Joelle K. Jay

personal leadership

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Getting an Edge: How Are You Staying Sharp?

This fall, I’m noticing a trend. Leaders are suddenly getting motivated! (If you’re one of them, you may want to join my Free Teleseminar called Getting an Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership next Wednesday at 12 PT!)

Maybe it’s that time of year – something about the feeling of a “new school year” seems to stay with us our whole lives. Or maybe it’s because the economy has been sluggish for so long that leaders are finally getting up off the couch and saying, “Enough! I’m going to do something!” In any case, the trend is for new initiatives to be launched, new ideas to be proposed, and new partnerships to be formed. This is the kind of energy and enthusiasm that will get these leaders ahead – ahead in their careers, and making a bigger impact.

How are you getting an edge at this time?

Let’s keep it simple. If you, too, are feeling the buzz of excitement that seems to be in the air, take these steps:

  1. See the vision. If you know your vision, connect to it now. See it anew! If you don’t know your vision, start dreaming! What do you want?
  2. Get focused. Where specifically are putting your attention right now? If you were going to “make something happen” related to your vision, what would it be?
  3. Take action! Identify one key step you can take right away. Put it on your task list, and go do it. Watch for results!

After that, as my friend David Bailin, an executive at Citibank, likes to say, “Rinse and repeat.” And repeat, and repeat. Next thing you know your vision will be a reality.

Readers of The Inner Edge will recognize these three steps as the first three Practices of Personal Leadership. If you’re feeling ready to swing into action and make some exciting things happen, come join us in The Inner Edge Community! You’ll find an energized group of high-achievers talking, working, and thinking together to learn the steps they need to take to achieve their visions.

The best place to start is by joining the Free Teleseminar I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. Here are the details!

Getting an Edge: 10 Practices for High Performing Leadership

Date: Wednesday, October 5, 2011,
Time: 12:00–1:00 PST
Cost: FREE

You will discover:

  • 10 leadership strategies every leader needs to excel
  • An executive coach’s top recommendations for being your best
  • Reflective questions designed to achieve your best performance and results

Join the thousands of high-achieving business leaders, corporate executives, and entrepreneurs around the world who are learning how to be a better leader…and lead a better life.

Click here to register for the teleseminar.

See you on the call!

Best wishes,
Joelle

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Leading on the Edge

As a leader, you have many great gifts. Your talents. Your opportunities. Your drive. What are you going to do with those gifts? How are you going to share them with the people around you and the rest of the world? To excel as a leader, it’s important to give some thought to these questions. Because the reality is that as a leader, the true gift you have to give…is you.

Sharing the Practices of Personal Leadership

Helen Keller:

“When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”

You have already discovered what’s possible for you when you’ve come to see yourself as a leader. Now it’s time to share the wealth. How will you give your gifts to the people you lead? How will you give to your organization and the world around you? How big can you can really be?

As you consider how to give of your gifts, you create more gifts for yourself, for others, and the world.

And your gifts are desperately needed.

When I wrote The Inner Edge, this “leadership crisis” was the news of the year. Stories in business journals as well as Time, Newsweek, 60 Minutes and Good Morning America all reported that accomplished, talented leaders were leaving their hard-won careers to find more meaningful ways to live. The people featured in these stories invariably described a choice between success and quality of life – and in many cases, it was one they didn’t want to make.

Our culture, our organizations, the times we live in – they have a way of conspiring against our efforts to be our best. But better business should not come at the expense of quality of life, and quality of life should not come at the expense of business results. Work and life should be able to co-exist, happily and successfully. They can and they have.

But every day, millions of people drive onto the fast-lane and race their lives away – ironically missing the fact that everything they are doing to try to improve their life is actually running them into the ground. The work weeks get longer, the stress levels rise, and talented leaders burn out or move on.

