Weekly Six-Pack
Here are the 6 things to check out this week:
- For my salespeople: if you’re having a hard time hitting your number, try sitting down with Customer Success. Learn your customer stories and tell those to your prospects.
- I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently. Subscribed by Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo talks about the new subscription economy we find ourselves in. Untamed by Glennon Doyle came highly recommended from my girlfriend and did not disappoint.
- I seriously agree with Dave Gerhardt’s take on how side hustles can help you in your day job.
- Person to follow: Martellus Bennett. You may know him as a Super Bowl Champion Tight End who retired early. He’s now unleashing his creativity and has written several children’s books for people of color. I’ve been bingeing on his interviews and Instagram and feel super inspired by his creative process.
- If you need a kick in the ass or are interested in health and fitness, I’d recommend you listen to Joe Rogan talk with Spartan CEO Joe De Sena
- If you want to follow my 30 day challenge of working out, follow me on Instagram: @TommyTahoe.
As a lot of you know, I’ve spent the past few weeks in between jobs. It’s given me a lot of time to think. One thing that’s been top of mind is time: how fleeting it is and how much of it we waste.
In “The Shortness of Life”, stoic philosopher Seneca explains it well:
“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much… The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not I’ll provided but use what we have wastefully.”
So, how do I think about time? I categorize it into three buckets.
The first bucket is productivity and success. Not only do I spend a lot of time working on my day job (as you likely do too), I invest in myself. Jim Rohn said if you work hard on your job, you’ll make a living but if you work hard on yourself, you’ll make a fortune. I set up time specifically to read, to write, to listen to interesting podcasts, to meet new people. I put this in my calendar just like a client call.
I also earmark this learning financially: I include learning events – a conference (remember those?), an online course, books – in my monthly budget. There’s no guilt and no second-guessing. This is being a practitioner of what Drift CEO David Cancel calls becoming a “learning machine”.
The second bucket is experiences. I want to make the most of life. I know who my core people are and I make a point to book one “experience” with them each year. These types of moments and memories don’t always happen organically, you need to manufacture them and – more importantly – put them on the calendar.
Time is slipping away. In the past few years I’ve run a marathon, several Spartan Races and half marathons, visited 7 countries, played Pebble Beach with my dad, saw my favorite band (The Rolling Stones) play live and much more – all while being a borderline workaholic. How? Because I schedule the time in. Enjoy the moment, sure, but sometimes you need to plan for a memorable event.
The third bucket is wasting time. Seth Godin wrote that if we all wasted money like we waste time, we’d all be bankrupt. From social media to constant email refreshing, who can debate that opinion?
I don’t see relaxation as wasted time. Sometimes the best thing for you is to watch a Celtics game, read a book or just sleep for 10 hours. Where the wasted time comes into play is when you fall into the rabbit hole of Instagram for 30 minutes wondering how the hell you ended up looking at highlights of the 1990s Miami Hurricanes football team.
The Steve Miller Band trippily wrote that “time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.” I feel that. I’m sure you do too. There’s nothing we can do to slow it down but make the most of every minute we get. And we can do it.
The formula is simple: work hard, create experiences and be mindful of waste. Seneca preached that “life is long, if you know how to use it.” So use it well.
I hope you view this as time well spent and wish you well this week.
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