Clinton Skakun

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” – Thomas Alva Edison
There’s an old saying, “Work hard play hard.” (Good to keep in mind)

Take for example, popular statements like “Don’t work hard, work smart” and “work smarter instead of harder.” I don’t totally disagree with these statements and can understand where they’re coming from and from who. Don’t think that hard work isn’t ever going to cross your path again though. Working smart is definitely the way to go, however you need to work hard on what works(working smart) and stop working on what only partially works.

Using the famous GOYA formula

Tom Hopkins says, when you get in a slump, apply the GOYA formula. It seems to work like magic to. What’s the GOYA formula? Simply this: When you’re not getting anywhere … Get Off Your ASS! Often times people don’t slow down because they’re working too hard, it’s because they outperform one week, then slack for while expecting to coast. Eventually they have to work for three weeks to make up for the lost time. Remember a time in your life when you worked really hard at your job or your business or maybe something non-work related: did it take some hustle and some guts? Maybe you had to get up 2-3 hours earlier than you normally would. But whatever it took, you were going to get there. Usually, going ahead isn’t about learning more, or reading more books or taking another breather. The answer is just getting off your ass. “Nobody ever drowned in their own sweat!”

Look back on a time when you were employed at a job other than you’re own business. You had to work the hours on the schedule, take a brief coffee break, a lunch break and then get back to work. Sometimes the managers would bitch and sometimes you were pressured to work twice as hard. You’d go home, go to sleep and wake up the next morning and, whether you felt like it or not, you drove back to work. There was no question, just get to work. If you worked as hard at your current business as you did at your payroll job would your business be flourishing? If so, then get off your ass!

“There’s a time for work, and there’s a time for play, don’t mix the two.” – Jim Rohn

How many hours a day do you REALLY spend actually working and producing results? If you’re self employed this can be a tough one to answer. You could say, “well, I don’t know exactly how many hours I work because I’m self employed and I make my own hours.” But how many hours do you really make? You could use the old manager mentality, “well as long as shit gets done, that’s all that matters.” Or you could ask yourself, am I doing everything I could be or just passing the minimum? Honestly, based on my results would I hire myself? If you’re in business for yourself and your answer is no, I wouldn’t hire myself, than why the hell are you in business for yourself? The problem with us self-employed people is that we can’t tell the difference between fun, relaxing and actual work. Separate them! Relaxing does not equal work. Your work may be fun but don’t get work and fun, as in non-lucrative fun, mixed together. Because what you get is non-lucrative work.

Don’t allow play to take over work time, because work time will end up taking over play time.

When things get worse, you gotta work harder!

What do most people do when there’s a recession? They whine, complain and get depressed. There are always rumors that they are going to laid off. Every day at work is a reminder of how dim the future is for them. The problem is, almost everyone gets by in the good times. The so called bad times or depressions or slumps are golden opportunities to separate the wheat from the shaft. These times bring down the people with poor mentalities and rise up the champions who are up for a challenge. Tom Hopkins, who was a real estate agent in the 60’s and 70’s, made record sales during a down economy–hitting record sales that were almost unsurpassed of until the turn of the century. Mr. Hopkins said, “When we hit a slump, I just worked harder than anyone else.” He didn’t say leverage was responsible for his success. He didn’t tell us that a certain technique was critical to his success. Even though time management, the proper techniques and practice are critically important, he said “I worked harder than anyone else.” Should it come as a surprise? I think not. Take what you know and work hard with it.

• Do you work hard to find ways to work smarter?
• Do you work hard on yourself, building character and self discipline?
• Do you work hard to educate yourself, and work hard blocking out what doesn’t help you in the least?
• Do you work hard to build, work harder to maintain what you’ve built and work even harder to ward off what threatens what you’ve built?
• Do you work hard on simplifying, balancing the time scales and making life more manageable?
• Do you work hard to better yourself, to become better suited and more skilled, higher in effectiveness and a better performer?

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” – Russell C. Taylor:

Photo credited to nickgatens

In 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferris gives us an idea on how costly interruptions truly are. He says that for every interruption, it takes us 45 minutes to get back to complete focus on what we were previously doing. How much are you paid per hour? Is one interruption worth 1 hr’s worth of work. (See your self washing a load of bills down the toilet everything you let an interruption get a hold of you) For most of us there are 24 hours in a day, most of 24 hours are devoted to sleeping, working and taking care of interruptions.

I’ve compiling a brief list of ideas, inspired by Tim Ferris and others, you could use to reduce interruptions and spend less time working:

1. Your business phone should always be on voice mail. Contact these people when you decide to check your voice mail(preferable once a day)
2. Clients can call your cell when it’s an emergency. Interruptions are good when it’s for a good reason. Although, handle it like an interruption. (It’s all in the introduction: “I’m quite busy right now./I have an appointment in 5 minutes How can I help you?”–gets them to the point vs. “Hey bro! How’s life?”–life stories are long). Sometimes what people “think” are emergencies are actually very trivial. Instead of listening to them for half an hour, ask them to send you an outline in an e-mail or fax it to you. Once again, use the “I’m actually VERY busy right now and don’t have a pen and paper in front of me to write on. Could you e-mail it? I’ll take a look at it when I get a moment…” Be gentle, but don’t let anyone screw with what you’re currently doing.
3. Check your e-mail/Twitter/FaceBook/voice mail/rss once a day. Unless you’re using these things for reference material for a meeting. Overall these things are 2nd priority, work to your current clients are 1st priority. If you’re 50 clients want to chat with you every day, get them to e-mail you or leave a voice mail message. Most of the stuff in my “inboxs” could sit for 2 days and still not kill me. And on top of that they might never kill me, so why frantically check it every 10-20 minutes. One word: STOP.
4. Avoid meetings unless you have an outline to follow AND a limited time. Some meetings are called for the sake of setting meetings, it’s a waste of time unless you have a purpose(there’s a novel idea!). Every meeting should have a prerequisite outline or summary before you dive in. Answer the question, “What do we need to discuss?” Also, meetings should stay within the 20-30min range. Meetings aren’t for personal chats, try to stay on topic. To avoid wasting time, effective communication should play a roll. If one person is too vague or not quite clear on what he or she is saying, ask questions to clarify, encourage other people to ask questions, etc.
5. Discernment between Work from Play Entrepreneurs who work at home or don’t have shifts have to work on this. Make sure you’re not spending work time playing and play time working. I find it easy to “go and do something” in between gaps of work, thus making the work day longer.

Could you cut a 8 hour day down to a 4 hour day by merely focusing on work and procrastinating the interruptions? Sure you could.