6: Time Management

on today's topic we're actually going to be hitting on time management um starting to get some traction with these things so starting to get a lot of good feedback with these make it happen mondays and um so keep the questions coming and help me promote here and hopefully get some value out of this one too again today's topic is going to be about time management because and all the trainings i do that's what i always start my trainings like hey what do you want to get out of this what are some of the challenges and that type of thing that you're faced with and inevitably time management comes up at least four or five times like hey you know john i'm just so busy and all this other stuff so you know i've gone to the time management classes i've read some of the books um read some of the blogs too and i and i do teach a little bit on time management but you know there's there's no secret bullet to it right there's no silver bullet to it it's just more about being organized right and i i think the thing with time management you know everybody says i'm so busy i'm so busy i have so much stuff to do and that's that's that's bullshit i i mean ultimately it's not because we're that busy it's just because we're unorganized um you know as an example i i always used to use the excuse that uh you know working out right i i know i should work out i i don't like working out um but i know i should and but my excuse has always been i'm so busy i'm so busy you know i travel every week and you know this that and the other thing i can't do it and i remember about eight years ago or so um and i don't care what your political affiliation was but i remember obama was running for presidency and i was watching some special on him or whatever it is they come to find out that every morning while he was while he was running for the president of the united states of america every morning he would get up and do an hour he would go to the gym for an hour and work out and when i watched that i was like yeah i think my whole excuse about being too busy to work out um is pretty much crap because i don't think i'm that busy right i mean the person running for the presidency of the united states of america is probably a little bit busier than me so i just knew my excuse was bullshit and that's what it was it was an excuse you know that's the again for all of us it's not that we have too much stuff to do it's we do it all over we're all over the place in what we do all right so i'm going to talk today about a couple of things right um the primary components of effective time management are goal setting prioritization and focus if you can set good goals prioritize those goals and focus for a period of time time management actually becomes quite manageable and so you know that's where you know that's where it starts right is the goals if you'll notice on the back there i don't see my whiteboard right there i write down three goals every single morning of what i want to get accomplished that day and by the way they they ultimately drive to a ultimate goal of where i want to be in a few years or whatever that is but daily we need to be setting goals because i'm a shiny object guy right you bring something up and i'm like look over there right if i don't have something that guides me of what i need to accomplish that day i'll be all over the place right um and so that's where it starts right i write down three goals and they got to be smart too right specific measurable attainable realistic and timely you can't set a goal or shouldn't set a goal if i want to get better right or like how could you possibly measure that or something like uh here's two ways to set a goal as an example i want to get in shape or i want to be 185 pounds cut up benching 225 by may 5th 2007 what's a better goal obviously the other one right what's the best shape i've ever been in my life may 5th 2007 why because i was getting married and i was going to be by a pool and all sorts of crazy stuff and i wanted to be 185 pounds cut up benching 225 by may fit and damn i got there right ever since then i wanted to get in shape so i don't exactly go to the beach all that often anymore but anyways um you know my point is you write down those goals it keeps you focused and and i'm talking about writing down goals not every day not even every day but literally for every meeting like every meeting you're about to walk into what's your goal and y'all like crossing stuff off a list right something oddly satisfying about crossing something off a list no matter how mundane it might be right woke up this morning check put on my pants check and that type of stuff make yourself feel good write down goals check them off all right and and do it daily because that's what keeps you focused and and then just try to again goal setting prioritization like what what are those really the most important things you need to get accomplished that day and then focus right because focus is actually the biggest key to time management you know you tell me here's an example you tell me you're a good multitasker i'm going to tell you you're very inefficient in what you do you know there's actually a book called the myth of multitasking it talks about how the brain can't focus on more than one thing at the same time it talks about your body can do a bunch of things at the same time but your brain can't it's called task switching and it just switches tasks so fast you don't recognize it but the problem is is every time your brain switches a task it loses time so therefore the more tasks you do the more time you lose right so that's why focus is a critical factor here like for instance you know why does procrastination work right think about procrastination go back to our college days or whatever it is and say you were in the you know you knew what you knew you had a final coming up so you you had a final come up in 30 days you knew 30 days in advance you had a final coming up did you sit there and study for 29 straight days right and really diligent grab a chapter every single day or whatever it was or did you rip it up for 29 state straight days drink your face off and what about a day left to go before the final you just sat there and said oh crap i gotta study and when you made that realization of all i have to study did you sit in your dorm room with the windows open music playing people walking in and out or did you go find the deepest darkest section of the library lock yourself in a room wipe everything off the table and just focus on that book right and it worked right well you're here so that's folk the reason that works is because folks the brain's an amazing thing where it can focus on something it's not so great when when you're asking it to do too many things all right so that's why i personally own my calendar right one of the things that i've gotten very very specific about is i own my calendar if it's on my calendar it happens if it doesn't it doesn't all right so that's why one of the things that i don't miss i work out of my house here um i miss the open i miss the office environment because i miss the collaboration i miss being around people that type of stuff but what i don't miss is how horribly inefficient people's time is and how much nobody really respects