We need a whole new paradigm for work and life, and it starts with you. My dream is that the next evolution of our ambitious, achieving society will be to learn how to get the results we crave in the easiest, most natural way – the way that feeds us personally and enhances our quality of life. But no matter how great your life becomes, no matter how well your business does, you are holding back something even greater that the world urgently needs. Part of being a leader is sharing what you’ve learned and empowering others, as well.

Maybe you will be the person who plants the seeds of leadership in the mind of the next great world leader. Maybe you will be the one to help shift your organization into a healthier, more life-affirming place. Maybe you will initiate positive changes in the world that today you can’t even imagine.

People like you who see themselves as leaders aren’t just leaders in their jobs. They are leaders by definition, wherever they go. You will always be the one people look to for help and support. You will be the one who asks the questions, has the answers, or creates the opportunities for incredible things to happen. At home, at church, at work, among your friends, in your political party, when you’re with your kids, when you’re giving to charity, you will be seen as a leader.

What will you do with that potential?

It’s an honor and a privilege to be a leader – a real gift. What kind of a gift do you want to be?

In order to answer that question, you’ve got to lead on every level: your inner edge, your outer edge, and your leading edge. Then you’ll be truly leading on the edge.

For encouragement along the way, be sure to listen to the free coaching Audio, called A Parting Gift – available on the website at www.TheInnerEdge.com.

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be looking at the legacy you are leaving as a leader, and looking to the next level of leadership ahead for you. For more information, click here or email info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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The Sacred Trust

Over the course of this year, I have been releasing wisdom and insight from the leaders who participated in my research for The Inner Edge. I hope you’ve enjoyed the posts. (And if you’ve been following them, please let me know what you think!)

Cheryl Scott, the former CEO of Group Health and a senior advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was featured in an earlier profile. But she is not just an inspirational leader. She was also one of my husband Tim’s early mentors. We’ll include her twice.

For our last example of how world-class leaders have to be to achieve their status, I just want you to hear how Cheryl thinks. I’ll leave you with a quote from which she finds inspiration, in hopes that it will inspire you, too.

If you get to be a leader, which is a sacred trust, you feel extraordinary gratitude. It changes you.

There’s this great quote that I love from Albert Schweitzer.

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

How many people in their life get to have that?

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here to sign up!

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See the Miracles!

I was sitting talking to Michael Gerber one morning, who for decades has been the go-to expert for business owners through his work with E-Myth Worldwide. We were talking about personal leadership and the thrill of witnessing the moments when leaders experience their big breakthroughs.

I thought of my client, Belinda Keaganm,* who was promoted every year for five years before finally becoming the CEO of a large financial institution.

I thought of my client, Ari Chellis, who stopped being a “do-er,” started being a strategist, and earned himself the title of Chief of Staff of the chairman of an international organization.

I thought of my client, Caroline, the President and General Manager of a leading software company, who through faith and humor beat cancer not once, but twice.

As Michael and I celebrated their accomplishments, we talked about what it takes to be able to see the possibilities – to know and trust that the visions we have for our lives and our leadership can come to us even if we don’t know how to create them. It’s not luck. It’s openness. It’s willingness. It’s faith.

You can teach yourself to see the miracles that lead to breakthrough, the miracles that give you an edge. You can’t create those moments, but they’re there. As I wrote in the book The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership, Eureka moments, aha’s, epiphanies—they’re not scrunched into our in-boxes. We can’t force them to show up by working harder. Flashes of insight occur when we are relaxed, open, and alert.

Are you open to the possibilities before you? Most people aren’t, as Michael observed. In a lull in our conversation, he took a deep breath and sighed.

“Most people don’t see the miracles.”

*Clients’ names have been changed by request.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here for more information.

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Let It Be Easy!

Letting it be easy is the first strategy for seeing possibility. My friend and mentor, Dr. Heidi McKenna, once taught me this:

If things are going your way, go that way.
If things aren’t going your way, don’t go that way.

