Last week I had a call scheduled for one hour. At the four-minute mark, it was obvious it was going nowhere and would go nowhere. Thought maybe I’d make some money from it, but not everything always works. So I thanked the guy for his time and dumped out. Later.
I just got 56 minutes back to work on other stuff, get lunch, read something, workout, etc.
I had another a few weeks ago slated for 90 minutes. We got everything set up deliverables-wise in six minutes. I killed it at that point. That’s 84 free minutes. A lot you can do there.
Many of us worship at The Temple of Busy, to the point that being busy is more important than being strategic at most jobs.
We’re always talking about how “slammed” we are. It’s often the first, de facto response in a work conversation around “How are you doing?”
Busy.
Slammed.
But think of how much meaningless bullshit people hang onto or stay on/in simply because that’s the duration the calendar said it should be?
If you want to be less busy, dump out of the bullshit stuff when it’s clear that it’s bullshit. Not rocket science.
Same vein: if someone is 7-8 minutes late to a call, hang up. I don’t care how important the call might be for you. You need to establish self-respect and boundaries, and cut the bullshit.
Most people use their time very poorly. That’s been backed by science.
Maybe if they were willing to just dump out of the crap, though.
