Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: If you want more time, money, freedom, and have a business that's not reliant on you, then you're in the right place. Each week, Mark Creedon, along with some of the very best business minds in the world, will take you through simple, practical steps you can take to create the business you always wanted. From his own practical experience, Mark will show you how to work less, make more, and get the business you always wanted, the one that you deserve.
Now, here's your host, one of Australia's most sought after business coaches, Mark Creedney.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Hi. Welcome to the latest edition of the Mastermind for Business podcast. I'm Mark Creedney, your host. I want to share with you in today's episode a different way of looking at time management. Now, just before you switch off thinking, I've heard all this before, you haven't. It's something new. So if you are struggling with just too much to do in any given day, then that's what we're going to do today. I'm going to give you a whole new way to look at the concept of time and spending your time doing the things that are really of most benefit to you. That's what we're going to look at in today's episode.
So let's look at the question of time before we get underway. Let's say good day to Nick again.
[00:01:45] Speaker C: Good morning.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Good morning, Nick, there's a couple of different ways, and I've been teaching time management. I've been learning time management for a long period of time, and I've still got a long way to go in learning how to manage my time. But I think if we go back to the Stephen Covey, there's the matrix of urgent and not important and not important. And not urgent and urgent and important. I always found that Matrix really useful, but really quite so. One of the things that I've always taught as a coach is that time is about priorities, right? It's not about how much time you have, it's what you do with the time.
And then I was listening to this webinar with Dan Martel, Alex Hormozi, Taki Morin, and there was some really good stuff there. I really loved it because what it talked about, and in particular, Dan Martel talks about this in his book buy back your time, because what it talks about is the concept of time as energy.
So in other words, what you do where you spend your time rather than it being a priority. In other words, is this the highest and best use of my time, which is how I view time now? And I try to work in my highest and best use, or what we call your genius, time.
This talks about four time zones and seeing time as energy. So let's talk about the four time zones first, and then we're going to talk about time as energy. So what Dan Martel says is that there's basically four time zones, right? The first is the zone of incompetence. That's the stuff that you just shouldn't be doing because you're shit.
You. And I'll lay this challenge down to you, Nick.
I guarantee you, if you were to do an audit of your time across a week, you probably find that there is stuff that you are doing that you shouldn't be because you're shit at it.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: Oh, definitely.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: And so the thing you have to ask yourself is, what's the impact of you doing that? And we'll come to that a little bit later in today's show. So, number one, zone of incompetence. Number two is zone of competence. And that is stuff. Yeah, I'm actually okay at this. There's probably people who are bucket loads better at me. Yeah, they're the easy zones to understand because you go, yeah, I'm rubbish at this. Yeah, I'm okay at that. But there's somebody else who can do it better than me.
Zone number three is the zone of excellence, and that's the danger zone, because the zone of excellence is the zone of tasks that you do that you're really, really good at. But you absolutely hate things that you keep putting off. Right? Right. Well, you do keep putting them off. So there's two dangers with the zone of excellence. One is you're good at it, so you know you can do it, but you hate doing it, so you don't.
But the other thing is people around you will want you to stay in that zone of excellence because you're good at it, Nick. You should keep doing that. You're really, really good at that. Yeah, I know I'm really good at it, but I hate it.
It makes me unhappy to do it.
And so the zone of excellence is what you want to try and get out of. And where you want to be is in the zone of genius, which is what we talk about in mastermind all the time, is being in your genius. Right. It's the area where time doesn't matter.
What do you love doing in your business?
[00:05:19] Speaker C: I guess I love doing video. I love actually physically creating shots and directing shots.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Right. So creating and directing, that's your zone of genius? You could do that all day. And then somebody go, oh, shit, Nick, it's 06:00 at night.
[00:05:33] Speaker C: You are.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: If the sun hadn't gone down, you wouldn't know yet. Editing something you're good at but you hate is your zone of excellence.
Invoicing is probably your zone of competence. You can do it, but somebody else could do it a bucket load better. And maybe following up accounts is your zone of incompetence, because you're rubbish at it.
And we all have that, right? Everybody has that within their business.
Everybody operates within those four zones. And so the whole purpose of this episode is to say to the listeners, what we want you to do is try and get to the point where you're spending 70% of your time in your zone of genius.