To put this suggestion into effect, you just have to notice what’s working and do more of it. Notice what’s not working and do less of it. Easy. This strategy is especially helpful for making difficult decisions or finding your way through confusion.

Letting it be easy is an approach you can use to see new possibilities. You are able to work smart and let the current of your life carry you in the direction it wants to go. You can put down some of the weight of success by noticing which direction seems easy and right.

Try these questions to help you get in the mindset of letting it be easy.

•    What’s going your way?

•    What’s not going your way?

•    What do your answers suggest about what to do next? How can you let it be easy?

Take a step back every once in awhile. Notice where you’re struggling. Notice where it’s easy. Even if just for a while, try going the easy way. It may be the path of success. The Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu put it simply: Easy is right.

Many more ways to let success be easy are available in The Inner Edge: The Extension. This eBook provides 3 New Secrets to succeeding while “letting it be easy” that aren’t available anywhere else! Order your copy of The Extension today: visit www.TheInnerEdge.com.

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Learning By Chance, Learning by Choice

Leaders are encouraged to learn “on the job.” The problem is that many of us don’t. Either because we’re too busy, we forget, we don’t know what we need to learn, or we don’t have the resources we think we need, we end up learning by chance or command. Neither one is very powerful.

Learning by chance means you take opportunities to learn whenever they show up, but you don’t necessarily go looking for more. A conference brochure arrives; it seems interesting; you go. A friend recommends a book; it looks good; you read it. You take opportunities to learn as they come to you – in other words, when it’s convenient.

Learning by command means you learn when someone else demands it. When your colleagues tell you that you need to learn to be more decisive, or when your profession requires that you get an advanced certification, or when your boss sends you to a workshop to learn specific skills, you are learning by command.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these approaches to learning. Any learning that advances your expertise and builds your capacity may be worth your time.

Or it may not, and that’s the problem. You have so much potential, and there are so many opportunities to learn, and there is so much to be gained by learning that it simply doesn’t make sense to relegate your learning to the whims of chance and command. You need to learn by choice.

Learning by choice means carefully setting up your own learning opportunities based solely on what you need to get better results.

Learning by choice is based on a number of assumptions.

Learning is leadership. Learning is an essential component of leadership. Some experts go so far as to say learning is leadership, a leader’s constant quest for the improvement of the business, people, and results.

Learning is profit and competitive edge. The soul of business is innovation; the soul of personal leadership is the innovation of the self. You can’t have one without the other. If you want to have, run, or be part of a business that succeeds in a time of change, you need to be willing to change, as well.

Learning is life. In addition to learning for all of the practical and rational reasons that contribute to your effectiveness as a leader, there’s one more: learning is part of the fun of life. When was the last time you picked up a new sport, game or hobby? We learn these things not because we have to, but because we want to. Your vision and goals will be infused with a new sense of exuberance when you commit to learning what you need to learn in order to achieve them. You will know that you can do anything you want to as long as you know how to learn.

If you really want to lead well and live well, you must learn to learn well, too.

And if you’d like to master the ability to learn as a way of excelling as a leader and in your life, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find a free guide called Your Personal University to help you choose the most powerful way to learn.

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be making strategic decisions about how to learn and what to learn in order to excel as a leader and in your life. For more information, click here or email info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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Join the Leading Network (Yours!)

To get an edge – any edge, as a leader, in your life, on the competition, against your old limitations, toward your new self – you don’t have to go it alone.

In fact, you shouldn’t go it alone. You can do so much more with a team.

Call it a Mastermind, your “Dream Team,” an Imaginary Advisory Board, or just a good group of friends and associates, you will all go further faster when you support each other in your goals.

I’m not talking about doing the work, now (although a team is good for that, too). I’m talking about supporting each other in achieving your goals.

Here’s how Cheryl Scott, the former CEO of Group Health Cooperative, and now the Senior Advisor of Global Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, describes the experience.

