055: Rory Vaden - Multiply Your Time The Smart Way

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Today's show is all about how to multiply time. The big thing is we're all trying to manage time. We want to talk to you today and show you how to multiply your time. We're talking today with the author of Procrastinate on Purpose and Take the Stairs, New York Times bestseller, former speaker. You're going to love this show. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and Gazelle's business coach, Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is Rory Vaden from Nashville. Rory is the best selling New York Times author of Take the Stairs and Procrastinate on Purpose. And we're going to talk all about this idea of how do you stop managing managing time but multiplying your time? How do you have a breakthrough in this? I know this is of interest of pretty much everyone that we talk to. Even those of you who are masters of time are interested in new ways of thinking about time. We're going to see how it's not a simple, logical kind of thing, but there's actually an emotional access to something here that's really cool. So I think you're going to really love today's show. So I want to welcome to the show Rory Vaden. Welcome to the show, Rory.

Hey, Bill. Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.

Great. You're in Nashville today.

Yeah, I am in Nashville. I'm at home for once, which is nice.

And I'm at home today too, but only because there's construction around my office and even in the sort of the studio area, it's too noisy to record any podcasts. I'm home today on the home studio, so hopefully this mic works as well as yours. And anyway, so I, I'm excited to have you on the show. I, I have to confess, when you spoke at our Gazelle's Fortune Scaling Up Summit, I did not hear your whole talk. I came in, I think, on the tail end of it and you were already maybe a third of the way in and stuff. And I'm like, oh, this is great. I got to get you on the, on the podcast because I think there's some unique and fresh approaches here that really open up something for that. So thanks for coming on the show.

Yeah, absolutely.

So before we get into the big idea, Right. We all know people are going to learn a little something about how they don't have to work so hard managing time, but can find some ways to multiply time. And you've got some great principles. Let's talk about how you got into this. Tell us kind of your background, where you come from. Give us a little taste of your story. I know you're an actual entrepreneur. You've got an eight figure business with 150 people and you're the co founder of that. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you got into this and the arc of your story.

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I was raised by a single mother who sold Mary Kay cosmetics. And so I joke that I know more about makeup than I do about cars. And I. But I grew up around salespeople, specifically women who were in business and sales. And so I, when I was in college, I went to Denver University and was studying. My undergrad was accounting, actually. And I was this sort of shy, nerdy kid at DU and Dollars Unlimited, as I like to sometimes think of it. And so I was trying to figure out a way to pay for school. And I got recruited to work in this summer program called Southwestern Advantage. And I did this for five summers where I actually sold educational children's reference books 14 hours a day, six days a week on straight commission, paying all of my own expenses door to door in the summer and really got my training there over five summers. And my first summer I made about $17,000, made over $50,000 each of the next four summers. Made about a quarter million dollars when I was in college, just in the summers doing this and learned all about sales and running a business doing that, and then left that business, entered a contest called the World Championship of Public Speaking for ToastMasters. And there's 25,000 people from 90 countries that compete. I didn't win. I came in second in the world. As Seinfeld would say, I was the number one loser. But that is how I Met Zig Ziglar. A man named Zig Ziglar. He introduced himself to me personally and we became good friends and I traveled with him. In the next couple years I'd be backstage with him at the big events, got to know his family and he mentored me. And about that time we started Southwestern Consulting. And similar to you, we are a coaching business different from you, we do exclusively sales coaching. So we coach salespeople and sales managers on driving top line revenue. And we started with four of us back in 2006. And yeah, so today our team is about 150 people and we're a healthy eight figure business. And so we do one on one coaching. And so we, even though we do sales coaching, the number one reason, the number one challenge clients say that they have is managing their time and keeping up with the emails and the paperwork and being pulled with all of the follow up with past customers and. And that's just the big challenge. And that's. And so the last four years or so we did very, very in depth research on how are the most successful people in the world thinking about time and do they agree with the cliches that you hear? Do they believe in work life balance? Do they believe in planning your week out on Sunday night? Do they use to do lists? Do they use calendars? Do they believe in importance and urgency and Dr. Covey's time management matrix? And, and what we found is that for a lot of it they do. But there's two major differences that the world's ultra performers in terms of how they think these top 1 percenters and two major differences in how they think about time compared to everybody else. And that you know, findings is what we put out in our, our second book, Procrastinate on Purpose 5 permissions to multiply time.

