Acquire 30 Hours More a Week for Your Key Activities!

Good morning, Live Better than a Billionaire-a-Holics!

Are you feeling motivated this morning? I hope so!

I've decided to update and improve the most popular blog entry I've recorded to date. Here it is:

One of my fun activities last month was teaching a class on small businesses for those who wanted to start their own. It was a great joy to meet with these budding entrepreneurs and to hear about their dreams and plans.

To encourage them, I talked about my business of providing dream concierge services. Last night one student told me that he has been a concierge for eight years at one of Boston's finest hotels and offered to share his experiences.

First, I asked him the question that almost everyone does: "What's the most unusual request you've ever had?" Nothing really stood out.

Then I asked him what he liked about the job. It turns out that it's a high pressure job, and he doesn't enjoy the work very much. With the trends in downsizing in the hospitality industry, he finds himself doing the work that 2 or 3 people did when he started . . . and with lots of pressure from impatient guests.

When a guest wants something, they invariably say, "Just do it!" And they don't want to hear about the details. The hotel, naturally, is reluctant to order $1,000 worth of tickets for a concert unless the guest knows this in advance and has authorized the expenditure in writing. So the frustrated concierge spends more time getting authorizations than actually providing services. And the guests don't like it either.

Next, I asked him what surprised him the most. He found that one easy to answer. Guests are willing to routinely pay $40 to have something done for them that they could do for themselves for $3. Obviously, these people really dislike these tasks!

Since I heard these fascinating comments, I've been thinking about what they mean. First, a lot of people want it fast and they want it easy. Second, people don't want to change in order to get what they want. Third, people assume that the world will bend to their will if they simply throw money at the problem.

As a non-billionaire, the lessons are different. The billionaire probably feels desperate to grasp more time and control over his or her life. Much of that time sensitivity probably relates to all of the time demands created by wealth such as managing the money or business, minimizing taxes, keeping people from stealing, listening to those who want the money for donations and other purposes and dealing with invitations from people who want to connect to the wealth. When does the fun begin?

The non-billionaire, by contrast, has the choice of how much time to spend on all of those and other activities unless she or he decides to maximize their income. The person who wants to live better than a billionaire can opt instead to maximize their life by spending time on what brings them joy and their dreams to life.

I suddenly realized that like I do for my business students, I need to help people free up time for more delightful activities if they are going to be able to embrace the live-better-than-a-billionaire life style.

Here's a good place to start. By the way, if you want to know more about this approach, read Alan Lakein's book, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life.

Set your most important goals down. Your most important one is A1. Your next most important one is A2. And so forth.

Then determine what activities you need to do to achieve each of those goals. For instance, if your A1 goal is to earn a college degree on a part-time basis, related activities would be attending classes, preparing assignments and reviewing for tests. The most important activity would then be A1, the next most important activity would be A2 and so forth.

B goals would have B activities and unimportant goals for now would be C goals with C activities.

Write down how you spend every moment, 24 hours a day for 7 days a week for two weeks.

Then analyze how you spent your time. How much was on anything less than A1 activities? How much was on C activities? How can you shift time from B and C activities to A1 activities?

How much time did you spend doing things that you don't like to do? How could you get rid of those activities?

How much time did you spend doing things that aren't important? Many people find that they are devoting over 10 hours a week to watching reruns on television that they don't really care about.

What would you rather be doing with both sets of time?

How can you get more benefit from time you have to spend now, such as commuting to and from work? Can you listen to self-improving CDs related to your dreams in your car that you borrow from the library?

When can you have uninterrupted time to work on your dreams? For many Moms, this is late at night. For many Dads, this is early in the morning. But pick the times that you have available and use them for your high priority purposes in creating your dreams.

Also look at how you could use one activity to serve more than one goal. For example, could the college studies be used to help plan a new business, which is an A2 goal?

Then, take time to plan every day. Most people find that it helps to think about this just before going to sleep at night and just after awakening in the morning.

In addition, spend time building skills. Learn to read faster and with more comprehension. Start with How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. Learn to write better. Start with The Classic Guide to Better Writing by Rudolf Flesch. Develop better habits for achieving success. To do so, start with The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. Learn how to create 2,000 percent solutions (geting the same amount done with 1/20 the effort, time and resources or 20 times the results with the same or less effort, time and resources). Start with The 2,000 Percent Solution by Carol Coles, Robert Metz and me and go on to the soon-to-be published The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook..

Be sure to spend some time reading this blog daily. It will help you to focus on choices you didn't know you had. As you focus on those choices, soon you'll be able to -- well, Just Do It!

Here's another tip: Get a partner for your dream activities. Ideally this will be your spouse or significant other . . . but it may also be a friend, sibling, parent or a cousin. If two of you work on developing a dream, you'll make much faster progress. Each of you can focus on what you like to do best . . . being a dream concierge for one another. A great way to begin is to e-mail this blog to those you want to partner with and suggest that you work together on a dream that you share.

Donald W. Mitchell, Your Dream Concierge

Copyright 2005 Donald W. Mitchell