When you have tiny time, your job is to get more out of a little. Here’s a simple strategy that will amplify the quality of your results – everything you do in business – by following a proven principle.
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Transcript
Hello, lovely, how are you doing? It’s Yasmin Vorajee from Tiny Time Big Results. And today I want to talk to you about a principle that will help you to get the very most out of everything that you’re doing in business and actually in life, too.
So one of the things I love to do is to read and one of my favorite books back in the day was Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And I remember reading that when I was working in corporate and I loved the simplicity of the principles and how they could apply to so much in your life.
But today, I want to talk to you about one particular one that has always stayed with me. And it’s number seven and it’s called Sharpen the Saw. Abraham Lincoln once said ‘if I had eight hours to cut a tree, I’d spend six sharpening the saw‘. Maybe Covey got it from Lincoln? I don’t know. Well, it’s such a great point because how often do we just throw ourselves into the task without preparing adequately, without preparing more than adequately?
And this is true for everyday life and especially in your business, especially if you’ve only got a few hours. So in the morning when I get started, you know, I don’t want to just throw myself into emails and social media and all of that stuff, all of the things that take up all that noise and create so much disturbance. Instead, I want to set my day up the way I want it to go. And this is where this principle of sharpening the saw is really powerful.
And I would love for you to maybe embrace it for this week and see what it could do for you?
So what does this really mean? Well, for me, sharpening the saw, I mean, you think about it literally, if you’re going to go and cut a tree down and you want to make sure that it’s going to do the job. You’re not going to be sitting there with a butter knife trying to hack away at a tree because nothing’s going to happen. That the same with business. You want to put yourself into a place where you have the tools ready, you have the technology, you have the equipment, you have all of those things ready.
But what’s really important is what’s going on for you in here (your mind) and in your heart as well. When I wake up in the morning, I’ve got three kids, so I’ve got to get them ready for school and all of that good stuff. But I like to wake up a little bit earlier.
So I have some me time by myself, me alone. It’s brilliant 🙂
What I really love is that time for me just to be able to get my head in the right space. And this is what I mean by sharpening the saw. It’s about focusing on your intention for the day. What is it that I want to create? And think about it from a business perspective.
What is it that I want to achieve today in my business? When you have tiny time you can’t give yourself a massive to do list because you’re just setting yourself up for failure because you’re not going to get it all done.
Instead, if you think about what your intention is. Maybe it’s to connect with two people today, you know, from a sales perspective (that’s a really powerful strategy). Who can I connect with? Who are the two people that I could start a sales conversation with or just create a conversation with? How can I share my message today? And when you start to break it down into little buckets like that, what you do is you’re formulating a really clear intention rather than ‘I need to reply to those emails‘.
When you’re guided by emails that come in, you’re now responding to other people’s agenda and not your own. So set the intention. Think about the energy that you want to approach the day with. Is it going to be an enthusiastic, excited energy or is it going to be ‘oh, I can’t believe I have to do all of this work. I have to. I should‘.
Instead, I get to. I choose to. And you approach the day with an energy of excitement, enthusiasm! It just changes the whole tone of the day. And when you sit down and you think about what you want to achieve, you think what your intentions and you think about the energy that you want to approach everything with everything changes around you. The things that sometimes take so much time actually feel effortless.
And they don’t take any time at all. You reach out to people and it just feels so effortless and organic and it just feels so much easier. And that’s because you’ve sharpened the saw to begin with.
So let me give you a little insight into what I do in the mornings. This is not to say that you have to do this the same way, everyone’s different. I tend to wake up around about half 6:30 and the kids wake up around 7:30. So that gives me an hour.
And what I like to do is spend 15 minutes doing some form of meditation. Then I like to be able to just spend 10-15 minutes having a cup of tea and journaling, maybe reading a book that’s going to inspire and lift me. One of my favorites is called A Course in Miracles Made Easy.
Don’t judge me. It’s a really good book. And then what I like to do is to do 10 -15 minutes of high intensity exercise to get my heart rate up. And you might be thinking, ‘no way am I doing them‘. OK, I hear you. You might be fine with the meditating and you might be fine with the journalling and the cup of tea. But when it comes to exercise, you might be thinking, ‘oh, God, no‘.
Listen, honestly, it is such an amazing, amazing strategy when I do just even ten minutes of high intensity activity. Oh, wow. My energy goes off the scale. And it’s just ten minutes so I wholeheartedly encourage it. Or you could do some yoga. I like to alternate between yoga and stretching and doing the high intensity. Then the kids wake up then it’s getting them to school. And before I actually sit down to work (bear in mind that by the time this all happens, it’s about maybe quarter to nine, ten to nine) I go for a walk.
I go for a 30 minute walk around the town to get fresh air. This is me sharpening my saw. And I can’t recommend it enough because when I do sit down (it’s normally about half nine at this stage) I’ve got two hours before I have to go pick up my youngest. This makes the two hours that I actually spend working so much more productive because I’ve sharpened my saw. So think about that today and this week and ask yourself what could I do differently?
This really helps me to set up my energy and my productivity. And I want you to think about what sharpening your saw looks like. Let me know in the comments below what works for you? What do you do and maybe other people could benefit from it too.
I’d love to hear from you. Let me know what you think and go ahead sharpen your saw and I’ll see you next time. Don’t forget to grab your free guide on how to attract more dream clients by being more you!
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Take care!
Yasmin x