If we can get you there, then it is happy days. We can do that happy dance.
How do we get there? It's by doing two things. The first thing is to conduct an audit of your time. And I actually did this, Nick. So I sat down for a week, and I made a note of everything I did. So each day I kept. I just did it on pen and paper. And I kept a note of everything I did. And then at the end of the five days, I pulled all those bits of paper out, and I had a good look at what it is that I was doing. And I realized that I was spending 40, 50% of my time in my zone of incompetence or excellence. Interestingly, for me, I was spending less time in my zone of excellence and probably more time in my zone of incompetence and competence.
Right? And not spending enough time in my zone of genius. And you know what was happening is I was getting depressed.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: I was getting disillusioned.
Why am I doing this shit? I mean, I hate it.
Why am I doing it?
[00:07:25] Speaker C: No motivation for it, right?
[00:07:26] Speaker B: So I found that I was spending a bucket load of time in zone of competence and zone of incompetence. And not enough time in my zone of genius and feeling depressed, lacking impetus, lacking momentum, lacking motivation.
And you know what, Nick? It's actually really hard to motivate people around you when you lacking in.
It's funny. How do you give something that you actually don't have anything else, right? So it's like trying to give water out of a bucket that's empty.
It's impossible to do. So the concept is to. And for those you're listening now, if you're going for a run or a jog or at the gym or you're driving your car, don't do it right now, but over the next week, just keep a little audit, keep a track of all of the things that you do. And at the end of the week, I want you to do two things. The first thing is to look at which of those zones have you spent most of your time in. So you can just add up. And you could put I for incompetence, C for competence, E for excellence, G for genius, next to each of those tasks that you've done, and then add up each of those headings, and you might just be surprised to see what percentage of your time you're spending in the wrong zone.
The next thing is to then look at each of those things that are in the wrong zone and ask yourself this, are those things a drain on my energy or a gain to my energy?
So there's nothing worse than spending the majority of your day doing stuff that brings you down?
[00:09:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Right. That drains your energy. If you're doing things that are gaining your energy, then all those things we said before, you get more motivated, more impetus, more momentum, you motivate others, all those things happen as a direct result.
So going through the process of looking at, okay, I've got this list of things that I've done, I've broken up into the zones. And then the second stage is to look at, well, hang on, what's draining me, what's gaining me, if you want to know what to get rid of first, because if I said to you, you've got things that you're working on that are incompetence or competence or whatever, and you might say, well, that's fine, but what do I get rid of first?
How do I determine that?
[00:09:39] Speaker C: Yeah, what do I prioritize?
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Right. So I think it's the gains and drains thing. What you want to do is work out what are the things that are draining you the most and get rid of them.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: Like, do them first.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Well, either do them first or give them to somebody else.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: Delegate them.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Preferably giving them to somebody else. So it's a good question you ask, mate, because it's a nice segue into, I think the next stage is to think in terms of who, not how am I going to get through this pile of shit that I hate doing? No, that's not the right question. The question is who is going to work through this pile of shit that I hate doing?
And, you know, there's always someone.
[00:10:21] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. And it doesn't always have to be you, right?
[00:10:25] Speaker B: No, there's always someone. So I remember when I studied psychology. There was another student I met there, and she hated the counseling psychology side of things, and I hated stats.
So we would work together. I would really help her through the counseling component, and she really helped me through the stats component. She loved stats. Please. Statistics. What's there to love about it? But she loved it.
I loved the counseling concept, and she hated it. So there's always a yin and yang. There's always somebody who's good at you, good at editing, but you don't like it. But there's always people out there that can do editing for you, and it's about getting your business to that point where you can let go of those things.
[00:11:16] Speaker C: Yeah, sure.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: And you might sit there and go, yeah, that's fine. But my business isn't mature enough at this stage for me to let go of all of that. Maybe it's not. Maybe you can let go of 10% of it.
[00:11:28] Speaker C: Yeah. Take some of that burden off.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:30] Speaker C: Not the whole burden, but some of it. Because wouldn't it feel easier to tackle, say, half of that list?
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: The entire list. That might look so big. Speaking from my own experience, I don't know what everyone else is like, but if I've got a huge pile of things to do and I know it's something that I don't necessarily enjoy doing, it takes me so much longer. So much longer. I try my best to get through it, but you procrastinate more.
