When It Must Be Stronger Than Will Power

Regimen means disciplining yourself to do the same thing the same way at the same time every day.

For example, there are people who have lots of medical stuff, which setting aside all the debate of whether it works, but the stuff they're all supposed to take, it's like a full-time job. They gotta take these two pills precisely this time of the day. And you gotta take this with food and that’s not with food and you can't take this pill at the same time because of the side-effects of this pill. I mean, it's unbelievable.

Well, there's a thing called a viatical settlement, which is a way to buy the insurance policy of somebody that's terminally ill. When the latest advancements came in the so-called drug cocktails for aged people, there was a lot of conversation in financial circles about, “Oh my God, the viatical settlement business is gonna collapse because all these people are going to live longer and all the numbers have gone to crap.”

But nothing changed. Hardly anybody has the discipline to take the stuff the way it has to be taken in order to prolong their life. They may do it for a little while, but they won't stick to it. Now I have sympathy for them - I’ve seen the regimen and I have trouble sticking to a single vitamin and it's nothing like that.

But successful people have certain regimens about what they do. Like, for example, people say to me, “How do you write so much?” Well, my deal is 5:00 AM. That's my deal. And so I write for an hour, two hours before there's any interruption, before anything's happening, before I gotta go anywhere, before anybody's calling me and I do it virtually every morning. That’s very rare. Is there an exception? With too many exceptions, you don't have a regimen anymore.

Now you may not need to do that, but the more regimented the use of your time, the less ‘flexible’ time you have, the more you get done.

The reason people don't get a lot done is because they're busy making choices about how they're gonna use the time when they should be using the time. A lot of people actually go to work and then think, “Well, what am I gonna do? I'm here, now what?”

Try this on people that work in an office. Ask them when you get to the office tomorrow morning, “What's the first thing you gotta do and what's its intended outcome and when do you plan on having it done?” Most people won't be able to give you an answer. They haven't thought past, “Get to the office.” Then they get there and say, “What have you got for me? Six piles here. Wonder which pile I should.”

Have you ever done that? You got so many things to do that you can't decide which to do. And so you just kind of stand there. And before you know it, an hour’s gone and you're still not doing nothing. It wouldn't have mattered which one you started with, you'd have been better off if you flip a coin or throw a dart, but Start!

Honest to God, salespeople get up in the morning and don't know who they're gonna call. Try it! If you’ve got a salesperson that's working for you, they have the list of everybody they’re gonna call. See if they've numbered! Who's the first one they're gonna call? Who's the second one? Who's the third one they're gonna call? If they're not numbered, then guess what – they don't know.

Now, they're gonna sit down at the desk with the phone, open up their call list, and then they're gonna sit there for a while during prime selling time, thinking about who they're gonna call. And after they call the person, they'll go sit there for another 10 minutes and ponder who they're gonna call next, in prime time!

There should be no pondering. They should be doing. You can ponder driving home, ponder while you're on the pot, but you don't ponder while you're supposed to be calling. But people don't get that.

So when you regimen your time, like I do, I don't have to make a decision about the first two hours of the day. I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna go, right? The only decision I gotta make is what am I gonna write? And so I make that decision before I go to bed at night, if I'm gonna write – I put it right there on the desk, but now that decision's done.

I sit down and I start writing, you know, not pondering, not shuffling, I start writing. And therefore that's a pretty productive hour or a pretty productive two hours.

And so this idea of you could call it time blocking, you can call it appointments with yourself, you can call it regimentation. But it all helps you be more successful!

If you’re a Gold member, we discuss how to ensure that your employee’s time is a priority in your business using my Brass Balls training, or manage your own time better with Renegade Time Management, both of whichyou can listen to it right now for free inside your members area.

If you’re not a member of the newsletter, let me give you access to Brass Balls and Renegade Time Management in an offer you can’t refuse with $19,997 worth of training for free at www.nobsletter.com.