Why the hell would I want to wake up early?  I’d much rather stay up late and get things done then.  What’s wrong with being a night owl?

Why Night Owls Are So Much Less Productive Than Early Risers

Just kidding. That headline isn’t true at all.  There’s nothing wrong with being a night owl and there’s no magical reason that waking up early is better than staying up late (so no flame wars in the comments please).  If you’re staying up late and getting a lot of truly meaningful things done, then keep on keepin’ on.  There is no shortage of people who are burning the midnight oil and creating the life that they want.  More power to them (or ‘More power to you’ if you’re one of them).

But, consider this …

Working Late Could Be A Sign Of A Bigger Problem

Whether you’re working late, you have to ask yourself why you are choosing to do that.  Is it because you’re setting meaningful goals, blocking out time, and tackling them?  Or is it because you are trying to “catch up” or cram things in to an overworked lifestyle?  I spent a lot of my life in the latter, and I can tell you, it’s no fun.  When you’re living a life of reaction – trying to figure out how to handle it all – you open yourself up to “working the problem” rather than working through the problem.

Here’s what I mean.  If you’re falling behind, or you have more goals than time, the simplest answer is to stay up later and try and get more done.  It’s the easiest answer.  But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s right.  Staying up later to “get it all done” may essentially be an enabling behavior.  Maybe the problem isn’t that you’ve fallen behind – maybe the real issue is that your daily habits don’t set you up for getting ahead. In other words, the issue isn’t that you’re not bailing water fast enough, it’s that you have holes in the bottom of your boat.

And if that’s the case, staying up later to bail faster isn’t the solution.  Patching those holes is.  And doing that might require:

• Changing poor work habits

• Improving your time management skills

• Resisting the temptation to engage in time-wasting distractions

• Reducing the number of commitments / goals you manage

• Telling people ‘no,’ even when it’s inconvenient / uncomfortable

• Making a life change (for example, new job / career)

• Etc., etc., etc.

Working Late Could Be Taking The Easy Way Out

Again, if you’re a night owl who is making consistent progress on a life of balanced, meaningful goals, then more power to you.  But if this article has been making you squirm (and truth be told, it’s making me squirm as well as I think of some habits I need to work on), then your spidey-sense is telling you that you might need to start patching holes instead of playing catch up.

Working late is all well and good, but may simply be a way of distracting yourself with the problem rather than facing the discomfort that comes with trying to fix it.  Listen to your gut.  What’s it telling you?

Why I Became An Early Riser – And Why You Might Want To As Well

When I realized that working late wasn’t getting me ahead, I decided to start getting up early instead.  Why?  Because there’s a different dynamic that exists in those early hours, a special kind of time that lends itself more strongly towards getting ahead rather than just “doing stuff.”  There’s something about building that habit that just makes it easier to think about making changes that really do improve your life.

Getting up early has given me time to think abut what I want to do with my life without the distractions of the world.  I can think more clearly and make decisions more objectively, and on top of that, it just feels good to get into a waking groove earlier.  In the next post – the beginning of a series of articles about getting better sleep – I’ll talk more about the specific benefits that come with making the shift to an early riser routine.

Until then, I’ll see you in the comments, and I do hope you’ll subscribe to this blog to catch the “better sleep” series.

After seeing success story after success story, I decided that I’d do the same thing. Except instead of waking up bleary eyed, cursing the dawn as I pried myself out of bed, I’d find a way to make it easy to make the gradual changes that would turn me into what I like to call a “power riser” (someone who wakes up ready with enough energy to kick the world’s ass). Here’s how you can do it, too.

Step 1: Decide You’re Actually Going To Do It (And Not Just “Try”)

In the real world, when you try to change a habit, you screw up along the way. You backslide. You have bad days. Most people quit when this happens, and say “I’m just not cut out for this.” You know this to be crap, because you’re not most people. That’s why, if you decide to do this, you’re going to decide that getting up early (and loving it) is something you are absolutely going to do, because you are the kind of person who absolutely rocks.