That's really cool. So we're gonna still get into that. I love though that not everybody in my world today knows who Zig Ziglar was. And I grew up, my dad was a professional speaker and he studied speakers and things like that. And I was really from tapes to. I can't. I don't think I ever met. Well, I know that I didn't ever meet Zig Ziglar, but I feel so like he's so familiar to me and.

He had that effect on everybody. I mean amazing man.

So familiar. Somebody yesterday or not yesterday, like a week ago gave me a round to it. I'm like that's awesome. I'm like that's totally like reminds me of Zig and He's like who?

It's funny.

And there's an exercise I learned years later that I still use frequently with people. Especially like one on one with, with leaders. Not so much in a team setting where I do most of my work today, but in one on one. Sometimes I'll do bido have exercises with people and I've done that with and also with rising leaders be do have exercises. And I think it's one of those things that's in the background. I don't know if Zig invented it but. But he's the first person I know who sort of where I heard it talked through and I've used it in other settings and I've seen other people use it. But that whole notion of, you know, we normally think we we're going to have to have something and then we'll do certain things and then we'll be a certain way and you could actually flip it around and discover something that you could be now and do now that would give you what you want very soon. And I practice that all the time in every area of life. Sometimes pretty unconsciously, like there's a way of being that's that's hidden from me now but that's available now that would change everything. And I find that thing and then I be that now. It's often pretty shocking to people around me.

Yeah, it's good stuff.

Back to your thing and your insight. I was definitely though, like boom, you had me in my own world again. So tell us about, I don't know, example or two of this in action and what you saw before we dive into the kind of core ideas of it before we pick it apart. Why don't you paint a picture for us or share a story of it?

Well, I think for me, obviously our lives every single day is we're working one on one with people and we do research, so we do statistical sampling, we do polling, we do national studies, we also read lots of whatever books, academic journals, et cetera and we do all this stuff. But the big breakthrough for me happened. I learned this from a 3 year old. And what happened, Bill, as I was at my business partners, one of my business partners, one of the other founders, his name is Dustin and I was at Dustin's house on a Saturday morning early because we had our big international leaders planning retreat and so we don't normally work on Saturday. But I was going over there to pick Dustin up on the way to this retreat and we're trying to sneak out of his house and he has this Little three year old girl at the time named Haven. And she's the cutest little girl. She has this big, you know, like curly Q brown hair and these sweet puppy dog eyes, like brown eyes and a little southern accent, right? Because we live in Nashville and we're tiptoeing out of the house and she hears him and so she comes sprinting down the hallway and she runs down the hallway and she leaps and she latches onto Dustin's leg and she looks at him and she goes, daddy, where are we going? And he looks down at her and he says, oh, I'm sorry, baby Haven, Daddy actually has to go to work today. And her eyes well up with tears and she says, no, daddy, please no work today. Daddy, please no more work. And in that moment, Bill, I realized two things. The first is that I'm not ready for children quite just yet, actually. It's funny, I now have an 11 week old and he's in the room right next to me, so. Oh wow, things do change. So we got our first little baby and he's awesome. It's been amazing. But actually, the thing that I really learned in that moment was it dawned on me that everything I had ever learned about time management was all about calendars. It was like tips and tricks, tools and technology, calendars and checklists, ways to organize your to do list, or your office or your workflow, or ways to plan out your week or it was all logical. And in that moment, it finally dawned on me that time management isn't just logical. Today, time management is emotional. And it is our feelings of guilt and fear and worry and anxiety and our desire to feel successful and valued and important. Those emotions that happen at the subconscious level, those are driving our decisions about how we actually choose to spend our time as much as anything that is in our inbox, on our calendar, or on our to do list. And so time management isn't just logical, it's emotional. In fact, time management is a complete misnomer. You cannot manage time. Time goes on whether we like it or not. The whole word is kind of stupid because it's like you can't fast forward time, you can't rewind time, you can't pause time. Time ticks by whether we like it or not. So there is no such thing as time management. There is only self management. Managing yourself, which includes managing your emotions and managing your behaviors. And that's what this is really about. And until you understand that there is no such thing as time management, only self management. And that that is an emotional issue, then you will never be able to multiply time. And that was the first big epiphany for me. And that's the first big way that multipliers think different from everybody else.

