Kevin Hogan

Time Management for Future Millionaires

Part One of Two

By Kevin Hogan

Time management for people who work in corporate environments is very different from the system of thinking and acting for people who are in sales or work for themselves in some ways. The reason is simple. In the corporate environment there is a structured schedule created by people who may or may not know what is best for the company but they know how they learned task delegation and they follow that process.

All time management books I’ve seen are problematic if they are read by the entrepreneur. They are written for the corporate world which is really very, very different from the millionaire’s world.  There is some good in these books, but not enough to trigger success as a salesperson or entrepreneur (or even students).

You’ll read advice about decluttering your desk.   It’s almost certainly wrong. You don’t need to. Declutter your bedroom closet? You bet and have a pro help you. But your coffee table or whatever the place you generate your revenue from? No.

Today? Critical principles about wealth building as an entrepreneur or salesperson and the only real time management methodology that will get you where you want to go.

Principle One: Actions that build wealth often run counter to actions that create optimum health. Your task is to create the optimal solution.  Here are the facts.

Fact a) In order to have the self discipline that the top 10% of people have you will need to get plenty of sleep. Self discipline  (self regulation) and controlling your time are at the center of all long term achievement. The person who yields to their impulses simply can’t generate wealth, though I often see them generate health. It’s the nature of self discipline.  Sleep is necessary to good health, maintaining a reasonable weight, and general psychological well being. If you get enough sleep you’ll live longer. Don’t get enough sleep? You’ll pay an enormous price.

Fact b) Yes, you need to average 6 – 7 hours of sleep per night over the course of a week. It’s ok to get 4 hours tonight if you get 10 hours tomorrow night. (Really.) You’ll live just as long and remain just as productive. The body is forgiving of inconsistent sleep schedules but not the accumulation of hours.

Fact c) 8+ hours of sleep per night averaged over each week will cut down your longevity in a fairly dramatic fashion. Similarly, 5 hours of sleep per night (specifically 35 hours per week or less) *really* knocks the years off of your life span.

The Millionaire Management Point: If you want to build wealth and LIVE with the wealth you build instead of dying off early and giving it to your brother, then sleep about 42-50 hours per week. The data is overwhelming here.

Principle Two: Self Regulation (synonymous with self discipline for the purpose of this article) requires that the human brain has enough, but not too much, glucose to run on for fuel and to stick with plans that you take action on.

Building wealth is all about self control.

You determine in advance what you want, when and where. You lay the plan, research the actions, take the actions and make it happen.

Self regulation helps you control your impulses. Each time you control your impulses two things happen. First, you LOSE some self regulation points for the day as you control your Self. Without glucose, you will quickly yield to your impulses to laziness, procrastination, and bad eating habits.  Control yourself AND replenish your burned glucose throughout the day and you maintain your self discipline until the end of the day.

Wealth is predictable. Just sleeping the right amount is not going to trigger wealth building behavior. Wealthy people are wealthy because they do a host of things well.

Aside from sleep, glucose is what keeps the brain burning efficiently.  Not enough glucose means you’re going to have no self regulation when the impulses of every day life come to you each and every day.

Too much glucose over time, will put you at risk for diabetes. Don’t become diabetic as a trade off for building wealth. Be healthy and wealthy. Similarly, people who try to be “overly healthy” often eliminate the glucose needed to keep the brain wisely regulating your behavior. Glucose is necessary for naturally pleasant behavior, the ability to say “no,” the ability to stay away from distractions and wealth building.

An important note. Fructose is not helpful for self regulation/self discipline.  There is however no evidence that shows it is bad for self regulation…just not great for the body.

You’re going to need small amounts of glucose all day long as an entrepreneur. People who stop consuming glucose by 7:00 PM might as well stop working at 7:30 PM because they will not build wealth or have the self discipline to do much of anything else in life.

You need self regulation for more than maintaining success habits.

You need a LOT of self control to raise children, behave intelligently around other people who are out of control, to not spend all the money you are making on junk, to have successful relationship management and on and on.

Wealth comes as part of a specific ecosystem. Run out of self regulation points (Self Regulation Units) by 7 PM and you lose to your internal impulses everything that you do after 7 PM.

People who are self disciplined can choose to be wealthy. By choosing it and following through they have the self discipline to achieve wealth. No self discipline? No wealth is likely.  I will return to self discipline in a minute as you’ll need to organize your week in very specific ways that I assure you are wealth generators.

