Translator: Bob Prottas
Reviewer: Leonardo Silva You may have thought that we started late,
but it is ironic that the first speaker would be the author of the book,
"Procrastinate on Purpose". (Laughter) How is it, that we have more tips
and tricks, tools and technology, calendars and checklists
than ever before, and yet, we still always seem
to be behind? How is it that we work longer hours, we're moving faster
than we've ever moved in history, and yet we never seem to be caught up? How is it that we know more about time
management today, and yet stress is at an all-time high? The reason why
is because everything you know about time management is wrong. I first started to realize this
a couple of years ago. It was early on a Saturday morning,
I was at my business partner's house, and I was picking him up
for a very important international leader planning retreat, and he has a 2-year-old
baby girl name Haven, and she is the sweetest little thing
you can imagine. She has curly brown hair,
and these sweet, soft, brown eyes, and we live in Nashville, so she has
a little southern accent that's developing and as I'm picking up Dustin,
and we're about to leave, Haven come sprinting down the hallway and she leaps,
and she latches on to Dustin's leg, And he looks down at her and he says: "Oh, I'm sorry baby Haven,
Daddy actually has to go to work today." And she looks up at him,
and her eyes well up with tears, and she says: "No Daddy, please, no work today.
No work Daddy." And in that moment, I realized two things: The first is that I myself
am not ready to have kids just yet. (Laughter) The second is that even though
everything that you've ever heard about time management is all logical,
tips and tricks, tools and technology, calendars and check lists,
its apps, it's all logic. What I realized in that moment,
from a 2-year-old, is that today, time management
is no longer just logical, today, time management is emotional, and how our feelings of guilt, and fear,
and worry, and anxiety, and frustration, those things dictate how we choose
to spend our time, as much as anything that's
in our calendar, on our to-do list. In fact, there is no such thing
as time management. You can't manage time, time continues on
whether we like it or not. So there is no such thing
as time management. Really, there is only self-management. That was the first big realization I had. In order for you to understand the second, I want to take you on a quick history
of time management theory, and that really began
in the late fifties, and sixties, and it came during
the industrial revolution, and an early time management
thought was all about -- it was one-dimensional,
and it was all based on efficiency, and the idea with efficiency, was that
if we could develop tools and technology to help us do things faster,
then theoretically, that would give us more time. Well, there's nothing wrong
with efficiency, all things being equal, efficiency is better, and yet there
is an unfortunate limitation to efficiency as a strategy
for time management, and it's evidenced by the fact
that we all carry around miniature computers in our pockets, and yet, somehow,
we're still never caught up. Well, in the late eighties, era 2
time management thinking emerged. I feel like it was pretty much
single-handedly ushered in by the late, great Dr. Stephen Covey. And Dr. Covey introduced what we're
referring to as 2-dimensional thinking. He gave us something called
the Time Management Matrix, where the x-axis was urgency,
and the y-axis was importance, and the beauty about this was that it gave
us a system for scoring our tasks, and then based on how they scored in these
two areas, we could prioritize tasks, Prioritizing is all about focusing first
on what matters most, and for the last 20 years, this has been
the pervasive mode of thinking as it relates to time management theory. It's not that there's anything wrong
with prioritizing, in fact, prioritizing is as valuable a skill today as it ever has been in history. Even though we throw that word around, like it's the end-all and be-all,
to time management theory, right? We say:
"Get your priorities in order.", or "You don't have the right priorities." Well, unfortunately, maybe
that's not really the case, because there is a massive limitation to
prioritizing that nobody ever talks about and that is this: there's nothing about
prioritizing that creates more time. All prioritizing does, is take item
number 7 on your to do list, and it bumps it up to number 1,
which is valuable in and of itself, but it doesn't do anything inherently
to create more time, and it does nothing to help you accomplish
the other items on your to-do list. If you think about efficiency, it is
kind of like running on a hamster wheel, and if you think a prioritizing,
it's really about borrowing time. Borrowing time from one activity to spend
on another, it's kind of like juggling, and that really describes the way
that we even talk about time. I'm juggling a lot,
or I'm trying to balance a lot. And in that paradigm
there's only two strategies: one is to do things faster,
or to do more things, and that is what the world
kind of feels like, right? How does it feel to know that really all
we are is a bunch of juggling hamsters, sprinting towards
an inevitable crash landing? (Laughter) You cannot solve today's
time management problems, with yesterday's time management thinking. What we've noticed, is the emergence
of a new type of thinker, somebody that we refer to,
as a multiplier, and multipliers use what we call,
3-dimensional thinking. While most people only make decisions
based on urgency, and importance, multipliers are making a third calculation
which is based on significance, and if urgency is how soon
does something matter, then significance is how long
is it going to matter. It's a completely different paradigm,