“I joined a network of other Chief Operating Officers. We talked about what it was like to be a COO and be the #2. In this network, we started to explore our own personal leadership and personal mastery. It was transformational to me. I had never taken the time to think about it before that. When you’re in your 30s and early 40s, your career means a lot but it’s not necessarily about your own values and how to “leap from where you stand.” In two years of working with [my network], as we worked with great coaches and listened to Peter Drucker and read Peter Senge, it transformed the way I felt about my work. I started to think more purposefully about what I was about, what I brought, why I did what I did and how it connected to [my company] at the time. It really changed a how I thought about leadership. It became more personal.”

You can create your own network by asking yourself a few questions.

• Who do you admire?

• Who inspires you?

• How do you think they can support you?

• How can you support them?

• If you could get these people into a room all at one time and ask them the single most important question you have, how would that help you?

You now have your personal support team. All you need to do is invite them in.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Email Info@TheInnerEdge.com for more information.

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The Dream Team

Many leaders have heard of a Mastermind or a Personal Support Team. Another beneficial team I recommend for leaders who want to excel is one I fondly call The Dream Team.

A dream team is a loose collection of advisors who help you get where you want to be as a leader. You turn to them because you know that on your path to success, they are further along than you. These might include people like

• leaders you admire
• leaders who have the positions you want to hold
• leaders who have the skills you want to have
• leaders who have achieved what you want to achieve.

You meet with them one by one to ask them questions, seek their guidance, and learn from their experience.

Think of your dream team like Fantasy Football team. You never actually assemble these people; in this respect they aren’t a functioning “team.” However, like a real dream team, every member of this group has been hand-selected because together, they represent the best of everything you need to be the leader you aspire to be.

To set up a dream team, you brainstorm all of the people who you think would be good members of a team whose sole purpose is to help you win at the “game” of achieving your vision. You take some time to analyze the different ways they might be able to help, make a plan for eliciting their support, and start meeting with them one by one to see what you can learn.

To create your Dream Team, use these six steps.

1. Choose the “game.”
“Choose the game” means get clear on specifically why you want a dream team. What do you want to learn from meeting with your dream team members? As always, the answer should be tied to your vision. The focus of the game is learning. On your dream team you’re the rookie, if only in this one area of your life.

2. Pick the “players.”
“Pick the players” means being thoughtful and strategic about who gets on the team. This is not the time to hang out with good buddies and old friends; it’s a time to branch out and build new relationships with people from whom you can truly learn. Among the group, it is helpful to have:

Advocates. Advocates champion you, encourage you, and contribute directly to your success, perhaps by introducing you to influential people or making you a part of their team.

Experts. Experts have information and knowledge you need to be successful. Instead of learning it all the hard way, experts help you jump to new levels of awareness by sharing their experience.

Inspirations. Inspirations are people whose accomplishments make you want to be better yourself. As you watch a person who inspires you – whether that person is your most courageous colleague, a person who has risen to the top of her field, or just someone whose approach to life you admire – you are moved to a higher level of contribution and achievement.

These roles will often cross. In fact, people who can play more than one role on your team are often your strongest supporters.

3. Set the “rules.”
The “rules” of your dream team game are how you want to play. If you don’t set up the process in a way you’ll enjoy it, you’ll be less likely to see it through. Do you want your team members to meet with you for informal conversation? Or would you prefer a formal introduction with a letter and a follow-up phone call? Are you looking for a five minute meeting in person, a fifteen-minute phone call with another, a meeting over lunch? It’s a good idea to decide how you want the process to play out so you put your best foot forward and feel comfortable along the way.

4. Define a “win.”
What is the best case scenario for this dream team?
• Are you hoping to develop long term relationships?
• Do you just want a lot of information fast?
• Do you want complex information and are willing to talk to as many people as it takes to get there?
This step is important, because it respects the time of the leaders whose advice you’re seeking while also meeting the goals that matter most to you. If what you want is concrete advice on how to set up a sole proprietorship, you can get it in a series of short, one-shot interviews. On the other hand, if you want to become steeped in the culture of high-quality leadership, you’ll want to develop deeper, more substantial relationships with the people whose work you admire.

