Timing matters. Just as there is great power in the discipline of acting, there is also great power in the patience of waiting.
Waiting to do something when “we know it is something that we should do but we don’t really want to do it” is Procrastination. Waiting because “we are deciding that now is not the right time” is Patience.
Inaction that results from indulgence is Procrastination. Inaction that results from intention is Patience. Procrastinate on Purpose is a synonym for Patience.
Gun Slingers have no problem waiting until the last minute. They have to beware of waiting too long and causing “after last-minute costs.” Worry Warts need to practice patience so as not to incur unexpected change cost. You need both to have a great team.
Worry Warts typically carry the weight of the world and they feel pressure to do everything and to do it now. They need to give themselves the permission of Incomplete and to learn to be okay with things just being okay. It is okay to slow down.
UNEXPECTED FINDINGS
Waiting till the last minute is good because it reduces your vulnerability to unexpected change cost. Waiting until after the last minute is bad because it creates stress, anxiety and many negative actual costs to a business. So you don’t want to be late, but you also don’t want to be too early; Multipliers work to be precisely on time.
Doing something early is not the same as creating more time. It is just taking time from tomorrow and moving it into today and adding the risk of unexpected change cost.
Patience isn’t just waiting. It is also giving yourself time to breathe. It is creating margin in your life. And it is freeing yourself from the fear that you’re not good enough so you must do everything now in order to prove that you are.
It is a service to allow people the natural process of making their own mistakes.
The reason we don’t Delegate is because of a false belief that “someone else won’t be able to do it as well as I can” or that “it is faster to do it myself.”
R.O.T.I. stands for “return on time invested,” and it works the same as an R.O.I. calculation of money except it is for your time.
M.V.O.T. stands for Money Value of Time and articulates that all of us have an hourly wage and that we are always either paying someone else at their rate of pay to complete a task, or we are paying ourselves at ours.
UNEXPECTED FINDINGS
Andy Stanley teaches us that “Leadership isn’t about getting things done right. It’s about getting things done through other people.”
Anyone who runs a household runs a business.
The 30x rule says that we should invest 30 times the amount of time it takes to complete a task in training someone to do the task and it will still be worth it.
Most of us drastically underestimate the number of skills it takes to just keep us with our daily lives and the incredible opportunity of creating jobs for others and peace for ourselves by learning to outsource.
In every transaction there are multiple types of cost:
Actual cost is the amount of money you actually paid for something.
Opportunity cost is the equivalent amount of what you gave up by buying something else.
Hidden cost is the amount of potential return you would’ve received had you invested that money instead of spent it.
Hidden cost is the greatest of all of these costs and it is the one that the fewest people ever pay attention to.
Anything that wastes your time is a waste of your money.
Many people and companies know they need to invest in better systems but cite “not having the money” or “not having the time” as the reason why they can’t. Yet, when you apply the Significance calculation and take time into account, you see that it is literally costing them more not to make the investment. They are missing the permission to Invest.
A company can never outgrow the strength of its systems.
UNEXPECTED FINDINGS
Automation is to your time what compounding interest is to your money.
The greatest threat to anyone’s success is not a lack of talent, a lack of education, a lack of resources or a lack of opportunity; it is shortsightedness—a lack of vision. The Significance calculation changes everything.
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
The most immediate area of improvement in multiplying our time is taking inventory of all the things we can simply stop doing.
Most of us have a deep-rooted fear of saying no.
Give yourself the permission to Ignore without ramping down time or needing to explain anything to anyone. Just Eliminate it!
UNEXPECTED FINDINGS
You are always saying no to something. You are either consciously saying no to the things that don’t matter or you are unconsciously saying no to the things that do.
You aren’t doing anyone any favors by saying yes to something that you really want to say no to.
While most people operate and evaluate their time based on two-dimensional thinking. Multipliers consider a third factor, which is Significance.
Urgent is “How soon does this matter?” Important is “How much does this matter?” and Significant is “How long does this matter?”
You multiply your time by spending time on things today that give you more time (and results) tomorrow.
The only way to avoid always dealing with urgent fires is not to deal with your fires faster, but to get out in front of them to prevent the fires from ever happening in the first place.
UNEXPECTED FINDINGS
How we choose to spend our time is not just logical; it’s emotional.
Garnering your self-esteem and your self-worth from others will result in a never-ending route of stress and anxiety as you try to serve them without allowing you to define what success means to you.
Multipliers regularly give themselves five emotional permissions that the rest of us do not.
Managing your time is one-dimensional thinking. The limitation to this strategy, however, is that there is always more to do than we can ever have time for.
Prioritizing your time is developing the necessary ability to move one task in front of the others. While the value of this skill is more important than ever, we must realize that there is nothing about it that creates more time. It is simply borrowing time from one area of our life to focus on another to make sure the most important thing gets done first. It leaves us no strategy, though, for what to do with the remaining items that need to be completed.
UNEXPECTED FINDINGS
There is no such thing as “time-management”; there is only self-management.
The existing constructs of time-management theory primarily offer us two solutions for creating more results in our life:
Doing this faster (running)
Perpetually reprioritizing tasks (juggling)
This lack of strategies often results in massive stress, anxiety, frustration, despair and eventually burnout.
“Priority Dilution” means falling victim to the “Tyranny of the Urgent,” which is always pulling us away from things that we know are important but somehow don’t demand our attention right now.
Priority Dilution is the new procrastination. It often affects the chronic overachievers.
Many of the most common catchphrases we hear in relation to “time management” are not views shared by true Multipliers.
UNEXPECTED FINDINGS
Telling yourself and others how “busy” you are is a self-defeating pattern that erodes your feeling of ownership and control and thwarts your creativity from being used to find solutions to your challenges.
Balance is a myth that doesn’t even make practical sense to pursue. A Multiplier’s viewpoint is one of imbalancing their focus and energy in a desired direction for a short amount of time to create a desired result.
Leisure is a deceptively unsatisfying goal. Work is good and should be one of the primary sources of joy in our lives.
Results are what matter, and they are what Multipliers keenly drive toward. If you focus on producing results without limiting your ideas about how to create those results, you will come up with amazing solutions.
How To Be Brilliant At A Moment’s Notice Todd Henry
20110701
About This Book
In some circles, the word “creative” has recently morphed from adjective to noun. If you are one of the millions among us who make a living with your mind, you could be tagged a “creative.” Every day, you solve problems, innovate, develop systems, design things, write, think, and strategize. You are responsible for moving big conceptual rocks, crafting systems that form the foundations for future growth—creating value that didn’t exist before you arrived on the scene.
Whichever type you are, creative or “accidental creative,” this book will help you create faster and more effectively than you ever imagined possible.
For the traditional creatives, such as designers, writers, visual artists, musicians, and performers, this book will help you establish enough structure in your life to get the most out of your creative process. It will also teach you how to stay engaged and prolific over the long term, which is often a problem for artists who must produce continually on demand.
