The little lies you tell every day

We’re nearing the end of another year.  While I’m not making any predictions or conducting a year-in-review, I think it’s a safe assumption to say we both didn’t get as much done this year as we would have liked.  That’s a nod I see, yes?  We could have used more discipline.

I mean, sure there were accomplishments and shining professional moments.  Things to do a little self-satisfied shimmy over (cue: background music).  And I certainly experienced memorable personal moments.  It’s all been worth it; its part of the ride of life and the myriad ingredients that make up who we are.

With the learnings and the love aside, though, I look back and think about ways I could have crammed in more.  Been more efficient, maybe a little less self-indulgent.  Or maybe just more narrowly focussed.  Were I to have made some adjustments here and there, would I be any farther ahead today?

I may be reflecting because in January I’ll be one year older.  My youngest is getting more self-sufficient by the day.  And let’s just face it, 401(k) plans didn’t exactly set the world on fire the past 12 months. What will next year look like?  And how many more next years will I have?

Add to that the high expectations I set for myself:  finish a fiction novel I started four years ago; finish up my black belt in Tae Kwon do; learn more coding; pick up painting again. Complete every last business book on my never-ending list of stuff I really want to read.  Send shockwaves through the blog universe.  Finally make brownies that aren’t brown around the outer edges.  Maybe there’s something to setting those New Year’s Resolutions after all.  Or at least penning a personal bucket list.

I can thank my friend Andrew Hanelly for the bout of self-reflection.  He recently wrote a post about distractions, and how allowing ourselves to get mentally sidetracked can not only throw off your game, but devour hours of your time. Of your life!

Andrew points out how we’ve come to minimize the relative importance of this quick chat at the coffee pot, or that quick Facebook update.  The irony is, we may have done those very things in order to get ahead; a 21st century version office social currency or status symbol.  But as Andrew went on to say, “there is no credit card for time.”

You can’t charge enough time to get through that tremendously heavy period at work with your sanity in tact.  You can’t buy credits so that week after week of sports practices for the kids doesn’t leave you feeling frazzled come dinner time, yearning for bed.  Unlike your American Express bill, you don’t have the option of paying part in full, and paying part on time.  Because there is no more time.  This is your one shot.

As exampled in Andrew’s post, rarely do we lose the precious gift of time (and the opportunity it brings) in large blocks.  There’s no one sitting back, pointing at a Day-timer saying “Ah ha!  There!  Right there!  That’s where I lost 7 weeks, 4 days, and 22.5 hours.”

Instead, we lose time each day in bits and bytes.  A few minutes delay after the alarm sounds; a few minutes extra doing our hair; a few minutes extra running errands at lunch; a few extra minutes catching up on TiVo.  These sands of time add up.  While some can’t be helped – I mean, this isn’t a vacuum, some stuff is beyond our control – some of the losses are really just habits and excuses we tell ourselves.  We get soft.  And then we get OK with it.

Let’s stop that right now.  Together, starting today.  Turn off email except for 10 am, 2 pm, 4:30pm. Do your most dreaded task first.  Write your To-Dos down in bright ink on a white board by your desk for all to see.  Add all your projects to Basecamp – with milestones attached!  Keep your daily plans strictly relegated to what you can actually accomplish in a day, and then do it.  Get public about it!  No over-committing and under-delivering.

The same goes for business. There’s no room for complacency in plans to improve service or responsiveness.  They can’t discount a handful of disgruntled buyers.  And they can’t live (much less advance) in their own echo chamber.  Little things add up if they’re allowed to add up.  Little things become 7 weeks, 4 days, and 22.5 hours.  Little things become lost share of voice, and little things erode brand affinity.

Stop lying to yourself about where the day went.  Now is the time to get disciplined about what you want to achieve.  There’s no time like the present, and time waits for no digital marketer.

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