Your Most Valuable Asset Is Usually Wasted!

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December 1995
Vol 19 No 4

Every week, a deposit is made in a special bank account that each of us has. In a way, rich or poor, sick or healthy, regardless of race, religion, or political persuasion; this deposit gives us all a level playing field. At the same time, the way it’s used is the first thing that begins to separate the winners from the losers. Although rarely mentioned by those gurus who promise wealth and a life of ease and comfort to the true believers, how we exploit this special account is a fundamental key to how successful each of us becomes.

What is this deposit? Time! Although it’s measured everywhere in the same manner by minutes, hours, and days, weeks, months, and years; it’s not of equal value to those without those skills. An ancient analogy uses iron ore to illustrate this. Like time, iron ore in its raw state is reasonably plentiful. Its value is calculated in tons. Smelted into cast iron, it’s worth a lot more. Refining iron into steel, multiples its value 10 times over. When this steel is tempered and made into fine watch springs, its value leaps to 1,000 times the value of ore. How raw material is used is what creates the value.
The lesson here is, it’s not so much what we are given, but what we do with it that makes the biggest difference. Where, in the above analogy, expensive capital equipment played a large part in the transition from raw ore to finely finished product, when we begin the process of creating value with time, much of the capital required to create value is already in our grasp.

Let me elaborate. Within each of us, to some degree, lie critical components comprised of ambition, purpose, determination, persistence, intelligence, knowledge, discipline, and ability. History is replete with examples of lesser endowed or gifted people who became highly successful. Even without a high I.Q., money, power or position, many were able to exploit the attributes they did have and apply them to attain personal goals.
No one ever accused George Washington of being smart. Or Lincoln of being rich. Or Edison of being well capitalized, or Bill Gates of being a college graduate. Yet, each of them achieved the pinnacle of power and influence more from developing their personal strengths than from any other reason. All of these achievers exhibited a high degree of self discipline. Moreover, they shared the ability to use time efficiently throughout their lives. They spent little time with things that didn’t advance their goals.

There I said it. The ‘G’ word. Probably the first step in using the gift of time is to define and focus on your single, most important, personal objective. Whatever you strive for in this world ought to be something you truly want to achieve and are willing to devote a large part of your life to attain. Setting sub-goals to acquire the tools you’re going to need – whether money, equipment, facilities, labor, materials, education, etc. should be the next logical step in the process. Pervading all your planning will be the crucial factor of time. The availability of time coupled with the way you use it will set the limiting boundaries of what you can achieve. This brings us full circle back to our original premise, that efficient management of time is the true key to success regardless of whether financial or personal.

TIME SHOULD BE BUDGETED LIKE MONEY . . .

We’ve all heard that ‘Time is money’ but how many actually budget time the same way that they budget their money? Think about your paycheck. When you receive it, don’t you have established priorities as to how you’re going to spend it? Pay some bills? Buy some essentials? Splurge with some of it on toys and recreation? Put some away in savings and investments for the future? Hold what you have left over privately, away from the prying eyes of those who might want to beg, borrow or steal some of it? You should be doing the same thing with your 168 hour time deposit that you’re given each week.

When it comes to using time to create wealth, unlike those who work straight 40 hour weeks, full or part time entrepreneurs have a lot more time to manage. There’s nothing to prevent entrepreneurs from working 80 or 100 hours a week to accomplish goals. I was able to retire from real estate brokerage after 5 years at age 45 because both myself and my wife put in 90 hour weeks. That’s the amount of time that starting up a new business, raising two teenagers, and doing all the jobs we had to do consumed. It sounds arduous, but it didn’t seem so at the time. That’s probably because being able to work for ourselves to become financially free was exciting and just plain fun.

