So this chapter began in my last post, where I have been sharing How Great Achievers Manage Their Day
Here are the remaining tips on how over a hundred millionaires and twenty billionaires have been known to manage their time….
iii. They Wake Up Early
If you sleep at eight in the evening and wake up at eight in the morning, that means you are sleeping twelve out of twenty-four hours in a day.
In other words, half your day is being spent asleep. At the end of the year, it means you spent six months with your eyes closed…
Maintain that rate of eight-to-eight daily sleep and at the end of your seventy-year lifetime, you would have only lived thirty-five years because the other half was never lived – it was just slept.
Studies show that the longer you stay in bed the sleepier you feel. Staying long in bed doesn’t conquer sleepiness, it creates it.
The most successful people wake up either at five or six in the morning.
Thomas Jefferson, the former president of the United States, used to wake up so early that the sun never caught him in bed for more than fifty years.
In the African culture, the most prosperous farmers were known for waking up early.
They would wake up at dawn, about two-thirty in the morning, yoke the oxen and start plowing under the moonlight all the way to sunrise.
(You can’t wait for sunrise in Africa because it comes with more sun-heat than sunshine).
Wake up early. Open your shop early.
The days you wake up early are more productive than the days you wake up later.
Learn to wake up before your laziness wakes up.
iv. Have a Morning Ritual
Your soul needs breakfast as much as your body.
How you begin your day greatly influences how it progresses. You need to make a good morning if you really want a good afternoon.
Start your day with Power! Every day you need a Power Start!
Here is the method I have applied and taught many managers and leaders for years so much that we now even call it the Power Start! Formula.
Begin with Exercise: Exercise can be fun. I always enjoyed watching Karate and Kung-Fu growing up.
So I have now downloaded a full Shotokan tutorial course online (In layman’s terms – it’s a form of “karate”).
Some mornings I take my first twenty minutes intensely learning a move or two.
Of course, I don’t think that will make me a Sensei (master). I only do it for exercise.
Some mornings I prefer to dance to some fast music.
Then some mornings I don’t begin with exercise – I begin with meditation or reading a specific book.
But I prefer to share on exercise because it’s the healthiest way to start a day.
Exercise releases hormones called serotonin, dopamine, BDNF, and cortisol into your body.
These are happiness-inducing, energizing, brain-repairing, and fear-fighting hormones that keep you from being moody the whole day.
Your moodiness during the day suffocates your energy, your creativity and, most obviously, your social and intimate relationships.
Don’t be that kind of person others always ask, “What’s wrong? You look so sad today?”
To make matters worse, you respond with that usual sad energy-sucking answer? “I’m fine hey. Guess I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed that’s all.”
Sometimes you actually say, “Argh nothing. I’m just bored…”
Or maybe you are among those that I call the Rabid Risers.
While most people I mentioned wake up in a sad mood, rabid risers wake up in a bad mood. They shout, “I said I’m fine, just leave me alone will you!”
Stop being that person. It costs you your day, your energy and costs you the very same people who are meant to help you make life beautiful.
Take responsibility for your mood. You can’t have a good mood that you never made, and if you want an interesting day first put something interesting into it.
When you wake up in the morning – just for twenty minutes or more – take a jog, or play your most jovial music with aerobic dances along to it.
Beginning your morning with jovial music and dance, wow! Isn’t that a fun and enjoyable way to start a day and live your life?
If you don’t give yourself a happy life, who will?
The question is, do you want a happy fun life?
You don’t need extra money to have a beautiful morning.
The only reason you could be letting yourself go through the day in the same sad or bad mood you woke up in – is that you are addicted to pain.
There are people who love staying sad, they can’t see how much their sadness is only creating cancer, depression, low energy levels and more sadness.
It makes them lonely in a world full of people, and by pushing away the people who care for them, they are left truly alone.
Sleeping through the night clears your mind.
However, the first mood and thoughts you let stay in your mind when you wake up influence what can continue to get into your mind the rest of the day.
Choose to start your day with a beautiful mood.
A good mood is made not found.
Happiness is not something you find, happiness is something you make.
Choose to be happy. Light up your heart.
Happiness is not a result of a bad life gone good – happiness is a choice that you are always able to make despite all that you are going through.
Joyful early morning exercise is an amazingly effective trick to jumpstart your soul for the day ahead of you!
Run. Dance. Kick!
NEXT THING – Take a Look at Your To-Do List: Give it a few glances. Then go for a shower.
THEN Meditate for Ten Minutes: It’s easy.
Spread a mat. Sit cross-legged. Close your eyes. Loosen your body, all the way to your fingertips and your toes.
Deeply breathe in into your stomach, then breathe out. Do that ten times.
Continue being still, now start listening to your soul. What is it saying or feeling?
Don’t correct your heart, just listen to it.
If you are feeling afraid, simply note “my heart is low” or “my heart is afraid” or “my heart is worried” or “my heart is doubting.”
The good thing is to recognize that it’s not you who is worried or afraid, it’s your heart. You are not how you feel.
