What’s the difference between how successful executives manage their time and the rest of us?
Often people think it’s because they have an army of lackeys waiting to take care of their every whim. That may be true to a point, but each of us is responsible for how we spend our time, focus and attention. No matter how many helpers a person has it’s up to them to decide where to focus their attention.
After working with professionals at all levels for over ten years I’ve noticed some common traits among the very successful.
Here’s a summary of the top 5:
- They all work from a clean desk. I haven’t seen any highly successful people who have piles of junk everywhere. That’s because successful people know value their time and avoid wasting it on distractions. And a messy desk is a major distraction. Unfinished work spread around within site silently screams “look at me…do me” and lays guilt on like your mother. This is easy to fix, cheap and available to everyone.
- They understand that time is a very limited and highly valuable resource. In my experience everyone understands intellectually that their time on this planet is limited. However emotionally most people feel they will last forever. This leads us to behave as if our time is an unlimited which reduces its value.
- They view time as a precious resource to be invested wisely. They view their time, energy and focus as currency and are as deliberate about investing that as other limited resources within their control. For more information about this concept see my recent Ezine article.
- They focus on a few important things. They understand that they can’t do everything, so they focus on the three to five big things that have the most impact helping them reach their objectives. If you don’t have clear objectives of your own, see this post for a few tips.
- They have a system (time management system for lack of a better term) that enables them to keep their time and activities focused on those key objectives. They tend to be very disciplined and ruthless in it’s application and seldom vary from it. using the system has become reflexive which causes them to give it little thought.
Watch the highly successful around you and see how these traits apply to them. Think about how their actions compare to yours. What can you learn from them?
Note: I’ve had several requests for more information about this subject so I recorded a podcast about it. You can hear it now at The On Target Podcast.
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