5. Get in the game!
“Getting in the game” means approaching the people you admire to be on your team – asking them to meet with you, talking to them, and applying what you learn as you work toward your vision. If a meeting with one of your dream team members turns out to be beneficial, great. Ask them if they would mind meeting again. If not, fine. You’ve made a good connection. Some of these conversations will turn out to be a waste of time. Others will turn into the kinds of mentorships that last a lifetime.

Remember, the work you do with your dream team is not pandering or political maneuvering. There should be nothing in this process that smacks of manipulation. These are genuine, respectful conversations with people you admire to request the support you would be willing to give someone who asked it of you.

You’ll eventually find you can achieve more, and faster, when you are supported by a strong and experienced team.

For guidance on creating your Dream Team, use the free Dream Team Planning Guide. (Click here or go to www.TheInnerEdge.com, click on Worksheets & Audios, and scroll down to the 7th Practice for more free guides.)

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be creating our unique Dream Teams to advance our visions with the support of those we see as our inspiration. For more information, click here or email info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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Three New Shortcuts to Maximize Your Time

One of my favorite topics to write, coach, and speak on is Maximizing Your Time. It’s not just a topic for me – it’s an obsession! Your time is too precious to waste. I’ve started a collection of good ideas for maximizing time (which is the Sixth Practice of Personal Leadership). Most of these are available in The Inner Edge, and even more in The Inner Edge Extension. Here are a three more for today.

A New Kind of Balance
Paul Melchiorre, VP of Global Strategy at Ariba, once reframed for me the topic of “balance.” He said, “It used to be that there was office time for your work and down time with your family.” Now, though, our PDAs, laptops and cell phones bring the office right home. Flex time, telecommuting, and compressed work weeks likewise bring family life right into the workweek. “It’s not like you have a work life and a play life anymore,” Paul went on. “It’s just your life.”

Paul had a good suggestion for managing the co-mingling of the various parts of our lives: Set Rules. Don’t answer the phone during dinner, for instance, or schedule a family breakfast if you know you’ll be working too late to make dinner. If work and home are to share your time, make sure they both get an equal part.

Fun on the Run
It’s not just that our work and home lives are so integrated that we have trouble maximizing our time. It’s also because we’re so busy. Who has time for the full work day and the homemade meal and the family time and the workout all in one day, everyday? (It can be done, mind you…I coach people how everyday!) In a full day, sometimes you’ve just got to double up.

My friend and client, Saly Glassman at Merrill Lynch, often has creative ideas for Maximizing Time. She once told me a very funny story about how much fun she and her daughters have as they run errands. A trip to CVS might not sound like the typical Family Fun Night, but given all the laughs they have, it can be equally as good! Exercising with your spouse, taking your kids on business trips, or cooking dinner as a family all offer ways to get in quality down time in the middle of a busy day (or life). You really can do more with less.

Interruptible Time
Personally, I find peace of mind in compartmentalizing. I like to separate my work life and my home life. It’s my way of finding focus and relaxing into the moment.

But I am coming to realize more and more how much people can make interruptible time work.

“Interruptible Time” is time that is scheduled for one thing but doesn’t require so much concentration that you can’t switch to something else that comes up. I am convinced that this how executive search consultant Christine Heidenreich can work seven days a week and feel perfectly balanced, or how the CEO of a health care association can enjoy a long day at the zoo with his nephews right in the middle of the week.

To practice interruptible time, it’s best to plan a bit ahead. Make a list of the tasks you have that you can easily “switch into.” For many people these include phone calls, but could also be reading or making simple decisions. Then look at your schedule to see when those tasks could be intermingled with others for an acceptable balance – for instance, on a low key Saturday or some evening after dinner.

