Placing Your Bets on Time
“I have something to tell you, but please keep it between you and me.” This is how a friend started our conversation the other day, pulling me to the edge of my seat. “I’m absolutely crushing my sales quota, but only working 15-20 hours per week.”
My friend, we’ll call him Paul, had just finished his 5th straight quota busting quarter. He wanted to keep it secret because while he felt positively giddy that he cracked the code in his job, he also felt a sense of guilt that he really wasn’t working very much. This of course grabbed my attention to understand what Paul was doing to achieve such significant results with so little effort.
As we continued sipping coffee on this beautiful late summer morning, Paul was showing a sense of confidence I hadn’t seen in him before. He had swagger. Without a hint of arrogance, he carried himself and communicated with friendly conviction. He was feeling sure about himself, and for good reason.
Placing Bets
Paul’s mindset shifted about a year ago, when he was plodding along in his sales role, barely meeting his annual goals and regularly complaining about his team, his micromanaging boss and his unexciting industry. He was tired of working so much and seeing such little results - especially when many of his peers were experiencing consistent success but knew his abilities were at least as good as theirs.
“I just stopped wasting my time on stuff that doesn’t matter,” Paul shared. “If my instincts tell me that a client isn’t serious about working with me on a project, I tell them what I’m observing, and unless I hear a strong tangible reason that they want to work with me then I’ll just move on. I get invited to a ridiculous number of pointless internal meetings, and I used to attend all of them to make sure I was present. Now I just skip most of them or join for 10 minutes and drop.”
As Paul walked me through some examples, what he was sharing was quite simple - he looked at his time like chips on a poker table. He made a choice to trust his experience and instincts on where to place his bets (a.k.a., his time). Sometimes he was right, and sometimes he was wrong. But more often than not - he was right, and he was winning. And even though he was spending less time, it was squarely focused on what mattered most.
It’s very easy to get ourselves in a mindset of getting things done, and trying to do as much as possible in an attempt to be thorough. Sometimes we put in a lot of time and effort just because we think that’s what we’re supposed to do. This is what made Paul feel a little guilty about his limited schedule. The challenge is that this maximum work hours approach often comes at the expense of our mental capacity, and too much of our time is spent on things that don’t really move the needle.
Place Your Time Bets with Confidence
As you think about how you spend your time, I encourage you to be more deliberate about where you choose to deploy that time, and more stingy about your time when pulled into things that don’t matter. Just because you're invited to a meeting, doesn’t mean you have to attend. Just because someone asks you to do something, doesn’t mean you have to say yes. Just because there’s a sales opportunity, it doesn’t mean you have to pursue it. Yes, you should still respond to the client and understand it, but it’s okay to tell a client that the project isn’t a fit and exit with grace.
As you start to rethink where you place your bets on time, consider the following…
Where do I spend time that I really don’t think it’s making a difference or depletes my energy? Stop.
What activities give me the most energy and you wish I could do more? Do that more.
What things do I know I should be doing and just haven’t been? Get started, even in a small way.
Trust your instincts and start shifting more of your time to things that really matter, or that you believe will make the most impact. You may surprise yourself with how much you can accomplish, and be more like Paul to generate more results in less time.