I think it's really great. Whenever I've taught time management, I don't haven't taught it from the perspective of yours. And of course I've used the word time management. But one of the things that I do definitely address is the emotional space. And mostly I'm talking about all the emotions associated with a feeling of overwhelm. So overwhelm. And then surrounding things of like, I just have too much to do. And, and we do this a lot with teams when doing prioritization, like, look, you've got a big old to do list. You've got stacks of pa, your desk, You've got maybe a full email in basket. You've got messages coming at you. You've got people calling you and asking for things. You've got a world of things demanding you to do things. And in the end, you're only going to do certain things. You're only going to do so many things. And some of those things are going to include like, goofing off and whatever. And then one day, so far as we know, all of us are going to come to the end of our life. And at the end of our life, then all of our friends and family are going to gather around and they're going to say nice things about us, regardless of the fact that we still had things to do. If we're still in a sort of active, productive relationship, our spouse is going to still have things that are on their list that we're supposed to be doing. And if we're still working, like whatever, at the end of our lives, there's still things that are undone. So if you just get that, it's never actually going to get done. You could let it go and realize all that's going to get done is what's going to get done. And all you're doing is what you're doing. And so then that spending makes a difference. Right. How could you use it, spend it like that? And that's what I'm hearing and what you're saying that really validates that idea. The approach there of that I think is cool. So thanks.

Yeah, well, and I think, you know, you talk about using time.

Yeah.

Spending time. But the second major difference which really leads us to how do you multiply time? Is actually it's not using time or spending time, it's investing time. In fact, the way that wealthy people think about money is exactly the same way that multipliers think about time.

Right, Spend versus invest.

Well, yeah. And so most people are probably familiar with Dr. Covey's time management matrix, which really changed the world as we thought about time. And he if you're not familiar with it, it's real simp. Y axis is important, the X axis is urgency. And before pre Dr. Covey, all of time management strategy was very one dimensional. We refer to it as era one thinking because it was all about efficiency, do things faster. It's not that efficiency is bad, all things being equal. Efficiency is good if you don't compromise quality. But there is a point of diminishing returns to efficiency as a strategy relating to your time, which is very well evidenced by the fact that today we all carry these miniature computers in our pockets, the cell phones, and we have more tools and technology to help us move faster than ever before and communicate faster than ever before. But yet we know that most people still feel behind. Most people still leave the office at the end of the day feeling like there's more emails than they can ever get to. And so it's not that efficient, that you shouldn't be efficient, but that strategy isn't going to create margin in your life. Well, Dr. Covey single handedly ushered in a new era of time management thinking. We refer to it as two dimensional thinking or era two thinking, which is where the Y axis is importance and the X axis is urgency. And what Dr. Covey's matrix taught us is that not all tasks are created equal and that some are more important and urgent than others. And so he taught us to not manage our time by doing things efficiently, but to prioritize our time by focusing first on what matters most. That was a big evolution in the thinking in the productivity space. Now what's funny and fascinating about that is that do you know what year the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was written, Bill?

