-
When You Gamble with Your Time, You Chose Your Destiny
The year 2021 will be the year of the individual. The individual will define their destiny and the individual will gamble their time wisely. If we have learned anything at all in 2020, it is that our time is precious. Working from home, required us to manage our time with a personal responsibility many had never experienced before. Having an unprecedented amount of time at home, with our families and loved ones, reset our priorities and forced us to face our lives from the inside out. Self-discipline and motivation became paramount. The old conventions of the workplace, where we typically received structure and direction, were replaced with the four walls of our home and the things contained within. It took us a minute to get our bearings, but when we did, we learned how to efficiently do our jobs from home. That is, if we were lucky enough to have a job that could be done remotely, whether it be in our home office, a bedroom closet, or the garage. We managed our time and took stock of our lives and a couple of things became very apparent: the circle of meaningful people in our lives is pretty small and, at the end of the day, we are the master of our own destiny. Not our employer, not the government. It’s us. I realize that for many, the loss of a job was far beyond anything they could control. But therein lies the problem. If you want control, you have to take control. As the past year has shown us, the alternative is unacceptable. In 2021, the individual will decide on the things that will propel them to where they wish to go, wherever that place is. The answer lies in where you gamble your time.
If you have fallen into the trap of feeling comfortable with having others do and decide things for you, then you probably know how badly that can go. You have tough decisions to make, if you want to be successful in 2021. Simple things, like whether or not you can come or go, when you can come and go, and where you may go, have been dictated to us this past year. But that was then, and this is now. Hopefully, we have all learned a thing or two about common sense, reasonable behavior, and practical reality.
Do I have a job or not? Can I go to the office or must I work from home? How many hours can I work? Can and will the business I am in survive the pandemic? If it does, will it include me? If so, in what roll? Will my career be the same or will it change? If it changes, will it still be something I find rewarding and meaningful? Does my job provide sufficiently for the life I want to live?
Will the government help me? Should I accept their help? If the government gives me help, when will it arrive and will it be enough?
Human nature and history will tell you that in 2021, the majority of people will gamble their time by waiting on having the answers presented to them. They will wait for help, even if there is no rescue in sight.
The winners in 2020 set the perfect example of how gambling their time wisely, allowed them to excel in extraordinarily challenging times. Most who gambled and took a risk at finding their own solutions to the new work environment, were pleasantly surprised by the results. They saw that the only real gamble was to either wait or move forward. They weighed the options, assessed the risks, and met the challenges head-on with creative solutions and smart ideas. Who were you relying on to make things happen? Those who decided to become self-reliant knew that there was risk involved and sure, it was a gamble. A gamble with their time. But it felt good because, perhaps for the very first time, they were in charge of their own destiny.
Those who played the hands they were dealt, gambled their time correctly and won, are continuing to find themselves at the winners table. I’m not suggesting that every gamble is going to produce success and a windfall. What I am saying, is that if you don’t try, you will never know.
How did they do it? How did they find the courage and the ability to seek out and achieve success, when so many overwhelmingly experienced failure, defeat, and financial ruin? They did it by gambling with their time and their talent and they discovered that this huge challenge could actually be a huge opportunity. The following ten points are a guideline to help you figure out your own strategy to taking control of your career, gambling wisely with your precious time, and becoming the master of your own destiny:
1. Do not worry about things you can’t control
Take the pandemic, for instance. This is an unprecedented situation. There is no rule book. Of course, you have to be concerned about it, but you cannot let it run your life. Respect the seriousness of the disease, make well informed adjustments, follow your common sense and intuition, and push through. Do not let it consume you. You have far more important things to do with your time, like come up with ways to continue to provide a living for yourself and your loved ones.
2. Take the evening news with a grain of salt
We are a little smarter than we used to be about our news reports. We now know that not all the news is created equal and facts are no longer objective, but rather subjective, depending on who is telling the story. With that in mind, find out what’s going on from many sources, prepare yourself, and overcome the obstacles, as best you can. Don’t harbor ill feelings. You voted. Your guy won or your guy lost. You can’t change it. Your focus should rest solely on playing the cards you have been dealt and winning your hand.