Enjoying what you do has a lot to do with how well you do and how much time you spend doing it. We all play harder than we work. Doing what’s fun for you converts your work into play. Today is Sunday. I woke up at 5 A.M. after 4 hours of sleep. Instead of tossing and turning trying to get back to sleep, or giving up and watching late night TV, I decided to use the quiet time before sunrise to start writing this newsletter. Why? Because I’d rather go to work at something I really enjoy than be passively entertained. Besides, it pays well. They say that nobody asks about coffee breaks or vacations when they’re in a diamond mine scooping up diamonds, and the same can be said of productive work. Ideally, you should seek success doing work that you can look forward to with enthusiasm and joy. If all you’re getting out of your work is money, you could be depriving yourself of a lifetime of self satisfaction.

Distractions can be fatal to your goals. Beware of time-wasters. Avoid spending time meeting other people’s goals. You’ll be asked to set aside your own planned objectives to serve on committees, boards, directories to meet the goals of their Chairperson. Unless you can see a specific, tangible connection between spending this time and fulfilling your goals, just say no!

Ask yourself how often all the people you’re asked to help ever repay your expenditure of time and talent by helping you. If you go broke, will they help you out? Andrew Carnegie is a role model of mine. He single mindedly amassed a fortune, then spent it building free lending libraries to educate the public. You’ll probably do a lot more good in the long run spending your time assuring your own financing success, then, afterwards, making your contribution to those organizations and causes that you consider to be most worthy.

SPEND THE DAYS OF THE WEEK LIKE THOUSAND DOLLAR BILLS . . .

Assuming that you’ve settled on what you want to do in order to achieve your personal and financial goals, the first step is to divide your week up into days and assign priorities to tasks up to completed during each day in the same way that you apportion your paycheck among various expenditures. For example, weekends, early mornings and evenings are great for contacting homeowners and tenants because you can usually find them at home. Conversely, businesses are usually closed on Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays. So on your time budget for each week, you might block out those times for personal contacts with tenants and owners. You’ll note that, to the extent possible, seminars are scheduled around weekends rather than consuming potentially productive mid-week days. There’s a practical reason for this.

Mondays and Fridays are usually very busy times for businesses and government offices. On Fridays, last minute pre-weekend work must be completed by day’s end. On Mondays, all the pent up activity that has built up over the weekend can create a deluge. Calls must be answered. Mail must be processed. Customer demands must be satisfied. The same thing is true in my business too. For this reason, when I’m not on the road doing seminars, I schedule myself to be in my workplace catching up on office details on Mondays and Fridays.

We’ve pretty well covered what we do on weekends, Monday and Friday. That leaves Tuesday through Thursday. First, let’s look at what I don’t do on those days. I don’t attend meetings! Being an entrepreneur, you can make necessary decisions quickly without having to first reach consensus with bureaucrats. The process is fairly simple. First of all, inform yourself as to the facts and alternative courses of action, make a decision, then pass on instructions to those who might be affected. Computer, telephone and FAX sources can really speed this process. Meetings cost too much time.

The middle of the week is a good time to make necessary rounds of neighborhoods where there may be potential for buying or selling, visits to the courthouse, bank, mortgage brokerage and insurance offices, and other business contacts. I avoid unnecessary trips. When I must leave the workplace, I try to start early to get in ahead of the day’s normal business interruptions and to be back, off the streets to avoid traffic rush hour. Each trip out of my work area is planned like a safari with all the stops in logical sequence.

Typically, I’ll start with the post office and make a circuit which includes other mail box locations, building and office supply stores that don’t deliver on telephone orders, checking up on contractors, etc. Each trip, I try to drive along different streets in a circuitous route during my rounds. This gives me an opportunity to look for potential purchases in different neighborhoods while going to and from my point of origination, saving the time extra trips would cost me.

AVOIDING COMMUTING CAN PAY BIG TIME DIVIDENDS . . .

For more than 20 years, I’ve lived where I work. Although it provides comfortable living arrangements, my workplace was selected more for its location, access to transportation and efficient use by the business than for any other reason. Thus, I spend no idle time tied up in traffic jams or traveling between destinations. 95% of all my activity takes place within a 1 mile radius of where I live. With separate telephone lines for tenants, for the FAX, and for newsletter subscribers/customers, I can do everything, where I live, that I would normally do in a separate office, but much more efficiently.

