The Best-Kept Secret of the Rich

There’s a connection between appreciating yourself, and appreciating and respecting time. People who appreciate themselves understand and respect the use of time. Here’s what I (Jim Rohn) call the best-kept secret of the rich. It’s an interesting discovery that I made one day. I couldn’t believe it when I found out that rich people have about twenty-for hours a day. And poor people have about twenty-four hours a day. Imagine that!

The difference between them is in the management of the time. Practicing a few simple disciplines every day can change your whole life. Your future can change. Your income can change. But you must get a handle on the management of your time. As with everything worthwhile, discipline must be practiced. Discipline is a very important factor in how you manage your time, the twenty-four hours given to you every day.

I have four approaches that might help you get a handle on the management of time. Here’s the first one: keep it in perspective. That’s not a bad suggestion. Somebody says, “Well, I’ve been behind all my life. It doesn’t look like that’s going to change. Forget it.” I like that approach. At least it’s honest!

Nobody’s ideas of success and time management are right unless you can apply them to your own life. Don’t let somebody pressure you by saying, “Here’s what you’ve got to do with your time.” Resist all of that. You can take advice, but you don’t want to take orders. Let somebody give you their opinions, and then accept the ones you want to accept. Don’t accept the ones you don’t want to accept. Resist all attempts of other people to pressure you into becoming the model of their definition of success. Do it on your own time and in the way that’s right for you.

My second time-management approach is this: work longer, harder, and smarter. That can be an effective approach to managing time. However, there are certain limits to working longer and harder. One of those limits is your health.

When I first started with all this, I really poured it on. I got so excited about changing my life, revolutionizing my whole future, that I went bonkers. I could hardly sleep nights, especially the first ninety days. And that first year, I was on such an absolute, dead rush toward revolutionizing everything–my income, my bank account, my future, my relationship with my family… everything. And by the end of that first year, I was a walking shadow.

I’ve been pretty skinny all my life. In high school I turned sideways and they called me absent. And for that first year, I practically disappeared. I put in incredibly long hours. I worked six or seven days a week. If I couldn’t do it in eight hours, I’d work ten. And if I couldn’t do it in ten, I’d work twelve, fourteen, or sixteen hours. Toward the end of that year, it was affecting my health.

Then it suddenly dawned on me: what if I got rich and was too ill to spend it? Wouldn’t that be silly? Then I started to say, “Hey, I’ve got to pull back to a normal workload.”

If you’re not doing much, I would suggest that you work a little longer and work a little harder. After a while, though, there comes a point where, physically, you’ve just got to pull back. Sometimes the answer is to work harder and longer, but at a certain point, working smarter is the key.

Let’s say someone is working fourteen hours a day digging ditches. I could come along and say, “Well, if you just worked harder and longer, you’d make more money.” He’d say, “Why don’t you come down and try this? You’ll see!” Obviously, the guy is maxed out; he’s working as hard as he can. He can’t work any harder, but he could work smarter. That’s the trick.

Here’s a third approach to time management: step down to an easier task, to something more manageable. Find something that doesn’t require that much time, that much effort. That’s an alternate.

Some people in sales are promoted to management, and they soon realize that they aren’t up to the task. They say, “To heck with this management stuff. It takes fourteen hours a day. I’m tired of worrying about everybody. I prefer it out in the field. I’m getting my sales job back.” That’s a good alternative.

Somebody who works for a company may say, “Oh, I’d love to own one of these companies.” Then he finds out what it takes to own one of those companies. He experiences the extra pressure, the extra hours. He can’t play golf three days a week. Finally he says, “You know, I’ve had it up to here with all the headaches and trauma and dealing with all these people’s lives and running a company and being responsible for all of the stuff. I’m going to step down.”

That’s a good alternative. It really is. Don’t let yourself be pressured into taking on more than you can handle when stepping down might give you a better lifestyle.

There was a little girl who complained that her father never played with her. She said, “Daddy comes home with his briefcase full of papers, says hello to me, pats me on my head, and disappears. How come my daddy can’t play with me when he comes home?” Her mother explained it this way: “Your daddy works very hard. He loves you very much. But at the office, he’s got so much to do that he can’t get it all done, so he has to bring the rest of it home. That’s why your daddy can’t play with you.” And the little girl responded, “Why don’t they just put him in a slower group?”

Not a bad idea. And I offer this piece of advice to you: if you’re too busy to play with your kids, you need to join a slower group. You’ve got to have time for your family. I pursued some things that cost too much in those early days. If I’d known how much those things were going to cost, I never would have paid the price.

You’ve got to weight the consequences. Can you make everything fit? Sometimes that extra money isn’t worth it if it pressures you into losing touch with somebody you really care about. Doing less can be more.

The fourth approach to time management is the one I like the best: getting more out of you. If we just get more from ourselves, we can make an hour as valuable as ten hours used to be. We can get as much done in a day as we used to get done in a week. It’s a matter of increasing our efficiency, honing our skills, expanding our knowledge, broadening our awareness. Then we need to practice consistently and get better. All of that value can be brought to the marketplace and brought to the job. That’s where the real time management comes in.

I found that a normal day is enough time, but only if you make the best use of that time.

There’s a movement going on now in the workplace. People are setting up home offices. They’re telecommuting to work through fax machines and computers and modems and delivery services. People are even starting to work in one state and live in another. They don’t need to be at the office all the time. For some jobs, they don’t need to be at the office at all.

What have some of these folks found out? That projects that used to take two days can now be completed in just a few hours. Why? Because they have no distractions. No people stopping by their office to chat. No unsolicited phone calls to take. No unexpected visitors to deal with. When they work, they work. When they play, they play.

Of course, not everybody has the luxury of having a job like this. But some of the same principles can be applied at the office. Create “do-not-disturb” times. Schedule your days so you’re totally undisturbed during those hours in which you complete your best work. Set aside certain hours each day to take appointments and phone calls.

That’s really where the magic of time management comes in. You know the value of your own rhythms in getting certain tasks done more efficiently in a shorter period of time. You are working smarter, not harder.

* Source: Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn