4 Leadership Rules (Day 3)
This leadership principle brings order to the other three principles…
When it comes to our lives, we have systems for everything. Take these examples: cooking, money, parenting, business, health, spirituality, and you’ll see that everything has a system.
Let’s go through some steps you can take to create systems that get results. Remember, the quality of your life is highly dependent on the quality of your systems.
1. Automate, eliminate, or delegate. We all have a “genius zone” that we’re in whenever we’re doing activities that align with our strengths. However, many tasks exist that aren’t within that zone. Your genius zone is also your wealth zone as a leader because your strengths can make you the most money. Look at your everyday tasks and think about how you can automate them with technology, eliminate them from your day, or delegate their responsibility to someone else. For example, my wife and I haven’t grocery shopped in two years because we use an app called Instacart to delegate the grocery shopping to a personal shopper. If we tip a shopper $50 to shop for us for an hour, we work on projects that make us hundreds or thousands of dollars in that hour.
2. Help your future-self. Before I go to bed every night, I think about my future self in the morning the next day. I ask myself, “what will make my future self’s life easier?” As a result, I do several things differently. First, I sleep in my workout clothing, so I don’t need to get dressed in the morning. Second, I fill up a water bottle the night before to wake up and have it ready. Third, I meal prep, so my food is prepared, and I also set up space for my workouts before the next day. The question is, what can do you do to make tomorrow easier on yourself? We only have so many decisions we can make per day without getting burned out, so why not take care of those decisions at the end of the night and give yourself more mental space the next day?
3. Structuring your day. Ironically, when we micromanage our time each day, we have more time freedom. Set time budgets for yourself by scheduling your day. Do the most important things in the morning when you’re the freshest; save the less critical (mindless) tasks for later in the day when you’ve exhausted much of your mental capacity. I like to set timers on my phone for 1-hour time slots. In that 1 hour, I know it’s time to get in my focused production. Then, after the hour, I take 10–15 minute breaks. As you can imagine, things will come up that don’t fit into the schedule. Be flexible with yourself; we’re not trying to follow the schedule, no matter what, rigidly. The point of a structured plan is to decide what you will do with your day consciously. If unexpected things come up, take care of them, but always come back to your schedule’s order and structure. Consider practicing this with another person so you can support and hold each other accountable for your results.
So, what’s the moral / lesson of the story?
You can consciously create systems to Lead Your Life, just as business leaders create systems for successful companies. You don’t need to own a business, you are your own business. Budget your time the way you would budget your money as the owner of a successful corporation.
And what is the meaning/takeaway for your life and business?
Get Lead Your Life and I will show you how to create the most elite systems for your life, the same ones used by billionaire leaders and world icons. The quality of your life always reflects the quality of your systems.
Tomorrow I’ll share the fourth leadership principle… The fourth principle will ensure that the four leadership rules are guaranteed to succeed!
