If You Want to Succeed, You’ve Got To Be Selfish
Hint: You Can’t Achieve Your Goals When Someone Else Is Running Your Life
If you added up and categorized all your time, how much of it do you spend doing things that other people consider important?
Does your schedule revolve around your friends? Are you always planning things to align with their availability?
How often do you get a work call or text in the middle of dinner or on the weekend that needs your immediate attention?
If any of these situations sound familiar to you, there is someone else running your life.
If you ever want to achieve your goals and dreams, then you have to get more selfish with your time.
Work When You Work Best
“Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.” ― Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères
If you want to get ahead and succeed in your life’s goals, you’ve got to do your best work first.
When it’s within your power, work when you are the most productive version of yourself, whether that is early in the morning, during the afternoon or late at night.
Find out what are your most productive hours in the day. If you find you are most focused when you work from 12 a.m. to 2 a.m. (and you work from home or can push off work to those times), then by all means do so!
If your work-life balance prefers to work a little bit every day, then do so.
Of course, it is important to be a functioning member of society, so make sure you fit your other priorities into your schedule. But don’t rearrange your priorities for someone else who has little say in your life purpose.
One caveat: this argument may not be doable if you work for “the man,” work in an office, or have to clock in during the infamous 9-to-5 shift. Although it may be worth a conversation if you find you’re really not productive during those hours.
Good managers should be willing to negotiate if it means getting better work from their employees.
Sometimes you have to make short-term sacrifices if you want experience long-term payoffs. Get up an hour earlier, work during lunch, skip time watching a movie.
If you have a dream you’re pursuing outside your Monday-Friday employment, don’t feel compelled to work on it during normal business hours.
Work to your own rhythm, but be sure to work.
Tune Out the Naysayers
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Have you ever noticed that people have a tendency to tell you how you should live your life?
Some people think you shouldn’t be working just because they are off the clock. I call these folks naysayers. Don’t let them dictate when you should work.
If you have lofty goals and dreams, those will require a solid amount of work “after hours” and on the weekends. Business owners and entrepreneurs already know what I’m talking about!
The people who say you shouldn’t be working on a Saturday — for the simple fact that it’s the weekend — are not concerned about your goals and dreams. More likely than not, those people will come home from their jobs and spend the rest of the night watching TV. Meanwhile, you are burning the midnight oil to make your goals and dreams come true. You are becoming the person you were meant to be.
If you want to work on a Saturday, then work on a Saturday.
To be the person who makes the naysayers jealous, get the step-by-step guide here now!
Be Yourself
I have a simple saying that’s helped me get where I want to go: Walk alone until the right people walk with you.
Don’t waste time trying to be who someone else thinks you should be.
You are an entrepreneur, which means you are a self-motivated and goal-driven person. You value your time and know it cannot be wasted if you plan on conquering your dreams during this lifetime.
You didn’t become an entrepreneur to clock in and out of a dead-end job, and then rinse and repeat Monday through Friday.
You became an entrepreneur because you want to climb to the top of success mountain, and you plan on getting there no matter how rocky or tough the journey might be.
Bottom Line: Be Selfish
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” — Oscar Wilde
You have to be the first person to value and respect your time. Set boundaries so you can accomplish the important things. If you don’t, then no one else will.
Your priorities, your goals and dreams, should come first in your schedule, within reason.
Everyone’s situation is different. If you have a family, you need to share your time with those people who matter most. If you work remotely, you can be more selfish with your time. But at one level or another, we all need to get selfish with our time when it comes to work.
If you would rather read a book, study your competition, or learn your industry while your roommate watches TV, then by all means do so. Choose activities that will move you one step closer to your dreams, not halt that process.
If you plan on accomplishing your dreams and achieving a massive amount of success in the process, the key is to get very selfish with your time. It is your time, after all. It should be cherished, because it is one thing we cannot buy more of, one thing we can never get back.
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” ― Charles Darwin, The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin
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