And no, I’m not sucking up to you.It’s just that as a coach, I know that everybody has this jerk who lives with them called self-doubt, and he/she is going to do his/her best to beat the living crap out of your attempt to do something better with your life, because sleeping in is easier. But the easy way doesn’t get you a big business that gives you all the things you want in your life. So decide that getting leverage on your day is 100% do-able for you, ’cause you’re not going to quit.

Bottom Line: The earlier you get up, the more interruption-free, high-productivity time you have at your disposal. You want that high-powered time so you can get the edge and get more of what you really want. Every time you feel like quitting, tell yourself, “It’s worth it to see this through, damnit!”

Step Two: Decide You’re Going To Do It Gradually

The easiest way to totally screw up an attempt at habit change is to bite off more than you can chew. You know this, because it’s happened. We all do it. Most people bite off more than they can do and quit. But not you. You’re smart enough to realize that gradual change is how habits are formed. So nice and easy is how you’re going to handle it.

If you currently get up at 7:45, don’t try to get up at 5:00 am tomorrow. Shoot for 7:30. When that becomes easy, shoot for 7:15. Then when you get the hang of that, move to 7:00. Do it slow and steady and you’ll win. Your body needs time to readjust it’s rhythm and settle out. Jump too far, too fast and you’re making it hard on yourself and boosting the chances you’ll quit.

Now, some of you are going to say “Bad advice, Dave! You can change habits in an instant!” That’s 100% true, if you have enough leverage. Case in point : Grandma. Tried to quit smoking for years to no avail. Had a heart attack and the doctor said, “One more smoke and you’re a dead woman.” She quit immediately. That’s damn strong leverage. If you’ve got that kind of leverage, go right ahead. But chances are you don’t have a do-or-die situation before you. In that case, gradual change wins.

Bottom line: Resist the bull**** of modern marketing that says you have to have things now or never. Tell yourself it’s ok to make progress incrementally. Give it 3 months, and you’re there for life.

Step Three: Decide You’re Going To Get Up At The Same Time Every Day

I can already hear everybody screaming about this one. “But the weekends are my time to sleep in!”, you say. I say, bah. The reason we want to sleep in on the weekends is because we’re doing things that screw up our body’s sleep rhythm, and by the time the weekend hits, we’re toast. It’s the same principle as eating poorly – your energy levels get hosed.

Let me tell you this from experience (and find any early-riser-by-choice and they’ll agree): When you build the habit of getting up at the same time every day, you will naturally have a boatload of energy when you wake up. You won’t feel the need to sleep in. Of course, that’s assuming you go to bed when you’re tired.

Once you feel yourself flagging at night, that’s your cue to wrap things up. It may feel a little strange (or not “high achiever” enough) to say don’t force yourself to burn the midnight oil, but you’ll actually be more productive this way once you get through the initial adjustment period. Not to knock night-owls, I’m just saying go to bed when you’re tired, not when you’re exhausted.

Do five minutes of web searching and you’ll find study after study that shows that overtime causes a drop in productivity due to exhaustion/mental fatigue. It’s no different with your body. Once you get in the habit of waking up at the same time every day, you’ll be more productive during those early hours than you ever were at night.

Bottom line: Consistency is key (even on weekends). Wake up at the same time every day so your body chemistry gets into a solid rhythm.

Step Four: Decide To Have A Reason To Get Up In The Morning

Most people have such a hard time getting up in the morning (early or not) because they don’t have something compelling to look forward to. There’s no joy in waking up to simply meet the morning grind, especially when the night before was such a late one.

If you want to get up early every day, have something interesting and engaging to do in the morning. If your brain takes a while to “warm up,” make those first 15 or 30 minutes something that doesn’t require a lot of brain power, such as reading a novel or even grabbing a shower. Once you pass through that 15 minute barrier your brain should be waking up sufficiently, and you’ll likely see the warm up time decrease the longer you’re enforcing a consistent wakeup time.

Most people wake up thinking of all the things they have to do, such as work / bills / chores / etc., and of course they want to return to the fog of sleep. Have something you want to do, and view it as something you get to do because of your new discipline, and waking up becomes a whole lot easier.

Bottom Line: Do something fun for yourself in the morning and watch how easy it becomes to get out of bed.

