If you use the approach that got you here, you’ll likely stay here… and you’ll never find out what could have been possible.
This week, you have an opportunity that won’t be yours much longer, so use it. You have the calendar for a new year open before you, and it’s a canvas on which you can create a masterpiece year that will be featured in the gallery of your lifetime. Which is better: another bucolic scene with grazing sheep? Or, an epic painting that captures the conquest that changed the course of history?
Forget everything you ever learned about Time Management; what you learned about Time Management (TM) was simply a clever way to rearrange the clutter of demands that you call a “life.” Hit the “delete button” and get ready for a reset.
You’re ready to use Time Leadership (TL). Management maintains status-quo; leadership initiates powerful change. TM was a means to squeeze more from hours and minutes; TL will change the way you allocate days. With TM, your smallest unit was a half-hour; with TL, you work with half-days: morning (breakfast-lunch); afternoon (lunch-dinner), and evening (dinner-bedtime). You have 21 half-days every week, and they are the blocks with which you build the cathedral you call “life.”
You have three varieties of half-days possible, though you’ve probably allowed one type to dominate your life. The three variations to use are:
- Sabbath: lacking in most stories, these are the scheduled periods of rest/renewal/restoration/ relationships that were modeled by God in Genesis 1, and mandated by Moses in Exodus 20. You need 15% of your half-days set-aside for things that begin with “re-” These are high-value times; plan to invest them well!
- Focus: these are the closed-door, phone-off, single-emphasis segments (half-day: three hour minimums) that are game-changers. “What is he/she doing in there?” is the mystery for the  managers: it’s your Bat-cave, where – in seclusion – leaders conceive and pursue the initiatives that put points on the scoreboard and wins in the season record. At work, at home, in the realm  of the Kingdom: anywhere you’re leading, you must allocate Focus time. Without it, your claims of leadership are unfounded; with it, you’ll give propulsion to the dreams that become your greatest achievements, and make the most powerful memories.
- Buffer: these are the “between” times that just happen, without intentionality. No effort is required to have a Buffer day; in fact, most of 2017 was – by default – Buffer, for you. It’s a Buffer day when you show up – door open, phone blazing, in-box growing – and become reactive, from start to finish. You’re serving the agendas of others, not your own. To-do lists at work, and honey-do lists at home plot your itinerary. You’re a fireman, at best. If you have no plan for leadership, there’s a lot to manage… and you’ll stay busy doing things that won’t be remembered in a week. If you’re looking for historic, iconic wins, you won’t find them in a Buffer day: it’s an environment guaranteed to stifle leadership and squelch initiative.
Open your calendar; spread your months before you. This is an action challenge: where will your Sabbath times be protected? Where will your Focus be dedicated? Your new year will be invested or spent, based on the presence of Sabbath and Focus. Without them, Buffer will squander 2018…
While your calendar is open, here are two Focus opportunities to use. Career Focus: May 2-4 is our Leadership Summit, in Newport Beach. You belong there! Family Focus: October 17-27 is our Kingdom Leaders Strategic Experience in Israel. More than a “Holy Land Tour,” we’ll see both the past and present in the place central to the Author’s story of history. You and your spouse belong there!  Book those two experiences now… or, Buffer will beat you, and 2018 will be yet-another calendar page stacked onto the ho-hum pile of your personal history…
I’ll be with you – every Monday! – as we navigate through a new year, together!