Time Vampires

The Urban Dictionary defines 'Time Vampires' as,

"Something or someone who literally sucks your time like a vampire sucks blood."

Dan S. Kennedy, the author for the "No B.S." series of business books who also profile himself as a strategic adviser, consultant, business coach, and editor of six business newsletters is famous for,

• not having a smartphone

• not having email or SMS

• requires that you only communicate to him by fax

Dan influences more than one million business owners annually and has a long track record of taking entrepreneurs to seven-figure incomes and multi-millionaire wealth.

He is known to call the people that keep you from being productive "time vampires."

He says "NO" to many things in order to create for himself a system that is effective for him.

You may not survive without a smartphone and need an email, therefore your system and what you need to say 'NO' to may be different from Dan.

In his book, "No B.S. Ruthless Time Management: Time Management for Entrepreneurs," he says,

"There’s nothing worse than having a whole day or week go by and feel you haven’t accomplished much. Even worse is having a month, year or even several years pass only to feel you should be doing much better."

The point is not to let Time Vampires suck your time away.

Let's take a look at three points we can learn to handle Time Vampires...

Identify and Eliminate Time Vampires

Dan describes "Time Vampires" as things or mostly people that drain your time and energy in a way that is unproductive in relationship to their value. He calls them, “Needy, thirsty, selfish, vicious creatures who, given an opportunity, will suck up all of your time and energy…”

Your first step to ridding yourself of time vampires is to recognize them.

• People that interrupt you

• Phone calls, social media, emails, texts or faxes

• Meetings

• People that make everything seem urgent

Identify all of your vampires and then make a plan for how you will cut them off.

For example, you work with people who either can’t or won’t differentiate between unimportant and non-urgent issues.

The solution to address this time vampire is “to interrupt the interrupter” and tell the person their issue must wait until the next day.

Sometimes, you may have to just get away from them to get work done.

• What are your time vampires?

• Do you have plans in place for how you will stop them in their tracks?

• What do you need to say 'NO' to on a more regular basis?
  

• Are there people or places that you need to stay away from?
  

Be A Self-Discipline Master

If you were to observe the most successful people, you will see a recurring theme. It is the importance placed on consistency, commitment, discipline and habits.

They will set work hours, dedication to keeping consistent work plans and an unwillingness to compromise on those work plans for just about anything else.

Dan shared his experience that he’s noticed since he lost weight and is in better control of his physical condition that his income has gone up. He believes this is a reflection of “an unconscious preference on clients’ part to have confidence in, to trust, to give money to, to meet the fee demands without question of someone who appears to have self-esteem, self-control, and self-discipline."

If you want to get an edge on life, Dan says, “Self-discipline is the magic power that makes you virtually unstoppable.”

Think about the following:

• What consistent work plans can you put in place?

• Are you disciplined or could you use some work in this area?

• Do you stick to your work plans or do you too easily distracted and put these aside when someone wants you to do something?

• Do you have a habit of saying 'YES' to everything…be it getting on a call, go to lunch, join in a meeting, answer a “quick question?”

Focus on Work that Directly Produces Wealth

One of the key factors to success is to always be looking for ways to invest less time in work and get more dollars in return.

That means prioritizing the things which make you money and ignoring or delegating the things that don’t.

By now, you have read any of Dan's books, it is the emphasis on, creating systems for things such as:

• attracting prospects

• converting them into paying clients/customers/patients

• engaging with these paying audience

The idea of investing and creating these systems once and then continue to produce for you even when you are away.

He has many traditional business audience.

In our online business, we are already sold into automation as our websites are designed as niche income sites to attract our target market.

We can look to improve on the following:

• What additional processes can we put in place to attract more traffic?

• How can increase our efficiency in return on time/money/effort invested?

• What else can we leverage to increase our profit opportunity?

• How else can we leverage the work that we do?

• Is there a way to increase the amount of wealth created from our work?

Being more mindful about time vampires and taking action by saying 'NO' can help you build a habit to time effectiveness.

Do you have good time management habits?

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Eliminate and avoid time vampires...