About time

Paul recently won week-about custody of his children. Suddenly he’s got to limit his hours. He finds himself saying “I don’t have time to do this – someone else is going to have to do it.” His role has changed from doing to checking.Sue has a mystery illness that’s going to take her off work for who knows how long. She tells her foreman he has to step up. She returns but can only do two days a week. A few years later, the business has doubled and she’s still doing two days a week.We’ve seen lots of cases like this: something happens that limits an owner’s hours, and they have to undertake what we’ll call Forced Delegation. And it’s the best thing that ever happened to them. In nearly all the cases of Forced Delegation, the business improved as a consequence because the owner never took those jobs back, and instead focused on highest value activities. The only case I know where it didn’t work was someone who had to take 6 weeks off to look after a sick parent, and when he returned he took back all the jobs that others had performed perfectly well in his absence. He’s still there, working long hours in a business that hasn’t moved at all.Here’s the thing: If you think your time is unlimited, you’ll use all of it. If you treat it as limited, you’ll do only what matters. The irony is, you do more of what matters when you treat time as finite than you do when you think your time is infinite.Join us for "The Power of the 3 Day Week Webinar" hosted by Dr Mike. In this free 30 minute webinar, you'll learn the core principles that help our clients work less and spend more time on what really matters.