As the world changes around us, we are all learning to adapt. Technology is transforming the human experience. Suggestions like these are surfacing where the people who have found peace with the changes can show the rest of us what to do.

Don’t worry. I’ll keep looking for more great ideas, and I’ll post them as I do!

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. For more information email Info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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10 Techniques to Make More Time

One universal barrier to living and leading well is time. Being your best takes time – time to think, time to plan, time to align to your most important priorities. Here are Ten Time-Saving Techniques to get you that time.

1. Start with what you want to do, not what you have to do.

With all of the different systems out there for helping people organize their time, I have found the most effective tool to be a blank piece of paper. Every day, get out one small blank sheet. A 4×6 note card works great.

1. On the top half, write in the appointments you have today.

2. In the spaces between the appointments, schedule uninterrupted time to work on your most important priority.

3. On the bottom half, write no more than three to five actions you must accomplish – or want to accomplish – before the day is done.

You will start every day focused and end it having moved on your goals.

2. Open and close up shop.

The beginning and end of the day are the most critical for saving time, because you use them to get your thoughts organized. Reserve the first and last hour of the day for yourself.

At the beginning of the day: Take the time to consult your action plan, assess your schedule, and plan your day.

At the end of the day: Tie up any loose ends, put away projects with a note about what to do next, revisit your action plans, schedule time in your calendar for important tasks, and ready your desk for when you return.

3. Set the boundaries.
To get extra hours for yourself, try these suggestions:

• Refuse to schedule meetings when you need time for yourself. Don’t make excuses. Your time alone is just as important as your time with others. You will be more available and present for them when you return.

• Extend your day. If your meetings usually start at eight, your hour for yourself starts at seven. If your day usually lasts until five, the “last hour” you reserve goes from five to six.

• Shrink your day. If adding two high-quality hours to your day is impossible, try cutting the time you make available to others. If you need to start your day at eight and end at five, then you’re available for appointments from nine to four.

• Sweeten the deal. Make your time for yourself nurturing. Treat yourself to a good cup of coffee and some music, or some other special indulgences, routines, and niceties to remind you that the time you save is special time for you.

• Get out of there. It’s easier to resist temptation if temptation can’t find you. Try taking your hours to yourself into private, either by closing your door or by getting away from the office.

Are there barriers that sometimes make it difficult to do this? Of course. But if you can discipline yourself to make it happen, you will learn that these hours do more to help you stay on top of your work and enjoy your life more than any other hours in the day. With just a little time to get focused, you will feel complete, clear, rested and renewed.

4. “Go to the library.”
When you look back on the times you’ve had to study – really study, for something important like your hardest exams – where did you go? For many of us, it was the library. You can recreate the space and silence of the library in your everyday life.

• Turn off the phone.
• Leave your PDA, Internet connection, pager and so on behind.
• Turn off your email.
• Escape to a quiet place, alone – a conference room, an empty office, a café, your kitchen table.
• Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Just slip away.

It is so hard to concentrate in our beeping, buzzing, urgent, ever-available world. But you will accomplish exponentially more if you can escape even for an hour at a time to a place where you can think and get things done.

5. Give yourself permission.
The most common words I hear when I help leaders look for time is, “I can’t.”

• “I can’t turn off my cell phone.”
• “I can’t schedule time for myself during the day.”
• “I can’t get out of work any earlier.”

Ask yourself: Whose permission do you need to do any of these things? Chances are the one who is holding you back is you.

6. Get permission.
If there really is someone who keeps you from getting the time you need to work on your inner as well as your outer edge, ask them for time.

• Ask your boss: “I need to find at least an hour a day of uninterrupted time to concentrate on important behind-the-scenes work and stay aligned to our/my priorities. When would be the most convenient time for me to do that?”

• Ask your employees: “We could all use time to get our work done. What time of the day or week would it be possible for us to agree not to schedule meetings?”

