How do you spell love?

The answer is T-I-M-E. That’s how your children and all the other important people in your life spell it. They believe the amount of time you spend with them is equal to how much you love them.

Your understanding and affection for others grows when you spend time with them. When you are too busy to spend time with kids, spouses or significant others, you lose touch with their lives. In the case of our kids, they go off into their own personal world of school, friends and other activities.

Time is irreplaceable, especially in relationships, be they business or personal. The most successful among us create uninterrupted blocks of time they can spend with the important people in their lives.

Make a decision now to redirect and reallocate your time away from low-value tasks, like traveling to meetings, and toward high-value activities.

Plan to spend more time face-to-face with the most important people in your life. Free up your personal time by taking advantage of technology like online meetings. Meeting online saves that most precious of commodities, time.

The people you love will thank you for it.

Making Nice

Want to know what really works to influence people? Making nice. That’s it in a nutshell. Instead of meeting with your clients to do the talk and sell hustle, why not just take them out to breakfast or lunch — and leave the business presentation back at the office. Getting to know your prospective client, building trust and a friendly relationship is a smart way to do business.

I can hear you now — who has time for that these days? If you are going to be successful you must make the time to get to know your prospects and clients as friends and partners. Be like a farmer sowing seeds.

When you leave your breakfast or lunch meeting ask if you may contact your client in the future. If he or she agrees, great. Make that business meeting online, rather than face to face, and you’ll make up the time you ‘wasted’ by not talking business at breakfast!

Leverage Your Time With Online Meetings

Are you wasting your time? The first deadly sin of time management is procrastination, followed closely by delay. You know, all the creative little ways you find to put off meeting and talking with people who can and will buy your products or services.
By some measures fully one-half of working time, across the board, is wasted. Taken up by needless chatter, breaks and personal business that is interesting but not necessary and contributes not a penny to your bottom line.

We’ve talked about this before, but one of the best ways to cut out the heart of procrastination is with an ordered set of priorities. Determine your most important objectives everyday, make a list and stick to it. Review the list often during the day. And, most importantly, do it again tomorrow.

Another way to to squeeze more productivity out of your day is to make sure you have all the info you need when you’re selling either your product or yourself to a client. A stellar way to do this is to have a second meeting with your prospect — online — utilizing advanced real time technology. No more apologies to your client for not having the documents or background you need right at your fingertips. It’s all there on your office hard drive or network and with the press of a button it’s available to both you and your client. Or, with a quick cut and paste, your client sees only the information relevant to them. This kind of technology, my friends, separates the sheep from the goats among professionals.

Get Control of Your Life

In order to achieve goals and become your best, you need to gain control over your time. It’s well understood that having a sense of control over your life is the foundation of happiness, confidence and well-being.

Use every time saving skill or tool in your arsenal to gain mastery over your day. Discipline yourself to work on your most valuable tasks first, while your energy is high.

Changing your life to increase time mastery often requires making new decisions about how you will spend your time. It may require you to learn a new set of skills or learn a new way of doing an old thing.

The truth is, you can’t manage time, but you can manage yourself. Plan your day in advance — the night before. Make a list of what you need to accomplish the next day and let your subconscious have some time to work on it while you sleep. This is covert learning at its best.

Don’t be surprised if, when you awaken the next morning, you have ideas or insights that help you check off items on your list!