Kano approached death, he called his students around him and asked
to be buried in his white belt. The symbolism wasn’t lost. The
highest-ranking martial artist of his discipline embraced the emblem
of the beginner for his life and beyond, because to him the journey of
the successful lifelong learner was never over. Time blocking is
essential to mastery, and mastery is essential to time blocking. They
go hand in hand—when you do one, you do the other.
2. MOVE FROM “E” TO “P”
When coaching top performers, I often ask, “Are you doing this to
simply do the best you can do, or are you doing this to do it the best it
can be done?” Although it’s not meant to be a trick question, it trips
people up anyway. Many realize that although they are giving their
best effort, they aren’t doing the best that could be done, because they
aren’t willing to change what they are doing. The path of mastering
something is the combination of not only doing the best you can do at
it, but also doing it the best it can be done. Continually improving
how you do something is critical to getting the most from time
blocking.
It’s called moving from “E” to “P.”
When we roll out of bed in the morning and start tackling the
day, we do so in one of two ways: Entrepreneurial (“E”) or Purposeful
(“P”). Entrepreneurial is our natural approach. It’s seeing something
we want to do or that needs to be done and racing off to do it with
enthusiasm, energy, and our natural abilities. No matter the task, all
natural ability has a ceiling of achievement, a level of productivity
and success that eventually tops out. Although this varies from person
to person and task to task, everybody in life has a natural ceiling for
everything. Give some people a hammer and they’re an instant
carpenter. Give one to me and I’m all thumbs. In other words, some
people can naturally use a hammer extremely well with minimal
instruction or practice, but there are others, like me, who hit their