It was 9:30 on a Tuesday morning. My leadership team was wrapping up our weekly Level 10 Meeting™, and I left the meeting feeling energized and ready to work. As was my custom, I left the meeting and went back to my office to check my email. I planned to spend the next few hours buried in responses to clients, employees, and vendors. However, today was different. I had an epiphany! Why was I spending my most productive time of the day (and week) working on my least valuable task? Why wasn’t I spending this time working “ON” the business and making progress on my big goals (Rocks)?
Since I lived by my calendar, I decided to experiment. I added a one-hour block of time to my calendar immediately following my weekly leadership meeting, and I set this calendar item to repeat forever. The next week, when I finished my weekly meeting, I went back to my office and got busy for the next hour working on my Rocks and weekly to-dos (one of my clients took this advice and started calling it her “Rock Block”). This experiment turned out to be a huge success. It was such a success that I was soon able to add another hour (on Thursday mornings) to my weekly calendar. Before many months, I was able to add additional Rock Blocks to my calendar. This was real time to solely focus “ON” the business. I was able to proactively resolve even more issues which freed even more time for me. For the first time, I felt like I wasn’t a slave to the reactiveness of my business.
If you haven’t set aside dedicated time to work “ON” your business, grab your calendar and create your own Rock Block next week. Bonus: Color this calendar event green to remind you of your increased profits from spending this time wisely!