You end up doing a million things at once when you should really just be focusing on the one thing, but because you're not enjoying yourself, it's hard to. The motivation to get through that pile is missing, and it makes it a lot harder. So if you were able to lessen that pile, delegate just even a fraction of that pile, it would make it a lot easier.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Right. Because, you know what happens is when you get this big almost seems like an insurmountable pile of things that you don't really want to do. You walk to the Times.
I remember my mate Martin. I remember years ago having a chat with Martin. It was a Friday. Always remember. So Martin and I play a bit of music together. I mean, we haven't for a very long time now, but we used to play a bit of music together, and it was a Friday. And I decided to take Friday afternoon off, and I rang him, and I said, do you want to come over and we'll play some music? He went, oh, no, I've got.
He ratled off about 25 things he needed to do in his business. And they were all things, by the way, that I knew that he hated doing. So he was probably good at them. So they probably fell into his zone of excellence. They certainly were not in his zone of genius.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: But he's left them till Friday, right?
[00:13:07] Speaker B: He's left until Friday. Yeah, that's exactly right. So then Friday afternoon, I rang him and I said, oh, how did you go? Because I thought, well, maybe we can get together tomorrow morning or Friday night, play some music. How did you go with all those things? He went, Nah, mate, it was just too much. I just watched Netflix because it's just too much.
The number of times. It's one of the reasons, Nick, I hate working from home, because if I've got stuff that I don't really want to do, and I'm working from home, I'll just eat all day.
[00:13:40] Speaker C: Yes, it's very hard. My big thing is there's stuff that I'm not really enjoying that I procrastinate. I'll go on my phone and I'll catch myself out and be like, I've just spent half an hour on my phone. And I just could have spent that half an hour doing this instead.
And I think time, you can never get enough of it, right?
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Well, actually, do you know what? You're right. But it's not just that you can't get enough of it, is you can't get it back.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: No.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Right? So you can lose friendships and make new ones. You can lose money and make more.
[00:14:13] Speaker C: Not with time, though.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: You cannot get time back. And this is why, if there's one thing that anybody listening to this podcast now, if there's one thing I'd love them to walk away with, it's that understanding of time. And why would you spend your life doing things that drain you, that drain you of energy? Imagine having a job you hated. Yeah.
[00:14:35] Speaker C: And I think it works in your personal life too, right?
I think I've been guilty of in the past maybe spending time with someone just due to the fact that we've had a long connection, or I've known them for a long time or something like that, but they're draining. They drain your time.
Like I said, there's not enough hours in the day, right? How it feels sometimes.
So if there's people that are taking up your time, it's so precious, it's so valuable. And until you really value your time, then other people won't either.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Oh, no, they won't.
[00:15:13] Speaker C: So they'll take advantage of it. They'll use it. And I think we've spoken about this before, but it works both in business and personal life. You have to set those boundaries.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: You do.
[00:15:24] Speaker C: And you have to value your time for you to be able to say, oh, look, I've got this big pile of stuff I need to do.
If I was able to delegate a quarter of that pile, that time that it would have taken me to complete that quarter, I can now spend in something that I either enjoy doing something that I've been putting off, it opens up that space. But until you truly do value your time and treat it as the commodity that it is, then no one else is going to value it, and you're not going to achieve those results.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: No, 100% correct on both counts. And the thing is, you've made a really good point. As we were saying before, you don't have to get rid of 100% of the things in those sort of non productive zones. Just get rid of 10%, 20%, 30%. But if you are getting rid of 20% of the things that drain you, you then have to make sure you fill that 20% up with things that gain energy for you. Yes. So what's really important then we then move back to what you do with that time. Because if you free yourself up and all you do is fill it up with more energy draining activity, then you just defeated the whole purpose of the exercise. Makes sense. So really simple approach, right? Work out, do an audit. Do an audit for a week. See what it is that you're doing. Where are you operating in those zones? And then more importantly, think about, am I working in areas that are a gain or a drain of my energy?
And then move to the who, not how, what are the things that I can get off my plate? Even if it's only part, as you say, if it's 10% or 20% or whatever it might be, get some things off your plate that are actually going to give you some time back that you can spend on things that give you a gain in your energy, not a drain, because there's nothing worse. I often think, Nick, if you walk through probably any city, any city in the world, and you watch people catching the train or the bus or the tram or whatever it might be, into jobs, and often they just look for lawn as they're walking to a job that they hate doing, they just look like this city of lost souls.
