Martial Arts Professional Magazine

There is a “secret key” to peak personal productivity and performance that entrepreneurs are unwittingly depriving themselves of, to a worsening extent from one year to the next. This subtle form of self-sabotage takes its toll many different ways.

Entrepreneurs and sales professionals need resiliency. We face opposition; we experience rejection and disappointment; and we resolve problems in greater quantity and intensity than people in jobs from only 9 to 5. Our need to rebound quickly and frequently is far greater than for most people.

Consequently, we need to engineer a sufficient amount of recovery time into our daily schedules.

Most businesspeople have given it all away and have none.

What is ‘recovery time’? It is quiet time. It’s time to think, to re-gain perspective and for casual, stress-relieving conversation about other things than business. Such recovery time used to exist naturally and automatically in everyday life. That recovery time could be found while walking from the office to a restaurant for lunch, driving your car, or waiting in an airport; but all that is gone, given to a cell phone glued to your ear or checking e-mail ten times a day. The result of all this is NOT improved productivity. Not at all. Oh, there’s a greater QUANTITY of communication taking place, that’s obvious; but as the QUANTITY has multiplied, the QUALITY has suffered. Today’s entrepreneur or sales pro is immersed in all this communication, under greater stress and tension, which diminishes attention span, listening skill, comprehension, clear thought and breeds rushed, ill-considered response and short(er) tempers.

Peter Drucker, the godfather of industrial productivity and quality, makes a huge point about the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness. Too many people are sacrificing effectiveness.

Being instantly or constantly accessible to your clients or employees does not necessarily mean you are more effective in those sales, service or managerial roles. In fact, it’s a very good bet that you are less effective. Returning phone calls and engaging in conversation while also speed walking through an airport, dodging passer-by, in a din of noise (vs. waiting and returning calls in a hotel room with quiet and privacy) does not make you more effective. No, again, less effective.

No one can perform at optimum effectiveness - thinking, appraising, formulating ideas, communicating, persuading, negotiating or managing - if under unrelenting pressure. Few people can communicate with optimum effectiveness under extremely adverse environmental conditions.

In my book, No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, I present a compelling case for taking new, stronger control over both technology and time, and re-organizing your management of both, to heighten your effectiveness and enhance your resiliency.

If you want to be more effective this year than last, then you’ll focus on quality, not just quantity, and you’ll exert new control over your time, relationships and communication.