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Summary
It might just be sixty seconds, but a minute can make a very big difference if used correctly. Too often we discount the power that is in seemingly small actions or small periods of time. If used properly and deliberately, you can use strained resources to make giant strides toward meeting your goals.
If you find yourself pinched without enough time to see the results that you are seeking, consider adding in just a bit of time to the beginning or end of your day. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish by focusing intensely for even very short spurts of time.
The same intensity of focus and effort from small periods and small steps can be extended throughout your day until you gain a greater appreciation of how much opportunity is there for you to seize throughout your day. Very often, incremental progress sustained over long periods of time is what ultimately makes the difference in attaining the next level.
Read on to learn more about how to take advantage of those spare seconds and minutes in your schedule – and ensure that you are maximizing your greatest and most precious resource of all: your time.
Transcript
What difference can a minute make?
It is just sixty seconds – not enough time to microwave a bag of popcorn.
You would be surprised, however, at just how much you can manage to get done in even a narrow sliver of time. This is a lesson I first learned when I was making my way in the world of real estate. I began adding just one more minute of call time to my sales routine. It did not seem like a tremendous amount of time – but what I found was that in aggregate, all of those single minutes added up to huge returns for my revenue figures, tens of thousands of dollars a year in fact. What seems like a drop in the ocean when seen in isolation can ultimately add up to something very big over time.
There is tremendous power in adding just a little more time into your schedule to tackle your long-term goals. The difference stemmed from making sure that those extra minutes were entirely and completely devoted to staying focused on the core objective – in my case, finding people that were interested in buying or selling real estate. For you, that extra moment might represent a commitment to spend just one more minute each day on the core business driving your financial growth – whether it is practicing guitar, coding websites, or writing.
The power of that extra moment reminds me of the power of small and steady steps sustained over an extended period of time. That extra dollar might just be a dollar – but an extra dollar each day will ultimately compound to a truly significant amount of money. The same principal applies to practice and pursuing excellence in any field that you choose. We all hear the time excuse far too often – but surely all of us can manage to carve out one more minute in our day to work toward our goals.
Keep in mind these tips when applying the “one extra minute” rule:
Analyze Your Time Usage
They key concept is to make sure that you have a concept for how your time is being spent. Whether you use paper and pen or an excel spreadsheet, keep a careful record of how your time is being used. This will allow you to determine if your real priorities stack up to what you say they are.
After all, launching a career as a professional writer isn’t a real priority for you if you are spending more time watching television each day than you are on writing. Use this resource to help plan how to reallocate your time moving forward. Keep an eye on how the different times of year and day can affect how you decide to allocate your time – it may be easier to act as a morning person in the winter or summer depending upon your predisposition and how the time of the sunrise affects it.
Get After It
You may be a morning person or a night owl – figure out which one it is. Then use that time to add extra momentum to your day – time that is less burdened with distraction and interruptions from others.
Remember that every email you receive represents someone else’s priority for your time. You are far less likely to be deluged with other people’s priorities if you are grinding away first thing in the morning or late at night when everyone else in the house is asleep. Many successful people, it should be noted, tend to start working very early in the morning as it gives them a sense of momentum and accomplishment early in the day before they tackle the rest of their daily list.
My day generally starts at 5am, but no later than 5:30am. I don’t set an alarm, which is why it might vary slightly. When I wake up I am rested and ready to go. But you may very well operate on a different rhythm – the important consideration is to find where the extra time works best for you and then use it to your advantage.
Cut Out Time Wasters Relentlessly
With all of the demands on your time, you simply can’t afford to waste time on anything that doesn’t drive you toward your goals or bring you real pleasure. A simple happy hour with an acquaintance or an hour of television might not seem like a major expense on your time – but it all adds up.
Social media is a huge drain in particular. Make sure to use it for connecting with colleagues and potential customers – and then log out. Your life matters too much to spend it trolling the vacation pictures of your ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend.
Be relentless on cutting back on all of the noise and you will be amazed at all of the time you will suddenly have to apply to your goals – perhaps far more than just one minute. Think about the value you extract from each activity and which people or activities deplete your energy. Remember that there is a definite opportunity cost to everything that you do – it is detracting time away from the work you care about or spending time with those that you love.
Don’t get caught up in the fallacy of the sunken cost myth – just because you have already heavily invested your time in a relationship or project gone awry does not mean that you need to continue to waste all of that time on things that simply do not matter.
Do More Of What Works
Don’t spend the extra time on activities that don’t generate value. Simply staring at your screen or mindlessly updating your Linkedin profile does not necessarily translate to higher returns and professional satisfaction for you.
Use that extra time you have carved out to pursue your goals via the most high impact activities – this will very often be the hard slog and grinding work that you have put off. If the work is hard, it very likely is part of what drives growth in quality and skill for you – so put the time in and put the sweat equity in.
Focus On One Thing
The key to maximizing your time is to filter our all distractions and maintain your perspective on the most important mission at hand. Some of us like to work with music because it more easily allows us to focus on getting our work done. For others of us, music is more likely to get our mind wandering and looking for other artists to listen to. Some of us find that the climate of a coffee shop helps inspire us, while others need absolute silence and privacy to really grind the work out.
So spend some time to figuring what environment and what atmospherics are most conducive to fostering focus for you, so that you can really maximize the efficacy of those extra minutes dedicated to achieving your goals. This is a greater challenge today in the Internet era than ever before, so it will take real discipline to figure out how to keep your eye on the ball.
Einstein famously described relativity as the way that a minute spent touching a hot stone can seem like an hour – and an hour with a pretty woman can seem like a minute. While we are all limited with the same number of hours in the day, the truth is that we can generate enormous returns if we make the best use of the limited time that we have.
What strategies have you used to maximize the time available to you? Where have you been able to find those extra minutes that can make all of the difference?
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