Step Five: Get The Hell Out Of Bed, Now

Your pillow is soft. Your blankets are warm. Your flesh is weak, pal, weak. If you allow yourself to stay in bed for more than a split second, the chance of you blowing your habit-building goodness goes sky high. Whatever you do, when you wake up, get out of bed and get as far away from it as possible. Leave the room if possible. Just escape, before the temptation of sweet, sweet oblivion draws you back.

It helps to remind yourself how crappy you feel (physically and emotionally) when you hit the snooze button. Those nine minutes are a second helping gone sour. Don’t do it. Remind yourself how weak you felt the last time you intended to wake up early (and blew it), and let that shame spiring your butt out of bed.

Oh, and when you do get out of bed, if you’re doing something to warm up, do not sit/lay down. ‘Tis death, friend, death. You’ll just curl up … and huddle for warmth … and before you kn… (zzzzzzzzzzzz)

*Huh?* (shakes head) Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m back. (rubs eyes)

When I started along the early riser path, my #1 tactic was to head straight for the shower immediately after waking up. You stand up, you move around, and you’re golden.

Bottom line: That seductively warm bed yearns for your very soul. Don’t give in. Run, don’t walk, as soon as the alarm goes off.

Now It’s Time To Make This Work For You

These five tips should get you well on your way to becoming an early riser. They were the core habits I developed after I got married, had kids, and realized that a tasty slice of morning was the only way to get my business off the ground.

I had one advantage, though … I was a personal development coach, so I was pretty grounded in the process of developing new habits. So if the thought of becoming a full-out “power riser” seems a little daunting to you, you can make it a whole lot easier by downloading my “early riser” audios here.

Here’s to your newfound productivity (and please leave your success stories in the comments below),

Dave

(Yes, I know there’s been a lag in posts as I’ve been promoting my newsletter and new time management system. But for now, back to the show.)

You put unnecessary stress on yourself every time you tolerate the idea that there’s “not enough time” to do some of the things you want to, and instead they’ll have to wait until some point in the future “when you get some spare time.” This is loser thinking (and no, I’m not calling you a loser – it’s just you’ll lose out on so much good stuff in your life if you tolerate this kind of thing). You’ve got to crush the idea that progress has to wait under your heel until it’s powder.

Here’s why: Take an honest look at your life and ask yourself how many things you told yourself you wanted to do that have never, ever, ever been done. Stuff that you planned to get to “when some time came up,” but it just didn’t. Think of something that gnaws at you that you haven’t gotten too … maybe something you told yourself this time last year you’d do. Sucks, don’t it? Sucks big time. That book is still unwritten. That business still isn’t off the ground. And you’re left holding the bag.

So why didn’t you ever make progress on it? Most likely it’s because you told yourself that it was a big undertaking and you just couldn’t block off the time to take it on. Fair enough. But still, it’s loser thinking that left you with a lost opportunity to get more of what you really want out of your life.

Here’s How To Start Winning
So here’s how you turn the tide. Take your focus off of this project being some big undertaking that you’ve got to put 1000 hours aside for. Instead, just slip a tiny little slice of time into your schedule to tackle it. 15 minutes during lunch on Tuesdays. 30 minutes on Friday afternoon. Whatever works for you – just find a forgivably short nugget of time that you can take action on that project, every single week. In other words, establish a foothold on that project.

Do this, and an amazing thing will happen. Your project will move out of that fuzzy, when-I-get-to-it phase and move into a holy-crap-I’m-actually-doing-this phase. When it does that, you’ll bask in the heady afterglow of actual progress on a project that used to be stalled out and you’ll magically find yourself becoming more motivated to carve out the time to accelerate working on the project.

Your 15 minute slice might become an hour-long Monday lunch event. Or you might (gasp!) stop watching so much damn tv and surfing the web without a purpose. Or (double gasp!) you might even be motivated to wake up earlier to get more done. Any way you slice it, it’s a win.

I See You Skimming, So Here’s What You’re Looking For
Here’s the big lesson of the day:

Quit telling yourself you’ll eventually get to that project you’ve been putting off forever. Schedule small, regular slices of time and they will grow on their own.

Focusing on establishing footholds has been how I’ve gotten everything done. I’ve got a long commute, overtime, and three crazy kids that want (and deserve) all that I have to give, and I’ve used this Foothold technique to write two books and three audio coaching programs. Each project started with a little, manageable slice of time, and grew from there.

Now get to it. And if you haven’t subscribed to this feed by email or RSS, do it now so you’ll get updates on new lessons as they come out.

In lesson 1, you learned that simply assuming there’s a better strategy for getting your target result much faster is a huge piece of leverage. It puts you in the mindset of “the solution is closer than I think,” and that leads to finding it fast.

That’s the first step. But there’s a second step you have to consider – how your game plan may be slowing you down. Sometimes we set goals in such a way that we automatically make things harder on ourselves. For example, let’s say you’re starting from scratch, selling a $100 product and you set a goal like this:

I want to make a million dollars in 2008 by selling this $100 product to the world.

Sounds like a worthy goal. But it may not really be what you’re after, and it may be setting yourself up for a huge amount of extra work.

Here’s What I Mean
Let’s say you have a $100 product. You’d have to sell 10,000 of them to make a million dollars. Possible? Absolutely, people have done it time and again. So you set your goal in mind: 10,000 sales in 2008 = 833 sales a month = 27 sales a day on average. It’s possible, but imagine the amount of work you’d have to do to pull that off, starting from scratch. To reach your 10,000 unit sales goal:

• You’d have to generate a massive amount of traffic to your website.
• You’d have to write fantastic sales copy to get that traffic to convert to paying customers.
• You’d have to build relationships with prospects who’ve never heard of you.
• And so on, and so on.

Again, all very do-able, and it would keep you insanely busy. Your focus is on hitting the 10,000 mark, and you’re pouring all you have into it.

But What Are You Really After?
In this case, you’re focused on moving 10,000 units of your $100 so you can make a million dollars. But here’s the thing: You’re focusing on the how, not the what.

• What you want is to make a million dollars.
• How you plan to do it is to sell 10,000 units to the world.

The thing you want to do here is always ask yourself if your how is a highly leveraged way to get to your goal. Selling to 10,000 people is a lot of work. Maybe you could make it easier on yourself to get what you want … if you’re willing to focus on creating more leverage with the how.

You do this by asking a very simple question:

If I had to get this accomplished in 1/10th of the time, how would I do it?

That’s a huge question – but it can land you some huge results. If you had only 1/10th the time to accomplish what you want, you’d have to change your how to something that’s massively leveraged. You couldn’t just “improve traffic by 10%”. You’d have to think outside the box and come up with new faster-working ideas, like:

• Find a way to make your product worth $1000 instead of $100, and you’d only have to sell 1/10th as much.
• Consider adding high-priced consulting to go along with your product to accelerate revenue growth. You could earn thousands consulting or speaking.
• Bundle with someone who sells high-ticket items. If they can co-sell your items (even at a discount) as upsells to their products, it creates sales that you don’t have to personally put time in to create.

But Dave, You Don’t Understand My Situation …
I know some of you will be thinking, “But Dave, my situation’s different. I just can’t come up with creative solutions to help me get things done in 1/10th the time.” That’s a bull**** limiting belief that you’ve got to free yourself of.

Seriously – this is a strategy even a ten-year old can put into practice. Little guy Ryan Cenk wanted to break the $20,000 popcorn sales record for his Cub Scout troop … and he had sold a few thousand dollars worth of the stuff when he decided to use some leverage. He got on the phone with a guy his dad knew, the CEO of a mortgage company. Ryan pitched him on how tins of popcorn would make great holiday gifts for hiw employees … and netted over $13,000 in sales with a single sales call. No more door-to-door for Ryan.

No more door-to-door for you, either. If you want to make massive gains in how fast you’re closing the gap between you and your goals, you need to look at what you want to accomplish and ask yourself how you can tweak the how so you get faster results. Ryan’s how shifted from “sell to lots and lots of people” to “sell to just one of the right people.”

If you doubt that you can find a solution like this, go back to Lesson 1. Then put this lesson into practice.

