Learning new things is great. It’s exciting. Especially if it translates to acquired skill because you can then leverage that skill.
If you do so, things will happen. You might opt for a raise because you’ve increased in value for your employer. You might create your own offer and try to sell it. You might end up at that polar expedition you’ve always wanted to go on (if you’re like me 😌).
Learning new skills can do a lot of good for you.
But there’s one issue I hear people have, over and over. It’s not knowing what to learn. It’s not even knowing how to learn. Neither is it why…
It’s…
Time.
People perceive a general lack of time and blame that for not being able to learn new skills rapidly.
Luckily, there’s a very simple thing you can do. It does take a bit of courage but it’s highly effective. It’ll enable you to free up time. It’ll enable you to do way more than 90% of your peers. Be it coworkers or entrepreneurs, doesn’t matter.
Most people let their days be run by others.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing inherently bad about outward focus. If you’re an employee, there’s things you need to do. If you’re an entrepreneur, there’s people to serve. In both cases, you need to have that outward focus.
But most people’s calendars are filled with requests made by others. Most people are not behind the wheel. They’re not driving their day. Other people do.
Let me tell you a little story about this. As I’m not formally schooled, I was damn happy that I got this job as a junior business controller. So I let my manager and the seniors determine what to do each day. They’d set goals for me, strict deadlines and I got to work.
You’ll learn a thing or two this way but I didn’t work on the things that mattered to me. I worked on things that mattered to them. I was making their lives easier and in return, making mine more stressful.
I started automating a lot of the things I needed to do. I had to process a lot of data manually. Took me hours. Then I figured I could also do it in minutes by automating the standardised things.
Apparently, the seniors didn’t think of that.
So I did that, hours of work was now done in minutes so I had a lot of time to spare. I observed the seniors, figured out what they did so I could learn those skills too.
But my new found free time was scattered throughout the day because I still had to adhere to their deadlines.
So how do we solve this?
Focus blocks
I told my team that I would be working on the most important tasks right at the start of the day. I would allow no meetings in the first 4 hours of the workday. It’d only interrupt the processes I was working on and that would only delay delivery to them.
They fell for it.
And rightly so because it was a win-win.
They’d get great data timely, and I’d get a lot of spare time.
I’ve found that setting focus blocks is really simple. It’s highly effective because people really appreciate that you’re being upfront to them so they know what to expect.
For years in a row now, I’ve never had any people except for the department director, set appointments between 8:30 and 12:30. And that happens rarely.
These focus block allow you to work on stuff that matter to you. Learn new skills. Create the things you love to create. And you still deliver upon everything that’s asked from you.
Now I get this doesn’t’ work for people in call-centers for example but in most office jobs, this works wonders.
Now there’s two issues I see a lot when helping people to implement these focus blocks.
- They think its great but can’t work for them because they have to reply to their email instantly (while really, you don’t – you need to manage expectations)
- They don’t know what to do with that spare time
So right now, I’m looking for 3 people to help for free.
We’ll
- set up your focus blocks
- set desirable goals
- get rid of distractions
- manage expectations towards others
To be 100% transparent, I want to do this for free right now so I can learn how to create a great offer.
You’ll free up time and get the things done that matter to you.
Interested? DM the word “focus” through X
Have a great weekend,
Erik
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