You Have a Whole One Thousand Minutes to Make Your Mark on Today.
People who are successful in business tend share a handful of common traits:
- They’re disciplined with their time.
- They know how to stay focused on a single goal.
- They have a valuable skill which they continue to develop.
But in my experience, there’s a single thing that unites all of these, and which I’m learning again and again is the most important skill of all.
Compartmentalisation
And here’s why.
The ability to create boundaries which give us — and our brains — time to recharge, makes us so much more effective in our work.
Of course as a business owner you need flexibility.
But a flexible boundary is something around which you can begin to plan a realistic lifestyle.
A lack of boundaries is a fast track to burnout.
I don’t mean that people who’ve mastered this skill keep their work and life entirely separate. For most business owners that’s never fully possible, and indeed this very realisation is an important milestone in coming to terms with the realities of the entrepreneurial life.
What I do mean is that they’ve found a way that enables them to switch modes without a constant and nagging guilt that they should be elsewhere.
Because when the tentacles of work get everywhere you’ll begin to feel that every waking minute — indeed a lot of the minutes you should not be awake at all — should be spent working. And that’s what will happen, because you’ll start to feel guilty that you’re not spending time with your family…and feel guilty about missing work when you are.
Which is why this rule has been so important to me…
The One Thousand Minute Rule
Since I came across the One Thousand Minute Rule (it’s incredibly difficult to pin down who first created this idea, so giving a source is tricky) I’ve finally been able to start thinking about an actual way to plan my day which draws some boundaries in my life.
The idea is that every day we should spend around eight hours sleeping (note to self: I need to do this). This leaves 16 hours — or 960 minutes — to make a mark on the day. We round that up to 1,000 because that’s way less of a mouthful and one thousand is a huge number.
You can do a lot with a thousand of virtually anything.
So here’s what I do with my full 1,440 minutes in a standard day
- 440 minutes for sleeping
- 500 minutes for me
- 500 minutes for work
And the important thing is that I make the shift to prioritise these three areas in that exact order.
- Sleep must come first, or I’ll simply be unable to function (I’ve experienced this all too often by putting work first).
- Then I make time for myself, family, and friends. The reason I work is to be able to enjoy those things. Putting work first so that you can put them first “one day” means they will never come first at all.
- Then I make time to work. And I make sure that I work in that time. There’s a forcing factor at play here by limiting the time available to get the work done.
Have I mastered this yet?
Hell no!
It’s a work in progress. As is life.
But for the first time I feel I have a structure that works for me. One I can visualise that is not overly conceptual or arbitrary — as productivity systems tend to be.
It’s the beautiful simplicity of the One Thousand Minute Rule that makes it so attractive.
I’ll keep you updated on my progress.