You do this by asking a very simple question:

If I had to get this accomplished in 1/10th of the time, how would I do it?

Now get to it. And if you haven’t subscribed to this feed by email or RSS, do it now so you’ll get updates on new lessons as they come out.

“I just don’t have the time.” / “I wish I had the time.”

Chances are close to 100% that you have. Especially as the holidays approach. But this kind of thinking is simply a variation of scarcity mentality – the flawed reasoning that there isn’t enough of something to go around. I call it a victim mentality because you’re making the choice to mentally frame yourself as someone who, gosh darn it, just doesn’t have enough of that precious resource – time – to go around.

Oh, poor pitiful you. (I can joke about this, because I spent a few decades buying into the same thinking.) It’s tempting to simply accept the notion that there just isn’t enough time to go around. The reason it’s tempting is because it gives you an excuse for not doing whatever it takes to turn the situation around.

How To Wipe Out The Victim Mentality And Install Something Better
The victim mentality itself comes from the way that most people think about time. It goes something like this:

Number of Things To Do > Number of Hours In Day

or, in other words,

“There’s not enough time in the day.”

That kind of thinking sucks. It gets you nowhere. It makes you feel like a victim, because if only that big bad bully we call reality would give you more time, then you could do more, enjoy life, and feel less stressed. You just can’t win, so shy bother trying, right? But that’s a load of bull.

When you’re ready to rise up out of the time poverty level, this is what you need to do:

Stop focusing on how little you have and start focusing on how much you can do with what you have.

Focus on extracting maximum kick-a$$ results from every hour of your day and you won’t find yourself feeling pressed for time. Focus on the right mindset, and you’ll be able to create leverage that will help you double your current levels of productivity and get a lot more of what you want out of life. Focus on fixing your problems instead of living with them. It’s that simple.

It’s simple … but it’s not easy. It takes an entire shift in psychology, one that doesn’t happen overnight. And it’s hard as hell to do if you’re the only one rowing the boat. That’s why I’m going to step you through how to begin making the change over the next 30 days. If you’re not subscribed to this blog yet, subscribe right now so you’ll get every post, starting with tomorrow’s kickoff lesson.

Give yourself the greatest gift you can give this December – empower yourself by learning how to stop playing the victim and start taking control of the results you’re getting every day. Push past your anxieties and your doubts and get ready to kick some serious a$$.

Extra Goodness: As a bonus for the December Challenge I’m going to throw a free month of personal time management coaching to at least one of the challenge participants. Details will follow.

How To Take The December Challenge With Dave
Taking the challenge is easy. All you have to do are three things:

1. Write a comment below and stake your claim to the challenge. Write a short and sweet note about why you want to get more goal-slammin’ results out of each and every one of your days.
2. Subscribe to the blog feed via RSS or email to get updates as the December Challenge lessons are posted to the blog. I may etend this into January, as I’ve got some good vacation time coming up
3. “Show up” and put what you’re learning into practice. The easiest way to do this is to put your questions/results in the upcoming blog entries. I’ll be sure to answer any questions you have as you rock out with what you’ve learned.

I’m not saying that building a new habit is heartstoppingly easy, but it’s a hell of a lot easier when someone who’s walked the path steps you through it. Take the challenge, and build a habit in 2007 that will make your 2008 unbelievably productive, relaxing and satisfying.

Can’t wait to see your comments below -

Dave

If only … If only …

If only you would stop feeding yourself that line, you might start getting somewhere.

Tough Love
Listen, I’m not being insensitive to your needs and your situation. I know there’s a lot on your plate. There certainly is a lot on mine. But when you tell yourself consistently that you can’t have something because you don’t have the time (or the money, or the talent), you’re just playing the victim card.

You’re telling yourself that it’s okay to settle for not having it because hey, it simply can’t be done. No one can fault you – not even yourself. You can’t blame somebody for not doing something when they don’t have the resources, right?

But you do have the resources. You’re just acting like you don’t, because to act otherwise would demand that you push past your limits, work harder than you’ve done before, and maybe make a few sacrifices. You don’t want to pile the effort on to make it done, so you rationalize and tell yourself it’s okay to let your goal go.