You know, I did know. And is it the late 50s?

No, it's actually much later than that. It was the year 1989 is when it was first published. The 7 habits was 7 habits of highly Effective People.

That's so funny. I think of it as being really older.

Yeah, but what's fascinating about it is most of us still operate in that two dimensional paradigm. And the problem is that the book that was written in 1989 doesn't really solve our problem. Like you can't solve. Like if you think about the world today, the world is completely and radically different than 1989. I mean, in 1989, you don't have cell phones, you don't have Internet, you barely have email, you don't have text message, you don't have Google, you don't have social media, like, you don't have SEO, like you. The whole world is different. And you can't solve today's time management challenges using yesterday's time management strategies.

But some of those principles are pretty universal, right?

Well, for sure, the principles are universal. And so when we went out to the multipliers in these, like, top 1 percenters, and we start asking them about their opinions on time and their philosophies about time, what we found was not that they had discarded anything that the brilliant Dr. Covey said or any of the other great time management thinkers of the past have said in a lot of ways, but what they had done is they had subconsciously added to it. They had added a third calculation, which we now refer to as the significance calculation. Thinking back to high school algebra, if you were looking at a graph, the significance calculation would be the z axis. It's turning that square into a cube. And significance is different than importance and urgency, because importance is how much does something matter. If it costs a lot of money, it matters a lot. Or if it affects somebody that you love, that is very important. Urgency is how soon does something matter, Right? Like, if it matters now versus if it matters later. But significance is different. Significance is how long is this going to matter? In other words, how is this going to affect tomorrow and the next day and the next day. And so while most people wake up every day and they still ask themselves the question, what's the most important thing I have to do today? That is not the question that multipliers ask, because multipliers have realized, like, when you ask the question, what's the most important thing I can do today? What we typically do is we look at our to do list and we go, wow, I have a hundred things on my to do list or in my inbox that I could do. And after you take out all of the meetings I'm already scheduled in, the calls I already have on the calendar, and any urgent deadlines that absolutely must be handled today, I may only have a couple hours open in my day to actually choose to do work. And we realize we're not going to get all 200 of those things done. And so what we typically default to is choosing the task by which we can get the most number of tasks done in the short window of time we have available, which is the opposite of how a multiplier would think. A multiplier would say success isn't related to the volume of tasks that we complete, but to the significance of them in terms of what their impact is on tomorrow. So this brings us really to the premise, Bill, in one sentence, the way that you multiply time. And this is the premise of the TED Talk and of the Procrastinating on Purpose book. So, you know, make sure you capture this. You don't want to miss this if you're listening. The way you multiply time is by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. You spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow.

Hmm. So tell us what that means. What does that look like? So I give myself the emotional permission to spend time on something today. How do I get more time tomorrow? Tomorrow's 24 hours.

Okay, so let me address your part about the 24 hours, and then I'll give you a specific example. And this is radical stuff. Like, the first time you hear it, you kind of have to sit with it. But so people say multiply time. Like when they first hear it, they think that we mean it. Like we're talking about it as a superlative. Or is it an exaggeration, like a marketing gimmick? Like, hey, we could show you how to multiply time. No, I think about it.

I think about. Maybe others think about the same way. I think immediately I'm going to take a coaching call while I do a five mile run. That's what I think. There's my time multiplier.

That's not. That is not multiplying time. That's the myth of multitasking, right? You're trying to do two things at once. Multiplying time is about creating time, not trying to do two things at the same time. Let me give you an example. Let's say automatic bill pay, right? So if I asked you, I said, hey, do you have two hours open in your calendar today that you would go through and set up online bill pay?

Oh, God, yeah.