The sharpest minds in science in this specific area of glucose and self regulation are Roy Baumeister and Matthew Galliot at FSU.  Here is the precis from one of the most valuable papers I’ve ever read on self regulation.

Past research indicates that self-control relies on some sort

of limited energy source. This review suggests that blood

glucose is one important part  of the energy source of self-

control. Acts of self-control deplete relatively large amounts

of glucose. Self-control failures are more likely when glu-

cose is low or cannot be mobilized effectively to the brain

(i.e., when insulin is low or insensitive). Restoring glucose

to a sufficient level typically improves self-control.

Numerous self-control behaviors fit this pattern, including con-

trolling attention, regulating emotions, quitting smoking,

coping with stress, resisting impulsivity, and refraining

from criminal and aggressive behavior. Alcohol reduces

glucose throughout the brain and body and likewise impairs

many forms of self-control. Furthermore, self-control fail-

ure is most likely during times of the day when glucose is

used least effectively. Self-control thus appears highly sus-

ceptible to glucose. Self-control benefits numerous social

and interpersonal processes. Glucose might therefore be

related to a broad range of social behavior.

The Physiology of Willpower: Linking Blood Glucose to Self-Control,

Personality and Social Psychology Review

Principle Three: Actions that build wealth, that are not developed by the ecosystem of your home, are destined to fail.

Everything that generates wealth happens within a context. That context includes other humans. It is VERY DIFFICULT to build wealth by yourself.  You can do it. It is by no means impossible. But being 100% on your own is challenging.

God put us on this earth and gave us a mate to make the going a little easier for both people. The connection between marriage (not cohabitation) and wealth is dramatic.

Do the research yourself with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unmarried people typically don’t generate revenue of any significance.  It’s that simple. Again there are plenty of exceptions… but on average…don’t fight the math. Find a quality partner/relationship partner.

Wealthy people have ROLES in their marriages and in their business projects. Let’s get crystal here. Roles are about rational thought in action. When people have roles there is no argument about who des what, when. Everything always gets done because that is the function of roles. It’s Biblical and it’s evolutionary. Take your pick.

Quickly look at what roles are NOT.

The idea that doing the dishes is woman’s work is insane. (I know because I’ve yet to meet anyone who knows how to place dishes in the dishwasher correctly. Granted the small sample size…)

Wealth is so much easier to generate when (for example) she cuts the lawn, he does the dishes, she does the cooking, he does the painting and she does cleaning and he does the shopping and she does the whatever. Gender plays a role in early childhood management but rarely after that.

Roles make life SIMPLE and navigable. People who don’t know what they are doing in things as simple as household tasks have no chance at people building wealth which has many, many more complex facets than household management.

Roles in a marriage or a partnership are simple, easy to understand and must be sensible and mutually agreed upon by both.

I’m not married as I write this. I can share with you that there are a lot of roles to perform when you are single. Starting from scratch makes it much more difficult if you don’t have a partner who is doing their half of life experience.

Understand that I’m not saying that your business needs your spouse involved in the business. I’m telling you factually that business plus household needs two people combined performing roles that are logically and sensibly agreed upon.

Is it possible for the non-married to build wealth? It is but you improve your odds by MAGNITUDES if you are married and have agreed upon roles in life (imagine that business plus household = life).

Principle Four: Wealth is the result of years of actions consistently taken as planned.

Making a “lot of money” is all good and fine but making a “lot of money” is NOTHING compared to KEEPING that money.  You don’t hear wealthy people talk about how much money they made last year. It’s not all that important most of the time.

Most people have the potential self discipline to make a lot of money. But keeping money is another thing altogether. And keeping money is what WEALTH is all about. Wealth is ALL about self regulation over time.

You can stop listening to people who say, “Kev, she made a million dollars…”

Here’s the deal: You don’t care what anyone else made, what they claim they made, what they think they can make, what they tell you that you can make. In fact, you only care a little about how much YOU make. You really care how much you will keep over the next 10 years.

The 99 Day Wealth Test

Here’s what I want you to do for 99 days.

If you do this for 99 days, you will have what it takes to build wealth by systematizing your time as an entrepreneur or sales person.

Remember this is far more likely to be successful with TWO PEOPLE involved but I’m going to treat time management for the moment as if it is about JUST YOU.

PRINCIPLE FIVE:    Do the most important, difficult, critical to business, painful project FIRST every week.