And how do I know that? Because you are human, and guess what? We all do this. Every last one of us. Hi, my name is Dave, and I’m a victimaholic.

(”Hi, Dave!”)

Pick A Side
So you’ve got a choice to make, friend. You can either play the victim and say you can’t do it “because …”, or you can choose to push past that reason and do whatever it takes (ethically, of course) to make your goal happen. You can choose to be one of the “oppressed” or one of the overcomers.

Oppressed people lie down and take it. They tell themselves it’s ok not to go after what they want. It’s okay to accept that this is a world based on scarcity, and that you just have to accept the cards you’re dealt. And this kind of thinking invariably leads to a life filled with regret (and generally, a higher number of escape activities like too much tv or web surfing after a “hard day’s work”).

Overcomers handle things very, very differently. They tell themselves it’s not okay to accept the scarcity model and instead look for opportunity, even if they have to make it themselves. Rather than accept the cards they have, they play them and look for ways to trade up. Even if it takes a really long time, they take advantage of smart strategies to build up step by step. They demand more of themselves, and reap the rewards (and do their tv and web surfing only after a “hard day’s accomplishment”).

So you’ve got to pick a side, and you’ve got to take that thing that you’ve told yourself you can’t do because you don’t have the time, and you’ve got to get serious about taking control back and shedding the victim mentality. Maybe you can’t hav it all right now, but you can start on it. As I have to tell my coaching clients (and, sheesh, myself, much too often):

“The fact that you can’t do all of it now doesn’t excuse you from taking action on some of it today.”

Case In Point
When I was starting high school, I watched my older brother, a pretty good piano player, learn Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” over a holiday vacation. I fell in love with the song and wanted desperately to learn it. Only problem was, I had never played piano before. I could have played the victim, and said, “Oh well.”

But I didn’t. I got my hands on the sheet music, and since I couldn’t read music on the fly, I grabbed a pencil and wrote the note letter next to each and every note on those six packed pages of music. It was hard, tedious work, but I wanted it, and so I pursued it even though I didn’t “have what I needed” skill-wise. I improvised, and overcame.

Of course, I had another “problem.” I didn’t have a piano. I could have played the victim, and said, “Oh well.” But I didn’t. I asked around and borrowed someone’s 41-key electronic keyboard, and immediately discovered that 41 keys wasn’t nearly enough to play this particular piece of music. Both the left hand and right hand used a lot of range on the keyboard, so I simply couldn’t play them at the same time.

I could have played the victim, and said, “Oh well.” But I didn’t. Instead, I spent hours and hours practicing the left hand and the right hand separately, slowly but steadily memorizing the hand movements so I wouldn’t have to stare at all those letters on the sheet music.

And then I kept my eyes peeled until I found an piano I could use to practice the hardest part – playing both hands together. I found one in the back of my church that I could practice on for a few hours on the weekends. It was horrendously out of tune, so even when I was playing right, it still sounded wrong. But, as an overcomer, I wasn’t willing to let that hold me back.

The Moment Arrives
After months of practice I finally figured out how to play that Moonlight Sonata (even though I still had to practice one-handed at home). But it was all worthwhile when I visited a well-to-do friend’s house and saw an amazing grand piano and had a chance to play on it. Whereas I’d practiced on a half-sized keyboard and an old out of tune clunker before, this piano cost more than most cars. It was pure luxury to hear the sound coming out of those strings.

Because I’d put the time, effort and sacrifice into working on the Sonata when it wasn’t convenient, I was able to enjoy the true opportunity when it arose. And after that day I started getting invited to other people’s houses who had equally stunning pianos, and enjoyed the luxury of playing on those as well.

The Moral Of The Story
So what should you take away from this? Not that I’m a fantastic piano player (in truth, I really never learned any other music than that one Sonata), but that you don’t “have excuses”, you can only make them.

So what’s your excuse? Where have you been playing the victim and saying, “I just don’t have the time?” Quit living like a victim and decide you’re going to be an overcomer.

Read some of these articles to get you started and remember, it’s your life – so take total control of it!

