It's time for another one of those Friday fast tips from Growth Dynamics. I'm Charlie Hauck, President and CEO of the organization and I want to bring up a topic that I'm sure a lot of you've heard about in your professional and personal lives. I want to take another stab at the idea of the value of time and getting things done.
One of the things that sort of drives me crazy, not just in business, but also in my personal life, is hearing people say, "Hey, we should get together, we'll be in touch. See you in a few weeks. Yeah, I would love to do that. It would be great if we". Whatever those sentences are, they are typically part of a conversation about meeting someone, having another conversation, going out to see a concert, maybe scheduling a vacation, following up with friends you haven't seen in a while that you might run into in the grocery store down, walking around town, or whatever it is. All of these things sound like they would be important to get done. But they end up on this list of great ideas that never happen.
I'd like to challenge you all to develop a discipline around this belief - what gets scheduled gets done. I found personally in my life, I had a list of things that I wanted to do. But that list did nothing more than cause me frustration and aggravation about seeing that I had written them down, but they weren't executed, they weren't crossed off. In some cases, some of you have mastered the art of a to do list. Well, frankly, a to do list is nothing more than a recording of wishes. Please don't take that so literally that you regret watching this, but a lot of times the to do list are things that I'd like to do, but I'm not willing to schedule.
Moving forward, here's the advice I'd like to give you. If it's that important to you, take out your cell phone, or take out your planner, or take out something where you can actually look at another human being and say, "Let's schedule that now".
If we could just develop the belief that if something is so important that we want to go from talking about it to actually doing it, we should make it important enough to put a space in our calendar to prove that it is something that merits our time and attention at a specific time. And that we were willing to ask another person, "would you make the same commitment to me, to make this happen". So whether it's talking to your family about going to Disney World, talking to a business prospect about having a scheduled follow up, whether it's going to get your hair cut, obviously not that important for me. If it's important enough to get it done, it should start with being important enough to be on your calendar as a scheduled event.
Personally, I found the moment I quit trying to think I could remember to get done what needed to get done and I committed to writing it down and putting it at a specific time on a specific date, or a specific week to take a specific vacation. I found my life became more fulfilling, more enjoyable, less frustrating with the things I wanted to do that weren't getting done, and it was more rewarding to share them with the people that I wanted to have those interactions with.
Take this opportunity to change your old habits and develop a new one. What gets scheduled gets done. Decide what's that important and schedule it and in another couple of months look back and take account on all the things that you actually did do, instead of wished you had done.
That's my advice to you. Take a great look at your calendar, fill it in with the most important things and the most important people in your life and have a great weekend and a great rest of the year selling out there. Take care, go make money, out for now.
