Avoid My 2 Biggest Mistakes

We talk a lot about providing autonomy for yourself by controlling your time, but one of the things you should understand is I’m not perfect at this either. I once had an interview with a woman where she asked me this question quite directly, which hopefully you can learn from.

In her words, “You know, one of the things I've always admired about you is that you've always been really upfront about your personal life and problems and things. And the question I have for you is, because I know you’ll tell the truth – What are the biggest mistakes you've personally made with regard to time management and what does it cost you?”

The most common and reoccurring one that I keep getting better at, and by comparison to how good I was at it a decade ago, I'm now a 10 by comparison to what I need to be, and that is over obligating myself – not saying, “no” enough.

I think there's lots of reasons that I do it and that pretty much everybody who's very successful, and I think we do it for different reasons than unsuccessful people do. But you know, it's pretty much all emotional stuff, so it gets into managing your own emotions.

I still have a little queasy thing that happens in my stomach and travels up to my head when I'm saying no to a perfectly good client or a perfectly good project or a perfectly good opportunity. It's like being UN-grateful to the universe and to how far you've come to turn it down. And I'm very cognizant of the fact that, you know, I'm completely unqualified to do anything I do. And in many respects, it’s an absolute miracle that I've done as well as I have. And so there's a certain amount of feeling that comes that says, you know, “How dare you say no to this, you schmuck. You ungrateful schmuck.”

Sometimes others feel a paranoia in saying no for fear that those wells of customers and clients may dry up. And I don't think you should ever get rid of that completely. I think it's healthy paranoia to a degree. I mean, I think it's very dangerous to think that it's always coming, but for me at this point, that really is no longer a big factor for me.

For me, the sort of ‘ungrateful wretch’ thing is more is more in play. My behavior is compulsive in general, so I'm very aware that I have to be very careful of what hobby or pursuits I might allow. For example, I don't play golf, because if I’d ever gone to play golf casually, in three months I'd have had a trainer, I'd own a golf course and I'd be trying to get on the senior PGA. And if I played four games of poker, just to have fun, I'd be training for a tournament. And you know, I'm aware of that.

And while the compulsion and awareness have served me well, everything's part of the ying yang deal. Sure, it's served me very well, but it's also in the way of what I want to do. In short, “I'm trying to simplify my life, but I'm not cooperating.”

Then the other mistake that I've done much better at getting better at, is for a long period of time and working harder than necessary to make money and not devoting enough time and energy and thought early enough to making the money work for me. And again, the double sided coin is that I'm very good at making large sums of money. And so for a while, my answer to everything was just make more, because I could make an unlimited amount of money. But then I went too long without paying any attention to making the money work for me.

And so those are really the two mistakes.

And the fix is simple – apply the Brass Balls and Renegade Millionaire Time Management courses into your business. If you’re a NO B.S. letter subscriber, it’s free right now inside your members portal.

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