Then most times I pick a Life Capsule from one of my books like Life Capsules for Success, Life Capsules for Personal Growth or Life Capsules for Your Faith.
At times I call upon a Biblical verse that is on my heart for the past days or that morning.
I like the Buddhist Pali Canon too (the Buddhist Holy Book), Buddha always had a way to calm people’s souls on the days they felt low.
(You can use any material that inspires, calms and energizes you).
If you are Hindu, use the Bhagavad Gita – I have read that too.
I use the Bible more though. Since it’s simpler.
I slowly and gently repeat its verses to my soul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Say it gently.
Remember to be gentle with yourself because it is only the gentleness you give to yourself that you can give to others.
Life is a mirror, what you release, be it gentleness or anger, gets reflected to you. Release gentleness.
Try it, you will feel so light and brand new afterward.
THEN Read or Listen to Something Inspirational: for thirty minutes. You can do this in your car on your way to work. Listen to an audiobook or an inspirational speaker. Your life will only grow when you grow.
Congratulations. You just started your day with power!
This is why we call this the Power Start! Formula.
v. Start with Your MIT
MIT stands for Most Important Task.
Hundreds of millionaires and billionaires, and people who are outstanding in their lives and workplace, consistently exhibit this same trait – they focus their day on firstly fulfilling the Most Important Task on their To-Do List.
Most times we don’t even notice that we are running away from our Most Important Task. We answer phone calls, respond to emails, and even go to a meeting – just to avoid our MIT.
Have you ever noticed how you start tidying up your office or room every time you have something important to be done?
At the end of the day, it’s obvious you avoided your Most Important Task – but you comfort yourself by saying, “At least I tidied up my office after all.”
Let me be honest with you… You wasted time.
You switch on your laptop to start writing your university thesis – but two hours down the line you haven’t started.
Instead, you are busy re-arranging files in your laptop and claiming to be “busy deleting unnecessary files that are now using up most of my space.”
What you did is called wasting time doing the unnecessary good.
It’s good but compared to your MIT, that’s not the most important thing to do right now.
If you notice that your room, office, or computer needs some cleaning up, set a special day to clean it – don’t let any of your tasks take up the place of your Most Important Task (MIT).
If you were in my seminar, or one-on-one coaching program – we would list down all the things you have been doing to avoid your Most Important Task.
Usually, we discuss in detail and devise strategies to bypass each item on the list, just in one weekend you start seeing a tremendous shift. You do more with the same single day.
Most people avoid their MITs.
vi. Avoid Distractions
Your life can change in a remarkable way – if you can pay enough attention to changing it.
In just a moment of distraction, a car can crash, a water glass can drop and break to pieces upon hitting the floor.
In a moment of distraction, a billion-dollar wealth idea can slip away from your mind never to return. Distraction results in destruction.
A distracted mind is destructive.
Unfortunately, studies show that your mind gets interrupted by at least one thing every eleven minutes.
Your environment is saturated with distractions. These are from outside noises, incoming messages in your phone, friends, family, or interruptions from your dog.
Furthermore, the average human attention span has now dropped to five seconds.
This refers to the amount of time we give to something before thinking of giving that time to something else.
Then the average attention span of a goldfish is six seconds. That means if made to compete with a fish, today’s average person would lose.
An average person spends four hours each day on the phone and social media.
That means the average person already begins a day with twenty hours since four hours are already lost.
If you are not careful you can chat your life away.
Have a scheduled time to check your email and “instant” messages on your phone.
Yes, they are instant messages, but instant delivery doesn’t mean instant reply.
Don’t be distracted from doing the important by what is merely urgent.
As a rule, only check your messages for the first time at eleven o’clock in the morning.
Generally, schedule to only check your messages and emails three times a day.
If there is an emergency people will call.
vii. Avoid Meetings
Most millionaires prefer to hold meetings with everyone standing up. It’s difficult to talk for too long while everybody is standing.
Another time-saving tip: instead of offering your office visitors a seat, stand up when they come in. It’s not rude if you are both standing, and it’s difficult for them to talk for too long on their feet.
Back to the billionaire Richard Branson, he prefers to talk while taking a lunchtime walk. That way he saves time by combining relaxation, lunch, and a meeting.
Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook hardly has a proper time for lunch.
Elon Musk the billionaire founder of PayPal, who has developed his own space rockets, with a vision to send people to Mars – is known for gobbling up his lunch so fast that he will be done when everybody is just getting started.
Of course, it’s bad manners, don’t do it, I only mentioned it to show that successful people are time thrifty.
Time management is more important than money management.
You don’t have time to sit down and listen to music. You rather combine that with some other task e.g. listen to music while driving (that is if your car isn’t driverless), cooking, or eating.
Life is short. Every day, just like Cinderella, you are running out of time.
Conclusion
So those are the seven main ways millionaires and top billionaires in the world have been known to manage their time. Time is the platform where life happens. To waste time is to waste opportunity for life.
Live and Love
Love the people in your life when you still can, if you don’t leave this earth first it is definitely them who will go first.
