1: Sometimes, entrepreneur and author Dan Martell plays a little game with his coaching clients.
“It’s a mini-test disguised as a simple question,” he writes in his book Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire.
He sends a text: “Do you have time for a quick call in the next hour?”
How they answer gives Dan insight into how that coaching client is meeting the demands of the world around them.
Reactive client: “Sure, Dan, I’ll call you in a few.”
This response tells Dan that this client is “almost always just acting in the moment,” he notes. “They’re just going to squeeze me in, which means they’ll probably squeeze in a podcast interview, a client call, or anything else whenever it pops up.
“Not only does this mean they aren’t planning their day or week, but in real situations (when I’m not testing them), it could put more stress on the other person,” Dan predicts. “When someone tells them, ‘Hey, we need to meet. What’s your availability?’ they’ll be frantically looking at their calendar to come up with two to three chunks of time.
“Without any preplanned strategy on how to route meetings, they may just come back and say, “I don’t know. What’s your availability?” It can be a frustrating game of calendar chicken. It’s like they’re saying, “I don’t want to pick—you pick.”
2: Which is very different from how a proactive person responds.
“When I ask to meet in the next hour,” he observes, “proactive people will usually say something like, ‘Well, I can meet on Thursday from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., or I can meet next Monday from 1:00 to 2:00. Do either of those work for you?'”
Because the proactive person already has created blocks in their calendar that focus on specific activities—both their time and their energy.
“They know exactly what part of their day is best for meetings, when they work out, and when they have family time,” Dan writes. “By politely offering me a few specific times, I know they have a preplanned week that they’ll be able to take full advantage of.”
3: Imagine a major international airport.
What if the leaders of the airport had a relaxed approach to when planes took off and landed?
“There would be utter chaos,” Dan suggests, “passengers would never get to their destinations on time, gridlock would likely occur on the tarmac, and it would be nearly impossible to make connections.”
What do airports do differently?
“By using highly specific time slots,” he notes, “airports move massive amounts of passengers every day. When unplanned problems arise—and they inevitably will—the airport is able to adjust based on an organized, preplanned structure.”
Get this: “By planning ahead of time, airports achieve an insanely high level of efficiency,” Dan writes. “In 2019, almost 80 percent of flights arrived on time.”
Does planning prevent interruptions from happening? Of course not. “Commercial airlines may have upward of two hundred passengers per plane,” Dan writes. “Plus there’s a variety of uncontrollable issues—such as weather patterns and mechanical failures. Even with all of these issues, planning enables airports to make sure eight out of ten planes arrive within fifteen minutes of the scheduled arrival time.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: Am I letting my calendar control me, or am I intentionally designing my week to focus on what matters most?
Action: Block out time on my calendar for high-impact work and personal priorities, and respond to meeting requests with specific availability instead of reacting on the fly.
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