Wasting time…

When I started out in real estate, a couple of successful realtors told me the key to success was saying "no" to things. Saying "no" is what frees up more time and allows people to concentrate. Hey, can you do X, Y and Z?

"No."

"I need to work on C right now."

They told me not to feel bad about saying "No."

No need to follow it up with anything, no need to explain yourself, just be to the point. "No."

We can easily get caught up in being distracted, but for me narrowing priorities helps with staying focused. The next question becomes are we doing the things we said "Yes" to in a useful order.

This morning, for example…

Usually, I wake up in the morning and start the coffee maker.

Then, I take a few minutes to stretch in an attempt to make my lingering foot pain go away while I wait for it to heat up.

Once the coffee's ready, I head over to my laptop and open it up.

I get the first sips of coffee downrange while I wait for it to turn on.

Shortly after, I'm working on whatever project has the shortest deadline. But this morning, 47 minutes in I'm still messing around trying to figure out what to do.

I have photos from Nepal to edit

A short blog post to write.

A real estate listing to upload.

A pitch to Trail Runner to complete.

A story about Pont Rouge to write.

Usually, it's straightforward, but the extent of the number of Nepal photos that I need to go through keeps exerting itself on me.

"Hey, work on me."

"Hey, I'm a big project."

"Hey you've been back for a month why haven't you edited all of me yet…"

Typically, it's pretty simple, but the encumbrance of the Nepal photos and getting through them keeps reaching out to me.

So, I keep bouncing back and forth, which as we know doesn't work. Being distracted is not the path to completing tasks. I can't effectively write a pitch and edit photos.

Fuck.

I want to focus on projects with immediate deadlines.

But the photos keeping nagging…

Still, 24,000+ photos to go through…

I know I need to time block though.

Gary Keller describes it best in his book The One Thing.

"…only the ability to dismiss distractions and concentrate on your ONE thing stands between you and your goals."

So, time to start off one project at a time, entirely focused and then on to the next.

I started this at 4:49am.

Now it's 5:02am

Once I stopped attempting to 'multitask' between three different projects causing me to waste 45+ minutes, I was able to get this written in 13 minutes.

When people say "I don't have time."

It's typically pretty obvious.

People have plenty of time. They just don't time block or prioritize. Getting shit done is a result of being focused.

We used to see tons of people in the military like this. People who were always "too busy".

Usually, they were running around doing what we called "make busy work", not getting anything accomplished.

Legions of people feel busy but aren't productive.

The start to today?

I felt busy.

However, I didn't complete anything.