• Ask your family: “I need some time for myself to work on some of my personal priorities so that I can be my best here at home and also at work. Let’s make a plan for when I can have that time.”

As a mother of small children, I can tell you even toddlers understand that grown-ups need some time alone. Surely reasonable people around you (who also need time for themselves) can respect your needs to get time to yourself. Give them credit. Ask for their help.

7. Lop something off.
One reason it’s hard to get big chunks of good quality time is that we’re nibbling around the edges. An hour here, fifteen minutes there, squeezed between a hasty lunch and the nagging To Dos.

Think bigger. If your time for yourself is important, what is it more important than? Look in your life for a whole area that you can eliminate, saving you several hours in one fell swoop.

The trick is to find those activities that are less important than you really thought. You can do this both in your personal life and at work.

• Gina figured out most of her clients came from referrals. She lopped off networking events and saved several hours a month.
• Mahendra chose the most valuable of her social groups (five college friends) and lopped off book club, her parenting group, and the gourmet group and saved at least two hours a week.
• Tony realized he spent hours on yard work every weekend, and he didn’t even enjoy it. He hired the neighbor kid to mow and weed, lopping off a time-consuming chore and buying him half a day every week.
• Mik recognized how tense and grumpy all his meetings were making him. He made a list of the meetings he had to attend. They tallied up to over forty hours a week. He lopped off half of them by getting off two committees and finding more efficient ways to communicate. Then the meetings only tallied up to twenty hours.
• Brian counted up to three hours a day in traffic. He lopped off drive time by shifting his schedule for a less conventional commute, saving him over two hours a day.

Whether we want to admit it or not, we’re the ones who fill up our time. Lop off a hunk of the time you spend on lesser-value activities and you’ll suddenly have all the time you need.

8. Bring it in.
Many of us drive all over town out to do our errands. We drive out of our way to get to our favorite gym, then swing back across town to hit our preferred supermarket, then head all the way out the other way to meet friends for dinner. This unconscious habit eats up your time, adds to your stress and hurts the environment. To eliminate the waste, think about the places you go and experiment with ways to bring them in closer – closer to each other, closer to home, or closer to your route to and from work.

A client of mine who was a master at this technique changed her entire community from all over the city into a two-mile radius. She pulled her dry cleaners, gas station, bank, drug store, doctors, mechanic and gym all closer to home. You can do the same by filling in this sentence as many times as you can: “My is too far away. How can I bring it in?” Quality services are everywhere. Give up the need to travel for miles to get them.

9. Farm it out.
Just as effective as bringing your community in closer is the strategy of farming things out. In your personal life, have you ever considered farming out:
• your cleaning?
• your laundry?
• your errands?
• your personal accounting?
• your plant care?
• your cooking?
In your professional life, have you ever considered farming out:
• your filing?
• your phone calls?
• your meetings?
• your writing?
• your sales?
• your marketing?
• your travel?
If you have ever delegated any of these items, you know it’s possible to let others do some of the work so you can get more time to yourself. Challenge yourself. What else can you farm out? Put the word out. See who’s out there to help. Save yourself time.

10. Do the hardest thing first.
It’s stressful not to get to the things that matter to us, and it exacerbates the feeling that we never have enough time. Turn that situation around by doing the thing it’s hardest for you first. Whether it’s exercising in the morning, or working on your most challenging account first thing in the day, or making the difficult decisions before doing anything else, you will feel like you’ve saved time because the pressure is off. You will actually have saved time because you won’t waste it worrying and procrastinating.

What are your best techniques for saving time? Send them to us at www.theinneredge.com. Look for updated postings on the website to help you get the time you need for the practices of personal leadership that help you live and lead well.

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be “making more time” as we apply techniques that will reduce your stress and leave you feeling peaceful and able to achieve everything that’s important to your life. For more information, click here or email info@TheInnerEdge.com.