anybody else's time either meetings always start late um they uh you know they they end late there's really no purpose to them i almost every meeting that i was ever in in the office i was like you know i really only need to be in here for about 10-15 minutes um same thing people would just end up coming over to your cube your desk and you know interrupting you mid whatever you're doing is hey you got a question for you and that throws you off because that's why that focus it's about momentum too right the more you do something all specifically at the same time the more momentum and the better you get at it and there's something i read out there recently that said um if you're doing something if you're focused on something and you're doing it and you stop doing it it takes a minimum of 12 minutes for you to get back to where you were so as an example say you're making cold calls right and you're making your calls you make you know the first couple two three four a little rough or whatever it is but then all of a sudden you know you get a phone you know you kind of catch that groove and then all of a sudden you get on the phone with somebody and you have a decent conversation with and they say send me information and so most of us what we'll do is we'll stop everything we're doing we write this nice custom piece of information like it's the only one i've ever sent before in my life and fire it off there and then because we kind of felt like we did something we'll kind of get up stretch out a little bit go you know warm up the coffee hey just see the game last night and then when we come back now we've crushed our momentum so now again it's going to take us a minimum of 12 minutes to get back on track to where we were so for instance i do things in our chunks my biggest recommendation for you is to do things in our chunks doing hours within this activity than hours worth of that activity and so for instance when i'm making cold calls i'm not making cold like if you spring by the way i'm going to tie this into making calls too because a lot of people say john why should i even make phone calls or leave voicemails nobody even calls me back i do make calls um for one specific reason because you know well i leave voicemails for one specific reason and it's because when i leave voicemails my email response rates go up pretty drastically um but when making those phone calls you know most of us just two or three phone calls and then send some emails that type of thing that's where i think it's a waste of time where i know phone can be effective is if you hyper focus on one for an hour and not just making calls during that hour but making calls into one very specific persona for an hour all right so for instance i'm going to call every vp of sales in the sas industry um under 25 million that uses salesforce and i'm going to say the same damn thing over and over and over again and i'm going to come up with my questions i think i've talked about this before come up with my questions maybe i have a case study and i usually do about a half hour prep for a one hour call blitz so during that half hour prep i'm getting my names i'm getting my numbers i'm getting my personas and my messaging already so when i make those calls i'm not searching for information i'm not doing research i'm not doing any of that stuff i'm just hammering through calls and if you do that you can bang out probably i don't know 20 25 in an hour no problem and so for those of you say you know hey john you know 50 you know some people still have that 50 50 a day that's the metrics that they're under their managers say you got to make 50 i think 50 is around the threshold where it's still kind of reasonable um but i'll tell you making 50 dials throughout the day like again that's a hard thing to do um usually i get to the end of the day if my mentality is yeah i'll make a few here a few there i usually i can't get to 50 by the end of the day but if i do an hour you know half hour prep one hour call blitz i can bang out 20 25 no problem that's an hour and a half in morning hour half the afternoon i'm good that's three hours out of my day i got five hours left to do whatever i want with all right so it's the same thing with like send me information i send all my information at the end of the day you know why because i can get really enough i can get really efficient with sending all my information at the same time um i do all my research from my accounts at the same time so i have a research block where for an hour i just do research because i can get really efficient with doing research right i actually here's a tip for you you know when we're doing i'm going to talk probably one of these about customized emails and how to you know have reasons and do research on people stuff like that well i used to have a i still do a spreadsheet i use it i used to use a lot more when i was doing a lot um where it's just a simple spreadsheet with all my top tier accounts that their company's name in one column company's website in another column uh the name of the target person that i want to go after in another column and then their email address um and their linkedin profile ideally right so i have that in a spreadsheet and then what i do is when i'm researching sometimes i'll just do this on the weekends um you know while i'm watching something stupid on tv and not paying too much attention i just poke around somebody's website and look for reasons right oh they open up a new office they launched a new product like all these different things i'll put all that stuff on there and so that because i can get real efficient with that and then when i sit down to actually come up with my contact strategy now all those reasons are there all right and that's kind of the last the one of the last points i'll make on this is you know time management a lot of us i'll say that the thing that i struggle with the most right now with out there training and out there listening to the challenges that people have and stuff like that it's time i'm sorry it's not time it's work ethic uh you know so many people check i check you know i go to companies right now and if i go to meet uh an executive at four or five you know five say five o'clock and i walk into the office a lot of these offices are ghost towns i mean for me like i can't imagine like just being like all right i gotta get out of here five o'clock um if you care about what you do you work as long as it takes to get the job done um and if you have goals you can kind of you can you can justify it right you know i actually had a kid this week come up to me and he was talking to me about you know john you know i just got married and you know i got a wife and we're trying to figure out and she's kind of you know i want to do my thing and i'm working on stuff here you know and working my ass off but you know we got to be on the same page right and my wife's a little frustrated because i'm traveling a lot and all these you know any suggestion you travel all the time how do you balance that with your wife you know thankfully for me my wife actually did a lot of traveling before we even got together and she was actually traveling more than i did um early on now she doesn't travel as much so she understands it but i think