[00:17:42] Speaker C: Yes, I think I've been there.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we've all been there. I remember working at a place once, and you had to sort of walk up the stairs to get into the office. And I remember standing at the bottom of the stairs and looking up at the stairs, and it was probably, I don't know, ten or twelve stairs. It could have been 100, because I just stood at the bottom of the stairs and went, this is rubbish. This makes me miserable. Why am I climbing these stairs? And it was the last time I ever climbed those stairs.
It was time to move on.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: Because it was draining my energy. Yeah.
[00:18:17] Speaker C: And I think it goes back to just learning to devalue and understand that your time is worth something.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: It is valuable, massively.
[00:18:29] Speaker C: Something that my partner, actually, she's really great at valuing her time. Dee's fantastic at valuing her time and always has been. She used to be a coordinator in an office for, I guess, a national company. And one of the things that she used to always do that makes me laugh is people would come up to her, stand at her desk and come and say, hey, Dee, can I borrow a moment of your time? Or, hey, Dee, can I just ask you a question? Ask you a quick question? And she'd say things like, well, you just did.
And she was the real believer of that. Her time was extremely precious to her and valuable, and she had boundaries set up and didn't let anyone step over those boundaries, didn't let anyone take up her time. That wasn't necessary. And if you can get to that point, I mean, probably not as cutthroat as she was, to be honest, because she's pretty cutthroat with it.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: Brutal.
[00:19:22] Speaker C: But if you can, then it's a long way to being able to get everything done, because the list only gets bigger, doesn't it?
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. But the thing about that with Dee is that she valued her time. And I often say one of the biggest insults that people can pay or give you or perpetrate upon you is to say, can I just steal 15 minutes of your time?
[00:19:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: No, you can't, because time is money, and time is precious, and you just don't get it back. You don't get it back.
If you're listening to this now, what I want you to do is think about how can you audit your time to work out how you can spend more time in your genius. Your aim should be 70%.
And along the same lines of that is you want to be spending 70% of your time doing things that actually give you energy. There's nothing better. Every Friday, Nick, when I run the Friday focus sessions for our mastermind clients, I'm just pumped. I get off it. I'm excited even if I've had like a shitty morning or now I've got rubbish things to do, I just feel so much more excited about because I'm working on something that actually really gains energy for me.
[00:20:29] Speaker C: And you've achieved.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And I just feel better about it. 100% simple exercise, guys.
[00:20:35] Speaker C: And I think also making time, making the time for things that you need to stay consistent at or that you need to get done, or that I think it's really important to say, look, yes, I'm right in the middle of this. To give you an example. I make sure that I exercise. I like to exercise. There's a time in my day where I go, you know what? Even if I'm right in the middle of something, yes, I cut it off right there. And I go, no, it's time to stop. I could keep going, yeah, sure, I could spend the next five, 6 hours doing this, but I'm committed to myself, to making sure that I spend that time on myself, so that then tomorrow I can come in and do the same thing again.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: And because you're doing something then that gives you a gain in your energy, that energizes you, filling back up the tank, right? 100% sharpening the saw, all those analogies.
It's about commitment and consistency. And what you've just said is really important, because one of the things we say in time management all the time is that you've got to preload those things into your calendar. Yes. And what gets calendared gets actioned.
100% cool. Good stuff. If you are in a small business or professional practice, and you've loved what you've heard today, or if you haven't loved it and you've just liked it, then I'm okay with that. Subscribe to the podcast because it makes it so much easier for other people to find us. Please. If you know someone and you think, wow, they just do too much time in their zone of excellence, or their zone of incompetence, or in things that drain them, share the podcast with them. And if you'd really like to know about how we can help you do exactly what we've spoken about today, because this is the sort of thing we do with our mastermind members all the time. It is metropolemastermind.com au. Until we speak next time, please make sure you spend time with those who matter most. Thanks, Nick. Thanks guys.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on the Mastermind for Business podcast. If you're ready to have a business that you're not a slave to, check out metropolemastermind.com au or have a chat with Mark and the team at all the W's. See what's possible today.
