Mark Bernardtalk of your business. You must t ake the stance that, “If you don’t do
business with me, your business will not succeed” or “If you don’t buy
my product or service, I know your company and your people will not
be as successful.” That’s how much passion and commitment you have
to have toward your own product or service. Attitude drives your ability
and esteem fuels your talent.WRIGHT^
In your list of ten, you mentioned time management, but how do
you manage your time? That’s one of the problems almost everyone
talks to me about. What does time management mean to you?
BERNARD
Time management is really a fallacy. You cannot manage time. You
cannot give me eight hours, and I can’t give you nine hours back. The
person who created the term “time management” is a great marketer.
It’s a great marketing strategy.
I’d like to reframe time management as activity management and
rename it as a destination. What is your destination? How many
activities can you put into a day? You cannot manage time, but you can
manage the activities within that allotment of time. How do you do
that? You create daily and weekly destinations. There are only 1,760
business hours per year—220 days times 8 hours. That is really a ll you
have to be in front of a decision-maker. These are your money activity
hours.
Anoth er thing I do for activity management is create power blocks
or time blocks. I took this from s chool. My wife is a teacher and we
have all been through the school system. What are the time limits of a
typical session of a school period? It’s about 45 minutes per course, p er
session. It is because we can only handle 45 or 50 minutes before we
start mentally drifting. So I took this concept into my business. Create
45-minute to 50-minute power blocks to sit down and get to work. The
last 10 to 15 minutes of each hour is yours to enjoy the win—doing
what you needed to do without interruption. I’ve known people to lie
on the floor, go outside, look out the window, just enjoy and bring