the one thing that um really helped was sitting down and mapping out where we wanted to be right like what are your goals you know that question people ask like hey where you want to be in five years that manager right like you know when you're interviewing and i always used to think that was a bullshit question but um now it's pretty important to me um and it's not necessarily where you want to be in five years with your with your existing company i mean in your life like where do you want what kind of lifestyle do you want to be living what kind of car do you want to be driving what kind of job you know what kind of money do you want to make those type of things and and it's a lifestyle thing right we work so that we can support a lifestyle hopefully right that's why i work as hard as i do because i want to live a certain lifestyle like i i want to go on nice vacations i want to stay at nice places and shit like that i want to you know i want my daughter to have the opportunities and my wife to have the opportunity that's why i bust my ass right but if you're not goal driven let's put it this way you're just along for the ride like if you don't have if you're not writing down goals about where you want to be and what you want to do you're just along for the ride you're letting somebody else dictate the path right if you write goals you can start to dictate that path you know if you read any one of the books out there like any one of the books on successful people right there's think and grow rich there's you know whatever there's 10x there's all these different books out there like every single one of them is just about goal setting you know they're really the most successful people on the planet write down a goal and say this is what i'm doing i don't care what anybody says and that's really what helps you deal with whatever you're going through right now so for instance like if you're in a shit job say you just just your job sucks right or you don't like it for whatever reason if you don't have a goal about what you're trying to accomplish and if this doesn't fit into that goal then yeah it's gonna suck and you know what you're gonna go find another job doing something similar and you're probably not gonna like that either but if you write down say okay in five years i want to be driving this kind of car i want to be making this kind of money this life this type of lifestyle whatever it is again smart write them down and then you drive towards that you can deal with a lot of shit as long as it's supporting that goal like i could eat a shit sandwich as long as i'm driving towards a specific goal that i'm faced with right but if i don't if i'm just going through the motions and looking at it like every day i gotta do this without really thinking about where i want to go it makes it a lot more difficult all right to deal with that shit so yeah you know i guess that's really where it comes from like that you know that kid talked to me this week or last week um about you know his challenges i was like dude just sit down with your girl and map out like where do you guys want to be let's talk about the next five years and where we want to be and get alignment with that because if you don't have alignment with that then yeah she or he is going to be pretty upset when you don't come home when you're working late when you're traveling or whatever but if it's moving you towards a goal you should be able to work it out all right and that's where it comes down to time management right is is like i said earlier goal setting prioritization and focus you set good goals prioritize those goals and then focus on them for a period of time you start to figure it out a lot more so to wrap things up because i you know time management i don't know if there's any questions out there right now but um to wrap things up on this one i do have to actually speaking of time management i gotta bail a little bit early on this one because i got a one o'clock call that i have to take and i have to do a little bit of prep for um but uh you know own your calendar write down goals every day well back up five years out write that down all right money lifestyle again lifestyle goals back into that from a work standpoint okay to live that lifestyle how much money do i need to be making right and therefore from there you can say okay well then what do i need to do to be able to make that money what steps do i need to be able to take to be able to get there right now does that mean you keep working at another organization does that mean you go off on your own i don't know right whatever and then back that down into daily right what do i need to do every single day to be able to put myself in a position where i can stay focused on those goals because when i got that up there see that picture right there that's me actually um i did a cross-country trip when i was freaking out one day sorry something on my screen um back when i was my first startup i i was working so hard i almost had a mental breakdown and so i just i just freaked and i just jumped in my car and drove cross-country and uh with a buddy of mine and that was that's in utah and i was standing up on that rock being like ah you know i'm free i i you know i felt a lot better at that point because i my stresses had gone away and above that notice that number and it looks like it's backwards on this but that's a million dollars in uh arr that's my goal i want to hit a million dollars in recurring revenue for myself um because that is going to put me in a position to live the life i want to live um for my daughter to have the opportunities that she has and for my wife to be able to do what she wants to do right and everything drives me towards that main goal right i had it for a specific day and i was trying to i pushed a little hard i was trying to hit 40 i'm 41 now so i missed it by a little bit but i'm at the revenue number um but i just need to figure out the recurring piece of this and so that's what everything all my decisions are towards that right when i spend money i'll spend a ton of money um to get me to that goal if it's going to get me there and then you'll notice on a daily basis what i need you know that's the year and then there's 2017 above that and then that's the that's that's the day of what i want to get accomplished just keeps me motivated right so if you got questions hit me up all right i'm gonna bail now it doesn't look like too many people have questions today so um you know again if you're getting value out of this do me a favor help spread the word um j barrows facebook page uh also hit me up on snapchat um john m as in michael barrows where i answer any questions i actually a lot of you hit me up on snapchat a lot so i answer questions every day all day on snapchat um and then you can always email me john at j barrows and uh and i'm happy to jump on a call with anybody if anybody's looking for some advice or just some some you know some direction or whatever it is i'm happy to help all right cool all right everybody well it's been a pleasure make it a great week all right write some goals down this week do something you're gonna crush and then just go for it all right make it a great week take it out thanks you you you you you Oh, oh, oh.

Thank you.