Most of us would say, no, I don't have two hours open in my calendar. And Rory, if I did have two hours in my calendar, I would not use bill pay. That's. That is not important. Online bill pay is not an important part of my life. Why would I do that? That's the. That's the biggest waste of time ever. But a multiplier would say, wait a minute, let's think about this. Because if I spend two hours Today setting up online bill pay and it saves me 30 minutes every month of paying my bills. Then after four months time, I will have broken even on that investment of time. And every month thereafter I will be getting something. This is a concept we introduce in the book Roti return on time invested. It will be multiplying time. That one behavior that I chose to do today, I gave myself permission to do it. And I might have had to put off something else that was urgent in order to create the margin to have those two hours. But I gave myself permission to do it because it multiplies my time tomorrow. It creates more time for me tomorrow because that system is handling it. And it's a radical different way of thinking. Like coming back to the paradigm of 24 hours. It is true that we all have the same 24 hours in a day, which is 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds. But that's exactly the problem. Most of us evaluate our decisions and our tasks in the context of a one day paradigm. We sit there and we say, what's the most important thing I have to do today? But that's not how multipliers think. Multipliers are not thinking about a 24 hour paradigm. They're thinking about years and years paradigm. They're thinking, what can I do right now that makes the most impact tomorrow? Not what's the most number of things I can get done in the 24 hour window that I have? And that that perspective changes everything, radically changes the way you prioritize everything.

Totally got it.

So it helped. Now the question is, okay, so now you got it right. Time management is emotional, not just logical. And you multiply time by spending time on things today to give you more time tomorrow. What we call the significance calculation. So now the question is, okay, how the hell do I apply this to my life or to my business? That's where people go, okay, really cool, really smart. Like I kind of get it. And I could see how it be powerful. How do I apply it to my business? Well, that is where we created what is called the focus funnel. And the focus funnel is our attempt to create a visual depiction that codifies the unconscious thought process that multipliers go through whenever they're evaluating which tasks they should do and which ones they're not going to do. And it's a sequence. They process, they ask a series of five questions, basically these. And they go through this process systematically, perpetually, all the time, every time. But for most of them, they were doing it unconscious. And so when we codified it, we are bringing it into the conscious mind, which is why it's becoming, it's so, so powerful.

So let's go through those questions then and give people the picture of it. And of course we'll have a backup of these ideas and we'll point you to links and so on, but we'll have these again in the show notes. So just get them now. And why don't you take us through the funnel?

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll try to give you like a high level overview and you can go, if you go to procrastinateonpurpose.com There's a free one hour webinar where you can see the funnel and I do a free one hour training on how it all works. And so perfect, you know, put a link to that in the show notes or whatever. Procrastinateonpurpose.com but so if you picture a funnel bill at the top of the funnel, everything is coming in. Your tasks, your emails, your to do items, your sticky notes. Like just think of all that coming in the funnel.

Yep.

The very first question, which is also the first way that you multiply time, is can this be eliminated? Can this be eliminated? Is this even worth doing? And here's the trick about this. You go, okay, why does eliminating something, how does that multiply time? Like if I'm in the way it is, is because anytime you say no to something today, it creates more time for you tomorrow because it prevents you from doing something you would have otherwise been doing. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay, so it's really a matter of saying no.

But does that mean like because I say no in different ways sometimes I say no never, or no, not now, or someday, but not now.

So we're going to talk about those. So what we're talking about with eliminate is no, never. That's what we're talking about here.

That's a good idea. I'm never doing that.

