Success Factor: Are you leveraging your time, your mind, and your money?

Boy have I wasted countless hours doing things that I didn’t need to do when I should have been doing something else.  I have been a procrastinator; I have taken action without real focus; I have failed to plan my days ahead; and I allowed email and the telephone to run my life. Sound familiar or should I say more? OK, here’s more.  I have a hard time saying no; I allow interruptions when I am working; I am constantly putting out fires in my personal life and in my career.

Story. Do you remember the story about the big fish in the little pond? If you haven’t, contact me and I’ll send it to you. This story is about the desperate Trout in the swift stream.  This is the story of a young Rainbow Trout who is learning his lessons of living in the cold waters of the Northwest.  Life is fast because of the current, the competition, and those tempting shiny objects.

Our young trout has so much to learn and he gets lots of advice from two sources – a wise old uncle and all of the fast swimmers he’s competing against for food.  He spends most of his time with the fast crowd…chasing shiny objects. You know what they are. It’s those crazy lures the fishermen keep dangling in front of our little friend. The lures may change color, shape, and even smell, but they always have the same result – fewer and fewer Trout in the stream.

When we don’t use discretion, then every time a new idea comes along, we jump and chase after it. Too many of us are following the followers and not the leaders. We tend to ignore the advice of the wise ones.  Wise doesn’t always necessarily mean the old ones, but it does mean the productive ones – the ones who are surviving and thriving.

I could write a dissertation on this subject, but today we will keep it focused on simple but fundamental and critical issues.

• Are you leveraging your time so that it is the best use of your time?
• Are you leveraging your incredible mind to be innovative?
• Are you leveraging your money so that you are investing it wisely?

Your Time. Here are some questions to ask yourself before you decide to take action:

1. Is this the highest and best use of my time for my career?
2. Does this action have a high dollar value for my career?
3. Does this action have a high lifetime value for me, my family, and my friends?

Your Mind. Your mind was created more for processing than for storage. Yes, you can train your mind to memorize whole libraries of information, but the value of your mind lies in how you evaluate information and arrive at solutions. There are countless strategies for finding solutions but my purpose here is to give you only one.

Mind Storming. When you are searching for courses of action or for solutions or creative ideas to do something, I have found this to be a very productive exercise.  When your mind is calm and relatively noise free, write a question which describes the type of solution you are searching for. Include as much detail in your question as possible.  A personal example may be – What are the ways I can spend three more days of quality time with my spouse or family?  A business example might be – What are the ways I can increase my prospects by 100% in the next ninety days without spending more dollars on marketing?

Then, you must write twenty ideas or solutions. Your next step is to begin writing the ideas and solutions that rise to your conscious mind. The first four or five will come easily, the next four or five will be more difficult, and the last few before reaching twenty will cause you to stretch your mind and to really be creative.  Every time I have done this, It has worked so well that I come up with so many ideas that I can hardly keep up with implementing them.

Your Money. The most fundamental concepts about leveraging your money are the ideas of saving and being thrifty.  Did you know that the best savers are the Japanese? On average, they save 20% of their income. Imagine what you could do with that 20% at the end of the year. Establish a separate savings account for the holidays or other special days.  If you have a mortgage or a car payment, pay an extra $100 toward the principle and you will pay them off sooner and pay less interest.  Shop online first before you drive to the department stores. You may find a better deal online and save the money on gas and your travel time.

Your Call to Action. Save this article and begin applying any one of these recommendations and let me know of your results.

Make it a great day and stay connected.

Leo Llonch