Time is the Most Valuable Asset You Have

By Bruce Lund, NEXTPERT
Topic: Career Development, Marketing, Networking, Personal Branding, Success Strategies, Reputation Management, Social Media, Entrepreneur, Gen Y, Millennial, Job Searching

www.nextpert.net

How to sacrifice short-term pleasures for long-term Success

Most of us know what must be done in order to reach our aspirations, but some still aren’t in the process of doing it. Nobody I know wakes up in the morning and want to live a mediocre life, but average people are everywhere. How does this happen?

Instead of looking at the obvious internal characteristics that motivates humans such as drive and dedication, let’s look at possible alternate roadblocks of the 21^st Century. The main one being focus.

Playing around on the internet may seem like a “valuable” activity but what “value” is coming from it? We’re checking our email countless times a day, surfing the web for useless information, and seemingly living our lives through social media. We’re all guilty, to an extent, of these behaviors that interrupt constructive efforts. They are known as intentional time wasters.

I know it’s easy to get caught up in these activities because they don’t require us to challenge ourselves with critical thinking and pass us through the day with ease. Whether it’s YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter, there is no risk of failure involved in the cozy online world of social media. There are possibilities that you may learn something knew or gain a nugget of information that may help your profession, but it most certainly won’t happen as frequently as becoming a doer. A person in the mix of real-life interactions and when I say real-life I mean face-to-face communications that are focused on growing your professional hard skills.

It’s easy to come up with excuses as to why you do it. The fact is you don’t need to check your email or phone every 5 minutes to see if you have a message. It’s time to step away from your social life and get intentional about your professional life. It’s easy to waste time and give into that blinking light on your phone or the new message icon on your computer. Instead, refine new skills and let’s get back to the time when technology didn’t consume our lives. 

You may ask why I am not in the process of being successful right now. The two most valuable things we possess in this life are time and energy. You need to make people earn and respect this. The easiest way to do that is to show how valuable your time is. Let them see how much value you hold for your professional life. You will quickly become known as a career-oriented person with a dominant focus.

If friends in your life give you a hard time for not responding during working hours then maybe reassessing your relationship is in order. One thing I will constantly refer to in my writings and speeches are “the shifts” I have made in my life. This has been the hardest part of the shift because it’s so easy to fall into the lull of checking the internet or looking at my phone, but the greatest benefits are from keeping on task and finishing projects.

Once I began to keep my dominant focus is when true, daily successes began to occur.

Let me be the first to tell you that your personal life isn’t going anywhere and will be there after work. The minute texts, tweets, or facebook chats will be there for you once you get off and catching up time can then be had. We are a creature of habit and become HABITUATED on wasting time that we forget that it’s our conscious decision to do so.

I realize you may be sitting there asking, “who are you to tell me how to live my life” and I agree completely, but I ask that you take a good hard look at where you want to be professionally and decide if these habits are affecting your outcome in getting there.

The first step to recovery is identifying that a problem exists and I know firsthand how hard it is to do this when it comes to your social life and time-wasters. Once you begin to realize you are only hurting your career aspirations by doing them the temptation may be subsided and a task completed.

Are you will to sacrifice the dreams you’ve had for years for temporary gratification? I know I’m not, not anymore anyway. I know it’s downright brutal at first, but these mini-victories will soon turn into public victories for you to put on display for the world. It’s time to be remarkable and work everyday like you’re showing off!

STATISTICS on Time-Wasters (pingdom.com):

90 Trillion emails sent on the internet in 2009

500 billion minutes per month people spend on Facebook

14.6 billion YouTube videos watched in May

2 billion tweets per month on Twitter

Bruce Lund is the Founder & CEO of NEXTPERT, a training and consulting firm offering insight and strategies to help recruit, train, and retain the BEST of the NEXT Generation leaders. Bruce is a Next Generation Expert completing his Ph.D. on the leadership of this unique group. Bruce has worked in and through many top organizations and teaches the whole self (Mind, Body, Heart, Spirit) approach in leading. He is seeking to become THE Leadership Expert Generation Y can count on for guidance to take them from where they are right now and teach them the distinctive habits of successful people to live an extraordinary life.