Yes, we're going to talk about no, not now. We're going to talk about that later. Which by the way, just to tell you what you just said there, no, not now. That's what we call procrastinate on purpose, which is where the title of the book comes from. We'll get to that. But eliminate is no, not ever. And it requires you to say no. But most of us, including me. So this one was probably, this is the hardest one for me to probably implement on. And as a small business owner, I can share a personal story of how this radical changed our business. Once I finally got My head straight. But I remember when I was conducting the profile with one of the multipliers, I said, you know what? I disagree with you. I said, I don't like this. I've gotten to where I am by being a yes man, by taking advantage of opportunity, by doing. By saying yes to things and trying things. And they said, well, Rory, that's fine, but what got you here won't get you there, because that is the dumbest thing that I have ever heard. They said, that's not what actually got you to where you are. Because that doesn't even make sense. Like, you think you're going through life never saying no. You think that you're always saying yes, but what you don't realize is that you are always saying no to something. Anytime you are saying yes to one thing, you are simultaneously saying no to an infinite number of others. And you're either consciously saying no to the things that don't matter, or you end up unconsciously saying no to the things that do matter. And so that first permission is the permission to ignore. And the way that you. The emotion you're battling here is guilt. Usually feeling obligated that I have to do something. Well, absent the significance calculation, I feel obligated to do something. But when I make the significance calculation, I start thinking differently. And I ask the question, if I say yes to this, what am I saying no to as a result? And in the context of that calculation, it's easier for me to say no to something that I would have otherwise said yes to. And because I say no to it, I'm multiplying time tomorrow that I wouldn't have normally had.

Got it.

So when you think about the to do list, right, Bill, like, you know, you take a time management course. Gotta have to do lists. Gotta have to do list. Okay, it's not that to do lists are bad, really. I use a to do list. I have one right here, you know, I have one right here in front of me. But to do lists are not really the answer in the next generation. Next generation time management is more about deciding what not to do than deciding what you should do. Because today we have more options than ever before, and we have to become, like, sculptors. You know, sculptors are interesting artists because most artists, their art is created by. They start with a blank slate, and then they add something to it. Well, sculptors, the sculptor's principle says that perfection is achieved not when nothing more can be added, but when nothing more can be taken away. And that's how multipliers think. It's all about. It starts with what can I eliminate? So eliminate is the first rung that's at the top of the funnel. That is the one where we have the widest swath of opportunity to multiply time. Because we're doing a bunch of things that we really don't need to be doing that we can say no. Like no is a complete sentence. And I'll give you the real life example. So at Southwestern Consulting, when we first started the company, Bill, we started as a seminar company. And so we started with the four of us. We started making cold calls out of a yellow pages phone book. And we offered companies to go and we would do a free workshop, a free sales training workshop for their sales team. And then we would sell them a ticket to come to our one day conference. That's how our business model started. Well, we grew that to be about two and a half million dollar business, which is a pretty good, you know, small business. We had about maybe 10 or 12 people in the company. And after between 2006, we did about a half million dollars our first year. We crossed a million our first full calendar year actually, which was 2007. By 2008 we had grown it to about 2 million. But by 2012 we were still only doing 2 million. So we did about a four year window where we had flat growth and our profits were very, very thin. We were making less than $100,000 profit on 2 million bucks. Because these live events are very expensive. The venues and the coffee and blah, blah, blah. Well, what we realized is we figured out that, you know, our clients were saying, hey, this one day event was great. What do we do after the event? How do I execute this and implement it in my life? So we had started selling coaching at the events because people were begging for it. It wasn't like our grand idea. Our customers were saying what now? Like what after the event? So we started doing coaching. Well, we started coaching in 2009, but by 2012 it had finally like it started really small and it had grown. It was still only a few hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue, but the profit margin on it was much, much higher. Okay, so we're talking like north of 20%. And so we made a decision in 2012 to completely shut down the seminar business. It was almost our entire business. And we transferred our sales force that instead of selling tickets to live events, we like cold turkey, switched to doing. They still did workshops, but instead of selling a ticket to live event, they sold coaching. And we figured out how to sell coaching without Doing the live event, which is still the model that we use today, is we go do a free workshop and then we sell coaching at the end of it. Well, we went from 2012 at 2 million. By 2015 we were over 10 million. And the last two years we've been, you know, growing, you know, tremendously more than 30%. And it was a drastic decision to eliminate which was the largest part of our revenue. Now, I'm not saying you should eliminate the largest part of your revenue in your business, but you should be thinking about it differently and asking the significance calculation what creates legs like coaching matters tomorrow. It's a long term, it's a recurring revenue thing. Seminars were a one time purchase. That's more of like an urgency type of thing. So in your business, what are the things that really create profits and money tomorrow, not just today. What are the things that are scalable? Right. Scaling up, to use Vern's term and you know, Gazelle's, and what you guys all do and thinking in terms of multiplying time is scaling up, which is why Vern and I became such good friends. You know, multiplying time applied to business strategy is like the whole, you know, scaling up philosophy.