That reminds me of the first pretty lady to enter my life – my mum.
Heaven knows I loved my mum, and wherever she is she knows I did.
Even today I still remember her voice as a sunrise melody of a songbird flying in the wind or perched on the window of my soul.
I was young. I hadn’t done much for her, but I had done little things with much love.
When she left, I didn’t shed a tear, I was sad she was gone but I was glad she was at rest.
Sometimes I take a trip down memory lane and see those episodes of my childhood.
I remember the battles she fought for me. I remember the good man she hoped I would become.
“Mum would have been proud of the man I have become…”
That thought!
That is the thought that loosens my hold on the steering wheel of my memory lane drive.
I would have avoided it if I could, but that thought takes automatic control and drives me into that December night that I last spoke to my mum.
I see her lying on her bed in the dark, I was coming from an adventurous three-day Christian youth camp which I promised to tell her about at sunrise…not knowing tomorrow doesn’t always come.
Again and again over the years, I have found myself transfixed on that night episode. My wish was not to have avoided that day…
I don’t even wish it had delayed one second more. My real wish was – if only I had known that December night would be the last with my mother…
If I had known that every time I was with my mother I was running out of time with her, believe me, I would have loved her much better.
If I had known that Six December was my last night with her, I would have thrown away my suitcases and created a room for her to quietly sleep in my arms.
People are not forever. Death is a deadline for even the strongest love.
Every day we are losing a chance to show our care to the people who love us. We must decide to stop losing it by deliberately using it.
If you are married to a man who comes home for you, who hurts you only if it’s a mistake – then stop judging him and comparing him with stars you see on TV soaps. Stand by your man!
If you are married to a woman who believes you even when she knows you are lying.
She is staying to build a home that your indiscipline and childhood sexual instincts are threatening to burn down… cherish that woman.
Come back home and love that woman. She is not a fool, she is a woman who loves you despite how you make her feel.
You have less time than you think you have to love the people that you love.
Just love them now.
Tell them they are special; don’t lay aside those words for tomorrow because tomorrow doesn’t always come.
Buy them flowers now when they still can smell them, remember they cannot smell the roses you place on their tombstones when they are dead!
Live Your Dreams
In Cinderella, the Prince represents her dreams. It was her dream to dance with the Prince someday.
Upon getting to the party, some different girl would have first had a chat with other ladies, probably only to realize six seconds before midnight that she hadn’t yet danced with the Prince.
This is the same as coming into this world and dancing with everyone, only to realize when your lifetime is almost over that you still haven’t danced with your dreams.
You have less time to follow your dreams than you think you have.
You do not have much time for a warm-up, and you do not have time to dance with someone else except your dreams.
Like Cinderella at the party… every second you are running out of time.
Live for Something that Outlives You
Though one day your life will be over, what you make out of it should live forever.
Only when you live your life for what outlasts it can you say you lived well.
The books we write, the words we say and the music we make will determine the pace of our generation and generations after them.
The love we share and the marriages unto whom we dearly commit will determine the joy of so many more children and grandchildren than you will ever hold.
We are here for a short time, but whatever we do in this short time will produce ripple effects whose waves last forever.
To have lived well is to have lived for what the next generation will be wrong to demolish.
Live for the freedom of mankind – that’s because every oppressor has a Nelson Mandela, a Martin Luther and a Mahatma Gandhi to stand up to him, and a Bob Marley to sing him away from human tolerance.
We will always remember those people who stood up for the freedom of mankind as heroes of us all – that is because though they had a short life like all of us, they spent theirs fulfilling what lasts forever!
Live for the love of all – that’s because no matter what greatness Adolf Hitler accomplishes out of hatred for the Jews, there is a day the whole world goes out to war against him.
Today we even call it the World War Two.
Yet though you are a Mother Theresa, doing small things with great love, the little you do shall be greatly known.
We can’t live forever, but we shall be remembered forever if we allow ourselves to be servants to what lives forever.
Love is forever. Live for love.
Live for truth. The truth Jesus spoke in three years continues to change lives two thousand years later.
To live for truth is to live truly.
Though a lie has the speed of a hare and the truth has the slowness of a tortoise – the tortoise always outlives the hare.
Every truth you share will live longer than the people who deny it.
Live for your dreams. The airplane was a dream that unlocked the flying age.
The computer was a dream that gave us the computer age.
The internet was a dream that gave us the information age.
When God wants to create a new age in our worlds, he begins by giving us new dreams in our minds.
Some dream by night while sleeping and some dream by day while walking.
The unfolding of ages is encapsulated in the dreams we hold within us wherever we go.
Dreams are simply our desires of better possibilities sent from heaven to earth – to be proven so.
To dream is to be in touch with the God of heaven and earth, the creative force and personality of all things and in all things.
To live your dreams is to experience the eternity of heaven while still on a temporary planet.
Bottom Line
Live a life worth remembering because some lives are worth forgetting.
It begins when you understand, like Cinderella, everyday that passes by is forever gone, never to return.
You are a dancer running out of time!
Next Chapter…
