Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/675319
1. Eliminate In this stage, we are encouraged to take an inventory of all the things we do, and give ourselves permission to stop doing certain unproductive things or to ignore them until they are no longer important. One of the other things Vaden mentioned that really hit home for me, was giving myself permission to say, "No," when someone asks me to do something that is really not important for me to be doing or something that I really don't want to do. I have had trouble saying, "No," when asked to work on projects for people, but an EO friend of mine told me to say, "Sorry, I just don't have the bandwidth for that right now." In line with Vaden's idea, my friend also thinks we don't need to explain why we say, "No." So give yourself permission to ignore, say, "No," and eliminate things that are eating up your valuable time. BY CHERYL BIRON W e've all wished that there were more hours in a day to get things done. With 2016 now well under way, wouldn't it be great to actually have more time to get done what we want to get done, particularly the leovers from 2015? Today I will share with you an insight I learned during an EO (Entrepreneurs' Organization) event where Rory Vaden, author of Procrastinate on Purpose taught us a way to actually multiply our time. If you are a student of time management, you will remember the four quadrants proposed by Stephen Covey, author of "7 Habits of Highly Effective People:" Important/Urgent, Important/ Not Urgent, Not Important/Urgent, and Not Important/Not Urgent. e main idea being to identify and prioritize what is important and not get distracted by urgent yet not important tasks. Well, Vaden adds a third dimension, that of significance, i.e. how long will it matter? According to Vaden, the traditional methods of prioritizing just enable us to more efficiently use the existing blocks of time. However, when making the significance calculation, Vaden states that we can realize that there are things we can do today that will actually make us more productive in the future. His big idea actually enables us to multiply our time. Vaden's framework involves what he calls the Focus Funnel, where he shows us we can actually give ourselves emotional permission to procrastinate on purpose. Here's an overview of how it works: 2. Automate In this stage, we are encouraged to give ourselves permission to invest some time and money now to save ourselves time in the future. Oentimes people say they can't afford to invest in automation, but Vaden's view is that your time is valuable, because any time we spend doing one thing is time we don't have to do another. So in theory, anything that wastes our time, also wastes our money. At One Horn, automation has been a great time multiplier for me. Luckily I have my husband/business partner, Louis, who kept automating the time-consuming but necessary tasks to make our back office so efficient we have the capacity to grow our business tenfold without needing to add office staff. is is how I got rid of so many menial tasks to free myself up for growing our business. rough our other company, we are offering our back office services to carriers to help them multiply their time by charging a per invoice fee to do their billing. I do recommend delving more into the idea of automation by reading his book, but anything you can automate can certainly multiply your time. Finally, a way to actually create more time Vo l . 1 0 , N o . 3 TRUCKSTOP.COM 17