- Dave

Read These and Get Going

• Three Simple Cheats To Free Up Five Hours This Week
• How To Get Serious About Time Management in One Hour
• What Line Are You Feeding Yourself?
• 3 Time Management Lies That Hold You Back
• How To Make Time When There Is No Time

Cheat #1: Consciously decide to cut one hour of “crap” out of your schedule.
Guess what? You (and everybody else on this planet, myself included) spend time doing stuff that has little to no bearing on our quality of life long-term. So bite the bullet and declare war – or at least a guerilla attack – on that this week.

Do you watch television? Tape or Tivo five hours this week and save it for later. Do you read for fun? Ditch the novels for a week. Do you web surf aimlessly? Call it quits for just one week. Except for the part where you come to this blog, of course.

The point here is that you’re not making a “major life change” here – you’re just taking a quick pause to focus tactically on something important to gain back five hours. You can always catch up on this low-priority stuff next week (though you may find that getting more done is more satisfying enough to repeat the experiment next week).

Regardless, you’re blowing time somewhere. Free it up and take it back for a week.

Cheat #2: Take a half-day off of work.
It blows my mind how many of the people I coach never thought of this one. Most of them even have a lot of vacation built up because of heavy schedules. The concept of taking a half-day off to nail a tactical goal can be a weird shift in thinking. But it’s a great way to free up time.
But hey, you take time off to go to the doctors, or to get your car worked on … why not do it for your personal or business goals? Chances are, the world won’t end if you take a half day (and your lunch time to make five hours total). And since it’s just a half day, it won’t bust your vacation balance.

But the best part of this tactic is it automatically focuses you. Hey, you’re burning vacation time so you know up front that you better not be wasting it! That pressure keeps your nose to the grindstone.

Cheat #3: Get up earlier and love it.
Okay, you might consider this a shameless plug. But the truth is, getting up earlier isn’t hard to do if you do it with a little finesse. If you could trim forty-five minutes off of your sleep time per day you’d have those five hours in no time.

Jon, I hope you take this advice to heart – and I hope all the rest of you out there reading this put it to good use as well.

All the best,

Dave Navarro

Here’s why: Whatever you don’t have in life is the result of the story you are telling yourself about why you can’t have it. (I wish I could take credit for that line, but that’s a Tony Robbins quote.)

In other words, the story you tell yourself allows you to rationalize not taking the tough, real-life action you need to overcome that time management obstacle that’s been messing with you and your business.

And rationalization is deadly to your goals because it allows you to shrug your soulders and enjoy comfortable inaction rather than saying “So I’m going to work on changing this situation by …”

So here’s your question: What story have you been telling yourelf to justify letting that time management obstacle continue to exist? What line have you been feeding yourself? What excuse have you been giving yourself to justify things staying that way?

Ok, I know that’s three questions, and I told you I’d only ask you one, so let me make it up to you. Answer the question for me by posting a comment, and I’ll give you some free guidance to help you out.

Till then, live like you mean it -

Dave Navarro

It doesn’t matter what it is. What does matter is that a lot of these high-tech solutions aren’t going to work. Not because the solution itself doesn’t work, but because if you haven’t established the underlying habit you’ll need to make use of it, you’re hosed! And that habit, specifically, is the discipline of using that tool daily. You’ve probably experienced this already if you’ve got a time management tool you bought but never used. Or some books you’ve bought but never read. Or a gym membership you haven’t used.

A gym membership is a great example of this. A co-worker of mine was on the fence about buying an expensive gym membership. She wondered if she’d have the discipline to go three times a week and was afraid to risk the money. So she decided to put herself to the test and see if she could “show up” three times a week to an imaginary gym session (which was really nothing more than following through on taking a 45-minute walk three times a week).

She didn’t do well on the follow through at the beginning, but after a few months she finally got into the swing of it and “showed up” consistently. When she had done that four weeks in a row, she decided she was finally ready to commit to spending that 45 minutes at the gym instead, and bought herself a membership (which she really did use).

Time management solutions follow the same pattern. If you’re hopelessly disorganized, a Blackberry isn’t going to fix that problem. You’ll need to “show up” and get better at organizing your commitments day to day before you’ll really benefit from the efficiency of an expensive device.

