Redefine Time

Jack Canfield's Success Principle #40

Today, we learn about how Jack Canfield divides his time between work, family, and recreation. He suggests three types of days: Best Results Days, Preparation Days, and Rest and Recreation Days.

Best Results Days
To achieve our best results, we need to spend at least 80% of our time working within our core genuius. Remember, our core genius means that we're working at something we love so much, we hardly feel like charging people for it. On a Best Results Day, we're achieving the highest payoffs for the amount of time we work.

A Best Results Day for me would be one spent writing, editing, quilting, speaking, or coaching other women. The payoff could be monetary, but it can also be the fulfillment of a dream. Hearing from a reader that I've changed her life for the better is a wonderful form of payment for me. Having plenty of money is nice, but serving God's purpose for my life is even better.

Preparation Days
When we prepare ourselves for more Best Results Days, we are learning a new skill, locating a better resource, training our team, or delegating tasks to others.

Preparation Days for me would include networking with other published authors, taking classes to learn better methods for helping women to thrive, attending a writers' conference, reading books such as The Success Principles, or attending a quilt show.

Rest and Recreation (R & R) Days
An R & R Day extends from midnight to midnight. It involves absolutely no work-related activity of any kind: no business-related meetings, phone calls, cell phone calls, e-mails, text messages, or reading. We are not availabe to our co-workers, clients, or students.

By setting strict boundaries around our R & R Days, we actually help others to become more self-reliant. If we aren't there to rescue them when a problem arises, they become more creative and self-confident.

Jack believes that all R & R Days do not include children, either. He suggests that we hire a babysitter, send the kids to visit relatives, or swap child care with neighbors and friends.

I think this is unrealistic. I could never have afforded that much child care, and I wouldn't have wanted to be away from my children that much. I do believe that parents need some time away from their kids, but not on every single R & R Day of the year.

Jack believes that it should be every person's goal to have 150 days off every year. By simply taking every weekend off from work, we immediately free up 104 days of rest. Adding another 46 days off in the form of long weekends, holiday weeks, and 2-week vacations brings our total up to 150 days without work.

For most women reading this, I can imagine them rolling their eyes at this one. There's an old saying: A man can work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done. We may be able to curtail the business-related meetings, phone calls, emails, and reading; but we certainly cannot skip doing housework, cooking, and laundry that often. Our homes would be disaster areas, and the kids would be committing mutiny.

A wise minister's wife with eight children once told me that she had a rule about rest: no matter how much work was not completed by 7:00 in the evening, it would just have to wait for the next day. She headed for her recliner in the living room, where no children were allowed to disturb her for two hours. She spent the time reading and meditating while her husband put the kids to bed.

Joe and I have been completely out of balance in the area of R & R for years. We went to stay one night in a hotel recently when I needed to see a doctor out of state. I realized that it was the first time he and I had been alone in a hotel since our honeymoon! We have only taken one week-long vacation in ten years, and it was an exhausting disaster with our adopted daughter failing to adjust to the daily changes in her schedule.

The Travel Industry Association of America reported that the average vacation lasted 7.1 days in 1997. By 2001, it was down to 4.1 days. That report is 10 years old. I wonder how many people even take vacations anymore. Are others like we are, unable to go places due to a lack of funds? Are they tied down to two jobs, as Joe is, because our medical expenses consistently drain our reserves?

Our most pressing goal for 2011 is to work less. When we work too much, we experience burn-out, and nothing is pleasurable anymore. Taking more R & R Days can actually help us to work more efficiently, because rest helps us to see things more clearly and creatively.

Like many of Jack's success principles, this one is not new. God gave the Israelites the following command concerning rest: "For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord." (Ex 31:15) If we are in the habit of over-working, we can begin the new year by making sure that we at least rest on the Lord's day.

Today's Challenge
Take the following steps to achieve more Best Results Days, Preparation Days, and Rest and Recreation (R & R) Days:

1) Schedule four Preparation Days during 2011 to increase the productivity of your core genius.
2) Clear your 2011 calendar of activities that steal away time from your core genius so that you can focus on working within your life's purpose. You'll achieve far more Best Results Days by doing so.
3) Schedule at least four vacations in 2011, to include either long weekends or week-long vacations. If you don't plan them, they won't happen.

Start today to control your time. You'll be amazed by the changes in your productivity and happiness.

Jack Canfield, America's #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com