Yep. So we go through Eliminate, Automate and Delegate, right?

Yeah. And we're not going to be able to get through all five. I mean, just based on our time here, we're not going to get through all of them. But yeah. So Automate is a key one that would be a good one to talk about. Or Delegate is also a key one that would be a good one to talk about.

But there are stages of not doing stuff, really finding opportunities to make something. So it's like Automate is like your billing example, Right. Could I set up something so I don't ever have to do it again?

Yes. Yeah. It's setting up a process and one of the catchphrases from automation. So one of the things we do is we help companies set up their CRM, like their automated, you know, marketing automation and sales pipeline management and CRM. That's one of the things we do at Southwestern Consulting. Well, automation is to your time, what compounding interest is to your money.

Absolutely. Yep.

And so that's a big catchphrase, you know, from the book and TED Talk and stuff. But yeah, if you, the goal is if you can't eliminate it, then you say, can it be automated? If it can't be automated, it drops down to the bottom of the funnel. Can it be delegated? If it can't be delegated then that task falls out the bottom of the funnel. So it makes it through the funnel. And there's one key remaining question left, which is must this be done now or can it wait until later?

Right.

If it must be done now, that's concentrate. And that means it's going to multiply your time and you should do it. And there's a whole set of strategies there. If it can't, if it's, if it doesn't need to be done now, then that is where it's not eliminate, Automate, Delegate, or concentrate, but procrastinate on purpose. We call it POP for short, which is where the title of the book comes from. And you don't procrastinate on it forever. You just pop that activity back to the top of the focus funnel where it enters into a holding pattern where that activity continues to cycle through the focus funnel until at one point in the future, it either gets eliminated, automated, delegated, or the. It'll. The answer to the question, can this wait anymore? Will shift from yes, it can, to no, it cannot. And then it slides down into concentrate.

So let's. Let me, Let me just check in on that. And, and we're getting, we're going to end up with a little long in the show, so we should probably. I think we're getting the round of the idea. But when I hear the procrastinate on purpose. Right, the pop it, the two ways that I handle that and just. And that I've taught others to handle it is one, pick the time that it's going to happen. So that would be one category would be say, okay, I'm not doing this now, but I'm going to do it next quarter or I'm going to do it next week or tomorrow, or I pick sometime in the future. I see this needs doing, I see the value of it, and that why I need to give it some time. It's not this next moment or even the next 24 hours, but I give it some time in the future that that specified, and then I put it there so I don't have to worry about it anymore. So I put it into next quarter's draft plan, or I put it into my calendar next week or some other time, and I put in the time to actually do it or think about it or work on it in a time that seems designed well for that. So that's the one way it's not now, but I've given it some future time. And then the other one is it's not now and I Don't know when exactly. And then that tends to go into a list of, I'm not doing this now, but I'm doing this. And that's a list that I review periodically to say, okay, does that go into this quarter, this next week, or whatever? It's an undated, unpromised thing. And then I'm pretty careful with myself and others that, like, I definitely want to do this, and I don't see yet when to do it, but I'm procrastinating it. Does that fit with what you're talking about, those approaches?