it's adding on to what is there, it's in with the old,
but it's also in with the new. Because most of us, if you think about
the modern day to-do list, which is one of the key strategies
or tools that we have, we ask ourselves, when we assemble
our to-do list, we say: "What's the most important thing
I can do today?" But that is not how multipliers think;
multipliers, instead ask the question: "What can I do today,
that would make tomorrow better?" "What can I do right now,
that would make the future better?" They're making
the significance calculation. When I say: "Multiply your time,"
that might sound a little bit superfluous. It might sound like an over exaggeration,
but it really is not. Now, it is true that we all have
the same at a time inside of 1 day, 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds. There's nothing any of us can do
to create more time in 1 day, but that's exactly the problem,
that type of thinking is the problem. We have to break out of that paradigm,
and instead, think about tomorrow, and that brings us to the premise
for how you multiply time. The way that you multiply time,
is simple: you multiply your time, by giving yourself
the emotional permission to spend time on things today,
that give you more time tomorrow. That's the significance calculation. You multiply time, by giving yourself
the emotional permission to spend time on things today,
that create more time tomorrow. The significance calculation
changes everything. The Focus Funnel is our attempt,
to create a visual depiction that codifies the thought process,
that multipliers go through in their head, unconsciously, when they are evaluating
how to spend their time. It's why some people create extraordinary,
explosive, exponential results, and other people seem to kind of
just create linear traction, and it works like this, if your tasks
all come into the top of the funnel, the first question a multiplayer asks is:
"Can I eliminate this? Is it even worth doing?" It's another example of how everything
you know about time management is wrong, or at least that it has changed,
because most of us use to-do lists, and multipliers realize that
next generation time management has much more to do with what
you don't do, than what you do do. Multipliers realize
that perfection is achieved not only when nothing more can be added,
but when nothing more can be taken away. It is the permission to ignore. Because anything that we say no to today, creates more time for us tomorrow. The emotional challenge
is that we struggle with guilt, and we struggle with wanting to say no, but really feeling
like we have to say yes, and so we go through life
trying to never say no. In an interview with a multiplier they said something that changed my life, "It's futile to go through life,
trying to never say no. What you have to realize, is that you
are always saying no to something." Because anytime you say yes to one thing, you're simultaneously saying no
to an infinite number of others. If you can't eliminate the task, the next
question is: "Can I automate the task?" Anything that I create a process
for today, saves me time tomorrow. It's like setting up online bill pay. I never have two hours in my day
to set up online bill pay, I just don't have time,
and if I had two hours in my day I would never use it
to set up online bill pay. But a multiplier realizes that
if I save 30 minutes a month from paying my bills,
by setting up online bill pay, then it makes sense to invest
those 2 hours, because then after just 4-months time, I will have broken even
on that investment, and every month thereafter,
I will get something we call ROTI, Return On Time Invested. Automation is to your time exactly what compounding interest
is to your money. Just like compounding interest takes money
and it makes money into more money, automation takes time,
and it makes it into more time. The way that wealthy people
think about money is exactly the same way
that Multipliers think about time, and they give themselves
the permission to invest, invest the time and energy
to automate the process. If it can't be automated,
then the question is: "Can it be delegated?
Can I teach someone else how to do this?" I'm reminded of a time, when I was
7 years old, and I'll never forget, I was in the car with my Mom,
and I hit her with this question, I said: "Mom, do I have a Dad?" And as you might imagine,
that was a pretty difficult question for a single mother, to navigate
with her 7-year-old. It was the first time that my mom
told me her life story. She was pregnant at 17,
divorced a couple of years later. Pregnant again at 22,
and then she was divorced from my biological father
6 months after I was born. So there she was, 22 years old,
single mom, no high school education, and she explained to me: "Rory, I decided at that point
that I would never have a man in my life, because I haven't had good luck with men,
and we may not have a lot, and we may not have a dad,
but we're going to have love." We went back and forth, and I said: "You know Mom, I love our family,
I really do, I love our family, but I think it would be really cool
to have a Dad." And so she said: "Well, I'll tell you what honey,
if you want a Dad, then why don't you go out,
and find yourself a good Dad." What kind of crap is that? (Laughter) It just so happened that that was my
first day at a new Shaolin Kung Fu center. I had been studying
martial arts since I was 5. So they put me in this all-adult school,
to be a little more advanced. Another gentleman who walked in,
it was his first day, also. This guy was much older than me. He had long hair, and tattoos
all up and down his arm, and a leather jacket,
and he came in on a motorcycle, and this guy was about the scariest dude
you can imagine, if you're 7 years old, and he gets paired up
as my sparring partner. (Laughter) His name was Kevin.
