choose to spend time on things that will not make a difference in my life 5, 10, 20 years from now.”

But you see, we’re cowards sometimes. “I don’t have the time” gives us the justification to not even try to change things. It’s accepting mediocrity by lying like everybody else does.

If we were to stop lying to ourselves, we would have to take action to change things – and maybe sacrifice some of the “escape activities” … and that’s not easy.

But that’s no excuse.

You’ve got to look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, “What am I doing with my time that doesn’t really have long-term value? Or do I want to be at this same level in my business a year from now, saying ‘Boy, I may not be making any more money, but sleeping in and watching The Simpsons’ was sure worth it!’

No excuse.

If you’re reading this far you’re one of the few who hasn’t copped out because they don’t want to deal with something uncomfortable. I congratulate you. I know that it’s difficult, because it’s a battle I have to face every day. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose … and I win more often than not … but when I lose, it’s always for the same reason – I made an excuse.

Anything you don’t have in your life, you don’t have because of an excuse. Somewhere you haven’t been willing to give up comfort and push yourself into the land of the uncomfortable to get closer to your goal. You’ve made excuses that an obstacle is “too big” for you to handle right now.
Excuses, excuses, excuses. Lies, lies, lies.

I had to face this just this weekend. I was talking to a friend about an important aspect of my life that I had let slip lately, and I started giving all the reasons to justify and rationalize it … the day job was really busy … the kids have been sick … and halfway through I realized that it was just a load of B.S.

The real reason it slipped is because I decided to head to bed every night rather than give up a half hour of sleep to get something done … because I had let distractions at work derail me a little … because other things just seemed to “urgent.”

I’m glad I caught on before I lied to myself any further. Now I’m taking the action I need to. And I’m going to urge you to do the same.

Let me ask you something – if your doctor said you had a medical condition, and you had to do 30 minutes of exercise a day or you would die, wouldn’t you shift your priorities, make a little sacrifice to make that happen? You bet you would.

And when it comes to your business – if you knew that you had to free up 10 hours a week to devote to building your marketing skills or your business would be dead in a year, would you do it? Or would you make excuses? You’d do it. You’d get honest and start cutting out the things that aren’t important in your life.
If you want more time, then you have to summon up the courage to be honest with yourself and realize that it’s going to take honesty about where you’re spending your time and the courage to make small (and sometimes larger) sacrifices to make your goals happen. There’s no way around it.

I’m going to encourage you right now to post a comment to this entry if you feel like something’s standing in the way of you following through on this. I’ll do my best to get you an answer that can help you out. So post a comment now, get honest with yourself, and start seeing your schedule transform for the better. You’ll thank yourself for it.

All the best -

Dave Navarro

The Power of Heroes (Part 2)

In the first part of this article, we talked about leveraging the success of others to put you in a more resourceful state literally “on demand.” By vividly imagining your role model stepping into your shoes, you discovered that you could overcome some of your own disempowering behaviors as the “hero” temporarily came into control.

This is a great time management technique because it can help you push past the time-killers of procrastination and fear.

That was the carrot. Now let’s look at the stick – the second question. Here’s how the two look together:

1. Who do I know of who has a phenomenal ability to manage time?
2. Who would I be embarrased to have find out about my time management shortcomings?

It’s no secret that fear drives us. the problem is that fear generally drives us to inaction. What if I fail? What if I get rejected? What if it just doesn’t work? Those kind of thoughts paralyze you.

The second question above, however, can have the opposite effect. It can catalyze you. It can stir you to take action.

Think about it. If you’ve got someone special coming over your place in an hour, and you haven’t cleaned up in a while, suddenly you’ll have the motivation to clean like a maniac so that you don’t look like a slob when your guest comes over. You want the place looking great – and more specifically, you don’t want to feel embarrased or humiliated when the guest arrives.

You can take the same principle over to time management. There are probably some areas of managing your time, your focus, and your motivation that are, well … sloppy. And there are some people you know – and whom you want to feel a certain level of respect towards you – who you would be terrified to have find out about your shortcomings.

So use that fear. Use it as leverage to get you moving. And you can do that in one of two ways.

1. Good: Vividly imagine the embarrasment you’d feel having to tell someone you aren’t meeting your goals because you’re procrastinating, or wasting time, or you just can’t summon up the willpower. Feel the pain of admitting weakness and let that pain push you to take action.
2. Better: Don’t just make it a “what if” situation – make it real. Get accountable to someone by telling them your time management/focus/motivation goals and report in. Knowing you will have to show results to avoid that pain will motivate you even more.

Give this a shot today, and please leave a comment on your results. I’d love to hear about it. And pass this along to a friend, as well. You two can compare results & help each other get even more out of this tactic.

So get to it now, before the motivation wears off!

All the best -

Dave Navarro

The Power of Heroes (Part 1)

Someone once said, “We don’t do things because they are right or wrong. We do them based on who we want to be like.”

There’s truth in this. We take a lot of our actions based on our role models – the people we want “to be like” – and our peers – the people we want “to be liked by.” These people evoke powerful emotional responses in us that actually drive the quality of the decisions we make (and conversely, can also drive us to make some pretty dumb decisions, too!).

But what does this have to do with time management? Just everything. Ask yourself these two questions:

1. Who do I know of who has a phenomenal ability to manage time?
2. (read the next blog entry to find out!)

This is the “carrot and the stick.” You can use the answers to both of these questions to help you become a better manager of your time.

Here’s how you use the first question. When you’re at a point where you need to take action in your day, think of someone you know of that has a fantastic grasp of time management. Then imagine that they were in your shoes for the day. If you were that person, how would you handle the tasks before you? What kind of attitude would they have? What kind of focus? How would they handle interruptions? How would they handle obstacles?

Then just imagine that your role model was taking over, and follow through accordingly. Sure, it may sound silly, but I’m telling you that it works. It may take a little getting used to in the beginning, but it’s insanely worth it.

Give it a shot today, and please leave a comment on your results. I’d love to hear about it. And pass this along to a friend, as well. You two can compare results & help each other get even more out of this tactic.

Stay tuned for Part Two of this article … but for now, put what you just learned into practice!

All the best -

Dave Navarro