I don’t know about you, but this time of year—back to school—always makes me recognize how quickly the years go by. No matter how awesome the summer was I’m left wondering, “Where did it go?”
By the time this issue hits your desk, the kids will have been in school for several weeks, pumpkin-spice everything will be on store shelves and football season will be in full swing.
My family and I had a great summer. We did so much: we swam, we beached, we grilled, we camped, we gardened (sort of). Still, I can’t help but think about the things on our summer bucket list that we didn’t get to, like visiting the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is less than an hour’s drive from us.
“Time flies” is a cliché, but it’s true and it somehow always leaves me surprised and wishing I’d spent some of my hours differently.
I recently came across a quote from personal achievement coach Michael Altshuler that resonated: “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
He’s right. There are always ways to be more efficient and effective so we can do what brings meaning and value to our lives and businesses.
In my attempt to become a morning person, I started listening to a podcast called “The 5 a.m. Miracle with Jeff Sanders.” A recent guest of his, business coach Kelly Roach, talked about a concept she calls ADOD. It’s something she encourages entrepreneurs—or anyone looking to be more productive—to think about every day.
ADOD stands for automate, delegate, outsource, delete.
“You never put anything new on your plate unless you get rid of something else,” she says. “Because when there is no white space in your life or in your business, you will become stagnant and you cannot grow.”
By “getting rid of something,” she means using ADOD to determine what tasks you can take off your plate to make room for something more important and valuable.
Maybe that means finally hiring someone to answer the phones, getting a bookkeeper or finding an assistant (or virtual assistant?) to put together job packets.
Questions to ask yourself when you’re going through the ADOD exercise: Is this task necessary? Do I need to be the one doing it? Is it contributing to our success? Is it a profitable expenditure of our time or can it be ADOD’d?
She added, “If you choose to spend your time on $10 an hour tasks, then you’re choosing to have your income align with that hourly rate.”
If you spend two minutes a day considering what you could ADOD, she says, your business will grow faster and be more profitable. And you just may feel like next summer goes by a little bit slower.
