It’s an easy question, right? Money, good employees, trust–all good answers, but I think everyone knows your most valuable resource is time. It’s the one truly non-renewable resource. Once your day is gone, you can’t get it back.
Clearly, there are good uses of your time, and bad uses of time.
Let’s just list a few of each, OK?
Good uses of time:
- Creating your best product or service
- Delivering your product or service to your customers
- Ensuring the future of your business by nurturing prospects, or building your vision
- Time spent with family and friends
- Leisure time and vacation time
- Time spent on your “Why” – Why are you here?
Bad uses of time
- Mindless social media browsing
- Time spent engaging negative people
- Getting buried in the details
- Unproductive work
So, how do you move out of bad uses of time and into good uses of time?
I think if you are clear on your Why, and clear on your hopes, dreams and aspirations, you get to move toward good use of time.
Let me give an example. I used to do contract work for a guy who owned a company of 20 people. Every evening after everyone went home, Matt would go around and empty trash cans, vacuum the carpets and sweep the floors. I think in his mind, Matt was being a good steward of his company and was willing to serve by doing the cleaning.
At the same time I was doing contract work for an Orthodontic office of about the same size. At the end of his day, the orthodontist, David, spent time working on leadership courses, he went to leadership seminars, he spent extra time training and working with his staff, and really worked on himself and on living his dream. David’s floors got clean too, but it was done by a high school student that he hired.
Both Matt and David went home about the same time, but I think David knew better the value of his time. He spent his time on things that really improved himself and his company, and he outsourced the work he know he didn’t need to be doing.
So, all that to say that living your Why, and being clear on your values leads you in the direction of valuing your time.
The more you live your Why, the more it becomes clear what you should be spending time on, and what needs to get handed over to someone else.