After I resisted teaching myself how to use a computer for 15 years, I finally learned how. The effort has been worth the trouble. With the entire family having made the transition to computers, this has enabled us to double the work accomplished each week despite occasional computer glitches. Our computerized workload can be shared via telephone lines. Thus, a widely spread out family such as ours can divide up business chores despite 3000 miles of separation. Using computers also makes administrative drudgery more interesting and tolerable. Thus, work doesn’t get pushed off to one side, piled up and forgotten in an in-basket which can cause problems and cost time later on.

Setting time priorities and sticking to them is a real key to being able to manage your time assets effectively. Formerly, when I maintained a specific office location, considerable time was wasted being polite to ‘drop in’ customers, salespeople, fund raisers, etc. I finally learned to keep the office door locked; posting a printed notice on it stating the office was open by appointment only, with a number to call to set one up. This limited daily interruptions considerably. Not having an office at all saves even more hours for productive use each week. The next item to control is telephone time.

TELEPHONE AND MAIL INTERRUPTIONS CAN CONSUME A WHOLE DAY

Limiting telephone access has to be balanced out with customer relations. If a large part of your business depends upon telephone contact, you can save lots of time and money by limiting your availability. To restrict wasting time on the telephone, you could install a tape recorder to inform the callers of your FAX number and of the hours during which you can be reached by phone. I learned this approach to handle calls by making the mistake of calling my telephone company business office after hours. They trained me to call only when they were willing, able, and ready to accept the call. This will give you hours of uninterrupted productive time for your own purpose.
You don’t want to get carried away. There’s another side to this story. One of the things a small business has to offer to customers is accessibility. We recently installed a toll-free ‘800’ number for customers who want to spend money. That telephone line always commands a priority. For other calls, we want the caller to spend his money, not ours. I average 6 hours or so a day on the telephone, usually in the evenings, either talking to customers, clients or business associates. I don’t really mind. That’s a part of the information business and something I have to schedule work around.

What about property management? Part of our initial tenant screening is to determine whether or not our tenants are capable of being self-reliant. If they’re not, they have to rent from someone else. Tenants aren’t buying access to me or my time with their rent, only their living quarters. Accepting direct calls from tenants for minor problems takes time. I maintain a FAX for that purpose. If a personal problem isn’t acute enough to send me a message by public FAX, it isn’t sufficiently compelling to me to become involved in its solution. For repair support, tenants are also given a FAX number which goes directly to a Maintenance Coordinator. He handles these calls and takes appropriate action. Similarly, rent collections, evictions and preventative maintenance inspections are all handled directly by the vendors and contractors who do the work.

Another thing to try to avoid is the tyranny of mail deliveries. Mail usually represents additional unscheduled workload. That’s the arch enemy of time management. For some reason or other, we’ve all got the attitude that, when a letter is received, it must be read. Formerly, when the mailed was delivered to our location, everything usually went a little off track while it was sorted and processed. By opening up a mailbox at the central post office and receiving or mailing letters there, I’ve been able to shorten the delivery time by about a day. But the most important aspect of all this is that now I only check for mail at a time when it is convenient or me, not for the sender.

I try to process mail while I’m in the Post Office. A quick reply scribbled on the letter I receive is probably more welcomed by the sender than a delayed reply on fresh stationery. Junk mail is tossed away right in the Post Office. They sell stamps and envelopes to use in mailing my responses and copiers are usually available if I need file copies. I’ve got several mail box locations. For only a few dollars per year, I can get the post office to sort my mail into various categories by having a separate box for each business activity. This way, I can focus on processing mail for one business at a time.

Time wasted is opportunity lost forever. By learning to conserve time and use it more efficiently, you can expand your horizons and increase your reach. If ‘time is money’, it follows that time saved is money saved. Every time you catch yourself wasting time, ask yourself if you can afford it.

 

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