Sunday you do THE project and you FINISH it. Sunday is THE CRITICAL DAY (assuming the “work week” in your business/niche/area begins on Monday.) to do BIG or urgent projects. Author? You WRITE all day.  Salesperson? You do all the book work, email writing, and all necessary work by the end of Sunday so when you get to Monday 8 AM you are selling.

Monday and Tuesday are the days entrepreneurs and salespeople make or break their business. These are selling days. These are the days to meet with people that they serve. Monday and Tuesday are not the nights to take the kids to a show. Monday and Tuesday are not the nights to play cards. Monday and Tuesday will typically prove to be about 2/3 of your income.

Screw up Monday and Tuesday and you are generally done for the week. Monday morning is the most important block of time you have during the week. It’s 4 hours after you get up. If you’re talking with  clients or similar, you’ll do well. If not, then whatever you ARE doing better be very, very important.

Turn the phone off if you aren’t talking to your clients or making sales.

Wednesday morning proves to be good for salespeople and entrepreneurs as far as selling and doing business is concerned.  Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoons are great periods to set appointments for the following week. Thursday and Friday evenings are good days to get less important projects done. They are good periods to do FUN THINGS like go to a movie in the evening or go out to eat.

Saturday is an excellent choice to make a family day or a rest day. Taking a “day off” each week works IF you have two people performing their roles well.

In the modern world people who take Sunday off make a lot less money on average than those who take Saturday off. People who have Sunday as a family day are requiring themselves to make Saturday the day the do everything for the business that is important but doesn’t fit into the wealthy person’s five day schedule. You’ll find what works best for you. Try both ways. In the 99 day test make sure you get everything done on Sunday.

Time allotment goes deeper than this.

You have more self discipline in the morning. You have plenty of self regulation units to avoid your impulses to do nothing, eat junk, etc. You are well behaved in the morning as most people are. Crimes, on average, don’t happen in the morning. Family fights, on average don’t happen in the morning. Most things people do that are really wasteful, destructive to self and others… begin to occur after about 8 hours of being awake.

The reason you do the big, depressing, massive project/seeing clients in the morning is because you will not have the energy to do it in the afternoon.

Too many bad/challenging/difficult things happen by 5 PM each day. After all, most people have no juice to work from 5 PM into the night. But in business you have to replenish that juice (glucose) because you are often only one or two people as an entrepreneur. It’s all up to YOU.

Personal email, texts and messages should almost never be acted on in the morning. Morning is MONEY TIME. This is when you do the actions you MUST do. You make your sales, develop your products and services. Afternoons on average are great for servicing accounts instead of selling or gaining new clients.

As the day wears on you become more likely to give in to distractions and follow your impulses (also known as your “gut feelings” which destine people to middle and lower incomes).

The exception to the “do it early in the day” rule:  Do NOT yield your mornings, Mondays or Tuesdays away from income generation tasks (seeing new clients, making sales, etc.)  Income pays ALL other actions for the rest of the weeks “stuff you will do.”

But some people are night owls. I am. I know hundreds of entrepreneurs and salespeople who are wealthy millionaires (or more) and the fact is there are an incredibly large number of night owls in this group.

Warning: Night owls don’t fare as well in longevity as “morning people.” But to fight against your “natural rhythm” be it day or night, is not all that smart if you are building a life that will pay for itself.

I get so much work done at night because everyone is sleeping. It’s as simple as that. The number of emails is way down. The number of messages is way down.

The number of distractions is close to zero when everyone else has gone to bed.

You need a lot less self regulation when all the drains to your self regulation in your house and in your business are sleeping or “off” for the night.

If you work when the rest of your world is sleeping you have massive advantages. You get FAR MORE done in those midnight, 1 AM, 2 AM hours than the same person does at Noon, 1 PM, 2 PM. Perhaps 2 -3 TIMES as much is accomplished simply because there are no distractions and there is almost NO NEED FOR impulse control late at night. There is no one that you have to be restrained with at midnight. They’ve all gone to bed, whoever they are. You are free to breathe easy while you do tasks complex or easy. There are no interruptions, so work actually gets done. 70% of all my writing is done after 11 PM at night. There’s simply no one awake to take me away from my projects. That means a lot gets done. If I tried to do the same in the daytime, I can’t imagine how that would play out.

Next week, you’ll get the necessary specifics of time management for people who will end up wealthy.