3. Learn from the past and move-on
Understand that past successes and failures happened because of past circumstances, risks taken, and decisions made at that time. This is a new environment. What do you need to bring to the current situation and how can you succeed? Past wins and losses are no longer relevant. Today’s reality and what you bring to it, is all that matters.
4. Forget office politics
Office politics played virtually no role in defining who and what was successful in 2020. Your time is too valuable. You are in business to win. In a pandemic, it doesn’t matter who had dinner with whom, or who was invited to play a round of golf. Nobody did anything, so it all came down to job performance and who could produce results. Focus on the hand you have been dealt and figure out the best way to play it. It’s about substance.
5. Look professional
When you show up for work, whether it be online or in person, look the part. Don’t jump on a Zoom meeting or show up to work looking like you just rolled out of bed. Understand that just because you can work from home in your pajamas, doesn’t mean you should.
6. Don’t blame others for your particular challenges
You got laid off. Your business closed. Your hours got cut. You can sit, wait, and bet that something will happen, or you can bet on yourself and make something happen. I don’t have to look any further than my own family to find examples of great ingenuity during these difficult days. My nephew, who was a leading automotive salesperson in a state that could not decide on whether or not to allow vehicle sales in the first months of the pandemic, wasted no time. Being kept off the sales floor, he and his best friend pursued their lifelong dream of opening a landscaping service. It is thriving. My niece, who was a highly successful HR manager, saw that the company where she worked for 15 years close because of the Corona virus. Rather than wallow in her unfortunate circumstances, she started her own HR business. It took off immediately because she identified a need for many downsized companies. One of her European clients made her an offer to work as their international HR person at three times what she made in her old position and allowed her to keep her new thriving company. By the way, she is doing all of this out of her home office, which is located in her bedroom. She shares her home with her husband and five school aged children.
7. Double down on personal growth
Read at least 15 minutes a day and commit to at least one hour a week for personal improvement. Invest in yourself. Seek professional training. Set and have both personal and business goals. Review and adjust those goals the first day of each month without fail. Become a lifelong learner.
8. Perform daily reviews
Review each day’s activities and learn from their successes and failures, so that you can repeat what works and scrap what doesn’t. At the end of each day, review tomorrow’s business schedule, in order to prepare and hit the ground running the following morning.
9. Show up thirty minutes early for work.
Getting a head start on the day, ensures that you will be ready for all of the day’s opportunities. This is when you identify where the challenges of the day will lie, where you need to step up, and where you will need to spend most of your valuable time. It helps to eliminate surprises and allows you to remain in control of your day and ultimately, your destiny.
10. When you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain
When you truly have nothing to lose, you can push all your chips to the center of the table and bet on yourself. You can actually see it as a safe bet because you know the odds of betting on yourself. It’s a whole lot better than betting on some outside force, where you have little, if any control.
The year 2021 will be the year of the individual. I realize that there is a significant segment of the work force that is at the mercy of the decisions of employers and companies. If you don’t have a job right now, I’m not assigning blame. What I am saying, is that you need to find a way to push through these tough times. You need to have enough confidence in yourself to take a chance and do something you might not have thought to do before. Gamble. Roll the dice. Be creative and fearless. You’ve got nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain. Think as an individual and don’t wait for something or someone to save you.
The rock band Molly Hatchet is known for a song titled “Flirtin’ with Disaster.” The song lyrics include the lines:
I don’t know about yourself or what you want to be, yeah
When we gamble with our time
We choose our destiny
Whether you consider yourself a gambler or not, every day that you get out of bed, you gamble with your time. Choosing to do nothing is a choice that yields very serious consequences. When you do nothing, you are gambling. It might not feel like it, but it most certainly is. I’m suggesting that you take a gamble on yourself and have a hand in deciding your own fate. Be smart with how you gamble your time and choose your destiny.
Jeff Cowan – Jeff@jcowansprotalk.com
-
0 Replies
Sorry, there were no replies found.
Log in to reply.