Yeah, so I think so. The first one, I was almost going to say, I disagree with you, because when I think procrastinating on purpose, we're not saying. We're not committing to when we're going to do that. The nuance, which you kind of covered with the second one, but the nuance I would say, is, at some point in the future, I'm going to reevaluate this, but I'm not committed to it yet because. Because a quarter from now, your business could look entirely different. And so the. The construct of it's. The circumstances are completely changed, so you can't commit to it because you got it. It's got to be evaluated in the context of the circumstances. And I think. I think you nailed that with the second one. Now there's. And so you go, but, yeah, that's what procrastinating on purpose is. Now, it's interesting because people will tell me, Bill, they go, wait a minute, Rory. And take the stairs. So that was. That was our first book. And take the stairs. You said procrastination was the killer of all success. You said procrastination was the foundation of a mediocre life. You said the whole book was about how to overcome procrastination and do the things you know you should do and take the stairs. And now you're saying procrastinate on purpose. Well, it might on the surface seem like contradictory messages, but they are not at all. Because there's a big difference in waiting to do something that you know you should do, that you don't feel like doing versus waiting, because you're deciding intentionally that now is not the right time. So waiting to do something that you know you should do that you don't feel like doing. Like, I know I should go to the gym. I don't feel like doing it. I know I should make the sales call. I don't feel like doing it. I know I need to do the budget for next year. I don't feel like doing it. I know I need to start my tax. I don't feel like doing it. That's procrastination. That's bad. That's killer of all success. That is foundation of mediocre life. Like, that's not good. That's different from saying, you know what? I'm not sure this is the right time for our business to, to start embracing whatever social media.

Right, right, right, right.

This. Or whatever. So. So inaction that results from indulgence is procrastination, but inaction that results from intention is patience. It's procrastinating on purpose. It's. It's strategic.

Yeah, totally got that. Totally get that.

And I think your two things cover that.

Yeah, they do. Yeah. In one case you're actually picking a time. It's just not the, the most immediate time. In the other case, you're saying, this is interesting and I got no idea. But I think in either case there's an intentionality and a being straight with yourself and the people around you that, yeah, it's a good idea. It's like, okay, at some point I'm going to clean the storage room and tool shed behind our house. Right. But just to be clear with myself and my wife, I have no commitment to doing that now. And I can relax because it's a good idea, but I'm not working on it. But it's in a someday and I need a good reason to bring it into the something specific.

Funny that. That's, that's. Yeah. So that.

Well, we all have something like that. Like in the greater sense. Yes, that should be doing. But, you know, to give up a perfectly good day when I should be sitting on the deck enjoying now and having a beer, like, you know, sometimes that's maybe more important to me.

Well, and so, you know, if you go to procrastinateonpurpose.com, you can watch the. If you want more, you want to share it with your team or whatever, it really is powerful. You can see the focus funnel and I do a whole training on it and you can get the rest of the project stuff there.

I think everybody will get a lot of freedom for doing this. I encourage you all to go to procrastinatingonpurpose.com and see it and notice the opportunity for multiplying and notice the emotional aspects of your decision making around time and invite you to find that and embrace that with your current sort of time management, time investment strategies. And then I want to remind folks, if you want to get reminded of these podcasts every week. We've got new content plus we've got our tools and articles and tips and things on scaling up your business and developing your own own your yourself as a leader in the process and all you need to do to get that is go to scalingusiness.com and and that'll take you to our main website and then either subscribe or download the growth guide there and either one will get you on a regular things and you'll get these updates and you won't have to go looking for them. Once again I want to thank Rory for joining the show today. I think it was a fascinating show. You definitely had me engaged. I know if you're showing up being a fan few minutes shorter, apologize for going a little long, but I think it was a great topic and great conversation today. So thanks again for being on the show with us.

Rory oh my gosh Bill, I appreciate so much the compliment of you having me and the last thing I would just leave everybody with is until you accomplish your next most significant priority, everything else is a distraction.

That's a wrap until next time. Scaling a Business Podcast Bill Galler Go to Rory's site. Go to my my site. Subscribe, download, do all the good things. Talk to you later.

Bye bye.

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