Back in 1995 I bought the very first Palm Pilot, thinking it would “get me all organized.” It didn’t. It got used sporadically and then not at all. A few years later I bought a fancier Palm, but to no avail. So finally I decided to take the simple route – I went down to Wal-Mart and picked up a 77-cent pocket notebook and began tracking my action lists and appointments in that.

It took a while, but I finally developed the discipline to “show up” every day and track things consistently. Only after reinforcing that habit did I upgrade my notebook to a smartphone, which just gives me a fancier interface for notes that I can sync with my laptop.

The point is, if I hadn’t developed the discipline of tracking things the low-tech way, I’d never be able to manage them in a more efficient way that helps me get more done. That’s why I say that high-tech solutions don’t help with time management … they only help you execute the disciplines you’ve already developed.

So where do you stand? Are you disorganized when it comes to basic time management principles such as tracking where you spend your time or capturing all the things you need to do? If so, start at the beginning. Get yourself a pocket notebook and start with the basics. For one full week keep notes on everything you do with your time and I’ll bet you see an instant performance increase. Or commit to capturing all your to-dos there, not spread out over post it notes, receipts, scraps of paper and backs of envelopes. You’ll be surprised at how focused that one simple act can get you.

And all for 77 cents. Can’t beat that.

Give it a shot and shoot me an email with your results at dave@davenavarro.com. I’d love to hear about it.

Unfortunately, building a skill doesn’t work that way. While it’s true that there are a number of easy things you can do to get an immediate edge over your busy workload, these things still have to be applied consistently and with focus. They can’t merely be something that’s “nice to do” – instead, they have to be something you will do.

Perhaps one of the things that makes it difficult for most people to really get a hold on becoming more productive with time management is that they view it as a quick fix solution – “If I buy this fancy day planner/PDA/whatever, it will fix all my problems and I’ll finally get ahead.” But in reality, it doesn’t work that way.

Instead, what time management is isn’t really the management of time at all – it’s the managing of your habits and behaviors. It’s mastering small and specific techniques that, when applied consistently, alter the way you look at your work and approach the tasks, projects and categories that make up the to-do lists you’ve been juggling. so you’re really not managing time – you’re managing your consistent behaviors. You’re managing you.

So it begs the question …. what kind of manager are you? Do you check in every once in a while, only paying attention when you have to put out a fire or handle a crisis? Or do you have a plan, one you put into place consciously and one that you work relentlessly because succeeding really matters to you? Be honest with yourself. This is no time to sugar coat things.

If you are like most people, you probably don’t have a time management plan in place. It’s likely you’re hoping things will come together on their own, and it’s likely you’ve been hoping that for a long time. In that case, you need to start getting serious about examining and adjusting your consistent behaviors so that you’ll have the all time you need to do all of the things you want.

Quick, Do This Now
So let’s take the first step now. Grab your calendar and make a lunch date (or dinner, or whatever makes sense for you) with yourself once a week and honor that appointment each and every week. This will be your personal review session where you ask yourself where you stand and what you need to do – and then you start working on it.

Just think of it – if you had a weekly meeting with your boss to discuss your progress on one particular project, don’t you think you’d stay focused and get results a lot faster then if you just worked on it “when you had the chance?” You know you would. So do yourself a favor and start scheduling this time now.

Oh, and if you’re thinking “I don’t have the time to have a weekly meeting,” stop feeding yourself that line of garbage. This weekly meeting is going to help you develop habits that will free up many more hours of your time every week, increase your productivity and erase an enormous amount of stress from your life.

That’s a pretty bold claim, but give it a shot and see how that weekly meeting proves itself to you over and over. The time you spend in this meeting will pay for itself. An effective way to frame this so that it becomes a no-brainer is to ask yourself “Would I trade a dime for a dollar?”

In other words, would you trade an hour of time to potentially free up ten more hours of productivity? If you “get it” – if you see the value in this, then you’re all set. So pull out that calendar, and schedule in your dime. Do it now, so you can start getting those dollars in return, as soon as possible.