He turned out to be pretty nice. We advanced through
the belt levels together, and so Kevin started bringing me home
from class, every once in a while. Soon Kevin came over on the weekends,
and we would practice our forms. Then we caught a movie,
and then before long, Mom came with us to the movies. So it was the 3 of us
going to movies together, and I'll never forget the first time
the 2 of them went to a movie without me. (Laughter) As it turns out, Kevin and I tested for our black belts
together on the same day when I was 10 years old. They got married 2 weeks later. A couple of years after that
Kevin adopted me, and I change my last name,
from Rory MacLachlan, to Rory Vaden, and they have been married
for 20 years, ever since. (Applause) And the point of that story
is that you can delegate anything. (Laughter) But if you ask the average person: "Are there things you could
be delegating to somebody else?" We would say: "Yes." Then you say: "Why don't you train
someone else to do it?" What most of us would say: "Well, because they
just can't do it as well as I can." And that may be true once, maybe twice, but it is only true
absent the significance calculation. If you think longer term, you realize they'll be able to master the task,
just like you were. Significance changes everything. It's how you multiply your time. It's giving yourself the permission
of imperfect, for a little while. Because over time,
they'll be able to figure it out. If you can't eliminate,
automate, or delegate a task, that task drops out
the bottom of the funnel, at that point,
there's only one question, and that question is:
Should I do this task now? Must it be done now,
or can it wait until later? If the task must be done now,
then that's what we call "concentrate". It's the permission to protect.
Alright, the permission to protect. It's all about focus,
and eliminating distractions. And honestly, there's nothing
all that exciting, or new there. However, if you ask the question:
"Can this wait until later?", and you decide that the answer is yes, then that's not eliminate,
automate or delegate, that is what we call
"procrastinate on purpose". Now, you're not going
to procrastinate on it forever, you're going to pop that activity
back to the top of the funnel, at which point, it will enter
into a holding pattern where it will cycle through
the focus funnel, until inevitably, one day, eventually
one of the other 4 strategies will be executed on whenever that task is. And what you find, is that
if something can continually wait, often what happens is you
develop the courage to do what you should have done
in the first place, which was eliminate it. Or you discover a system
for how to automate it. Or someone rises up
to the call of leadership. They rise up to the occasion,
and it ends up being delegated. Or it ends up becoming something
that is significant enough for you to spend your time on. A lot people say: "Well Rory, wait a minute,
in the "Take the stairs" book you said: 'Procrastination is
the killer of all success.' 'Procrastination is the most expensive,
invisible cost in business.' 'Procrastination is the foundation
of all mediocrity.' and now you're telling us
to procrastinate on purpose?" And yes, that is what I said,
and it's exactly true how I said it. But there's a major distinction
to realize and that is there's a difference
in waiting to do something that we know we should be doing
that we don't feel like doing, versus waiting to do something because we're deciding
that now is not the right time. Waiting to do something we know
we should do, but don't feel like doing, that's procrastination,
the killer of success. Waiting to do something, because we're
deciding that now is not the right time, that isn't procrastination, that isn't
the killer success, that's a virtue, and it's an art form that the world
really needs, which is patience. The patience to put off
the insignificant things. Like checking email
24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You multiply your time, by giving yourself
the emotional permission to spend time on things today,
that create more time tomorrow. Regardless of your religious affiliation, or your spiritual beliefs, hopefully
you'll have an appreciation for the way that scripture says the world was created. And in Genesis,
God has created this perfect world, and it says something amazing that
we're created in His image, and then in Genesis, chapter 1, verse 28,
he gives the first command to all of humanity,
and what is that command? "Thou shall have
no other gods before me?" No. Is it, "Love thy neighbor as thyself?" No. God's first command to all of humanity, "Be fruitful, and multiply." Thank you very much. (Applause)
