Super U Podcast | Time Management | The Focus Project #8

This audible clip from Erik Qualman’s #1 Bestselling book The Focus Project covers how taking small steps towards your goals now can lead to larger leaps in the future.

5x #1 Bestselling Author and Motivational Speaker Erik Qualman has performed in over 55 countries and reached over 50 million people this past decade. He was voted the 2nd Most Likable Author in the World behind Harry Potter’s J.K. Rowling.

Need a sneak peek? Below are the main takeaways from the episode.

Time Management | The Focus Project #8

Episode Preview:

“My chief of staff and I began meeting daily at 9:35am. The first order of business was reviewing my schedule for the day, week, and month. While monotonous it was necessary to be forward-looking and forward protecting. At first, my schedule is completely full. There weren’t even realistic breaks to eat lunch or go to the bathroom between meetings. We then decided to fence off specific times for certain activities. So for example, 10 to 1030 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were for coffee meetings. Most calls would be scheduled during my drive time 12:45 to 1:45 was blocked for lunch meetings. Most important was fencing off big, untouchable patches of time on the calendar, intentional fencing off time. One helped maintain my sanity and health and to allow me time for deeper thinking and writing.

Previously, I have has really run my schedule, I’d get a pocket of 15 minutes here 12 minutes there. There was sporadic, inconsistent and stress-inducing. I was writing my books sometimes in the back of Ubers because it was my only downtime as I ran from place to place. We now have a method we named cowboys scheduling a calendar with wide-open spaces and fences. I still can’t ride a horse to save my life. But I can now schedule like Annie Oakley or John Wayne. I just don’t smoke six packs of cigarettes a day as Wayne did. This week. Give it a try. Try scheduling like a cowgirl or cowboy by fencing off specific times for certain activities, and leaving wide open spaces for creativity, relaxation and deep thinking. Killing time vampires. Cowboys scheduling also means that when a coffee meeting is scheduled for 30 minutes, we keep it to 30 minutes. Previously, these coffee means could easily spill no pun intended into 60 to 90-minute affairs. Now I’m being more intentional with my time. For example, if the line for coffee is 15 minutes long, I’ll stand in line talking with the person I’m meeting with while they wait for their coffee. We then sit down and chat for the remaining 15 minutes. This is a vast improvement over patiently waiting at the table then feeling bad that there wasn’t much time to chat. Before you know it. The meeting will have stretched to over an hour. These unexpected 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there began to add up and vampire our time sucker time dry. They suck the life out of us. Guess what? By being rigid with the time scheduled, we get to the heart of the conversation faster. Most people that we meet up with are also over-scheduled. So it’s a win-win-win, we collectively kill time vampires.”

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The Super U Podcast is hosted by #1 bestselling author and Motivational Speaker Erik Qualman.