How to Protect Your Time: The ONLY Non-Renewable Resource
Yesterday I read an article about miscommunication that featured an email from Hillary Clinton to someone on her staff that basically said - and I'm obviously paraphrasing:
"Hey, went to the WH today for a meeting and it was canceled. They said they sent a notice. This is the second time this has happened. What's up?"
2 things were obvious to me about how to protect your time, or not:
1) Hillary had massively wasted her time heading to the "WH" for a meeting that didn't exist. Someone hadn't confirmed and took her time for
granted. (To learn how to hire the right "someones" in the first place, check this out.)
2) Hillary was a lot calmer than I would've been in the same situation. #Shocker.
In fact, the same thing has happened to me in the past (well, without the White House part, I guess.) Scenario: I'm supposedly scheduled to tape a podcast and when I call the number provided, nada. I follow up with the person who scheduled it and the response is, "Oops, that time got changed."
Oops?
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOops? Are you freaking, flipping kidding me? I blocked off how much time for something, that, oh, by the way, will now need to be rescheduled and take up MORE time, not just in the taping of the podcast, but in the setting up, etc. and you've got a freaking "OOOOOOPS?"
That "Oops" cost me a lot of money and aggravation and I'm certainly not at the level of Hillary Clinton.
So what's the point and why should you care that Hillary and I are massively inconvenienced on a fairly regular basis?
Because I've got some tips that might help you learn how to protect your time and avoid similar dramas.
- Guard your time with your life. We can always make more money, we can NEVER redeem lost time.
- Triple confirm everything. It takes 30 seconds to send an extra text or email saying, "just making sure we're still on for tomorrow at noon at
your place."
- Double check the time zone! Want to really feel lame? Set an appointment based on your time zone, only to find out your customer is 3 hours ahead. You've got to speak THEIR language, not yours. (To find out more about how to do this, click here.)
- Hire people who value their time like you do. If someone is late, sloppy or just dense, no matter how hard you try, you're never going to convince them to get with it. So hire right in the first place.
- Predetermine the value of your time. What's your hourly rate? Maybe not the rate that you make right this second, but how much do you want to be making? $50/hour? $100? $350?
- Force yourself to assess the real cost of wasting time. Hillary had to drive to the White House, probably got there a bit early to make sure she was on time and settled, probably had blocked 90 minutes for the meeting and then had to consider the time to drive to wherever she was headed. This was easily 3 hours in lost time, right? What's her hourly rate? Last I heard her going rate was $275,000 a speech and that was probably for 60 minutes, plus some meet and greet time built in for the event.
Net/net: If the same amount of time was allotted for the speech as the appointment (likely) and the travel time was the same, that lost time opportunity could've meant $275k gone bye bye.
Buh, bye. $275k is more than a lot of people earn in their lifetimes.
How to protect your time in the future:
It starts with awareness. Where are you wasting spending your time? If you could find even 2 more hours in the week, how many customers could you call/email/meet with/thank?? Thought so.
A lot.
WANT MORE?
If you want help finding those 2 hours or just tweaking a few things in your business, then you need to reserve your seat for my FREE webinar with Angela Proffitt (efficiency wizard who has this super cool color coding system to hire and find the perfect clients!) titled: "7 Pricing & Productivity Mistakes You're Probably Making & How to (Colorfully) Fix Them".
FRICK YES, SAVE MY SPOT!
(even if you can’t make it, register anyway and we’ll send you the recording! This also goes for the scenario if you're reading this blog post after the webinar airs live. You can still sign up and learn!)
What are your biggest tips on how to protect your time?
We would all love to hear them so please share in the comments below!
Good for you!!! Happy TDay! Xx