10 years.
That’s how long it took me to earn the title, Asia’s #1 time management expert.
A whole decade of reading, listening, thinking, attending seminars and taking notes, lots and lots of notes. Despite all that work, I still spend one to two hours a day in either input (reading, listening) or output (writing) mode. I’m constantly on the lookout for new ideas.
I reread old books and find little gems that I missed the first time, and have a stack of (digitally speaking) of books to go through. A few months ago, I picked up Time Ferriss’ book Tribe of Mentors. Like his previous books, The 4-Hour Work Week and Tools of Titans, it’s filled with lots of great ideas and I consider all three must-read books for any entrepreneur, CEO or parent for that matter.
THE GIANT BILLBOARD
“If you could have a gigantic billboard with anything written on it – what would it say and why?”
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Tribe of Mentors is essentially a series of interviews of some of the most successful people in the world. One such question being along the lines of “If you could have a gigantic billboard with anything written on it – what would it say and why?”
I love questions like these because they really make me think – what message would I leave? I sat down and made a list of the lessons I have learned. I came up with about 200. So which one? As you might expect, I do believe that mastering our time is the single greatest investment we can make for our families and our businesses. However, as I whittled my list down, time came in second.
BALANCE
I went back and forth between time and balance, but finally settled on this message – “Balance is everything.” In life, you need to have balance. Tony Robbins has attendees to his seminars fill out what he refers to as the Wheel of Life. He has people rate their lives in eight different categories – relationships, career, personal space, contribution, health, wealth, family and friends, and hobbies. He goes on to talk about once we finish filling in our wheel, we’ll understand just how comfortable our life is at present. A fulfilled life will have a relatively round shape, but most of us struggle in certain areas making for a bumpy ride.
There are many people that sacrifice family for career, and there are those that sacrifice career for family. I believe we need to strive to have a successful family life just as much as a successful career.
There are workaholics and there are couch potatoes. Neither lead to happiness. It’s hard work that allows us to enjoy the downtime, and without downtime we can’t recharge our batteries to be uber-productive in our businesses.
We’ve got to listen, but we also have to make ourselves heard. We should help others, but not forget to help ourselves. We have to learn, but we also have to teach. We need a balance in our diet, both for our stomach and our mind. We’ve got to take care of our family, our friends and our clients.
BODY AND MIND
My son is an athlete. He’s only 10, but will get his black belt in Karate in a few weeks. He earned his green belt in Aikido last month. But his real accomplishment was qualifying for the Junior Olympics (to read about it click here). Despite his incredible achievements, I am constantly telling him that it’s not enough. Allen Iverson, Boris Becker, and Mike Tyson are all athletes who lost over $100 million. On the flip side there is Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal. All six possessed incredible athletic ability, but it was their business genius that helped the latter three turn their sports careers into business empires.
USP
In working with clients, I am constantly looking for their secret sauce, their own USP (unique selling proposition) that allows them to stand out from their peers and competitors. It could be their speed, their knowledge, their creativity, their dedication, their humor. We all have something that sets us apart. I’m also looking for the gaps in their lives and work to find time to enable them to fix them. Each individual provides a different challenge, but inevitably most problems arise from a lack of balance. Businesses are no different, they struggle with some areas more than others. The only difference is the scale.
Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash