There’s no question that working with a purpose and staying focused have the obvious benefit of creating more chances to be successful, more chances to “make a sale”, more chances to refine your approach, more chances to improve, more chances to make more money. That’s pretty clear. So whatever your goals or targets are in a workday, working smart improves your odds of achieving success. It’s a game of numbers. Right? If you understand and believe that, then you’re correct. No argument there.
For Joe Girard, it goes much further than that, though. Let me take you to a deeper level of appreciation and understanding. The reason I believe you should always work when you work is one word: OPPORTUNITY. No, not the opportunity to close a deal or anything like that. I’m talking about the BIG opportunity. The opportunity you only get once. No matter who you are or what you are in this life, there is one gift we all share equally; that precious gift from God to all of us, TIME. On any given day, we are each given the same gift. We all get the same thing—1440 minutes. That’s how many minutes there are in a 24-hour day. How you use them, spend them, or ignore them is what separates us from each other.
I understood the value of time early on in my career. If you came into my office on any day and asked me to spell time, I would say to you M-O-N-E-Y. That’s what time meant to me, and that is what it should mean to you at work. When I combined my respect for time with my approach to working smart, I had an unbeatable combination. None of the other salespeople in the dealership ever made the connection between time and money the way I did. They never seemed to catch on to the fact that you only have so much time in your life to create wealth and stability.
The problem is you don’t know how much time that is. How many more years are you going to be able to work? How much time do you really have to know and love your families? How long are you going to live? The only time you are certain of is the time you have right now: this day, this hour, this moment. That’s all any of us have.
Don’t be surprised if on a typical day you spent more time doing nothing than being productive. At the end of the day, add up all the time you spent screwing around instead of working. You’ll be absolutely floored at the amount of time you’ve wasted away doing NOTHING. If you’re perfectly honest with yourself, you’ll probably notice there are times when you actually shot the entire day—never to be recaptured again.
If you put off (or slack off) till “tomorrow”, the clock may have stopped ticking. Listen, I’m not trying to sound like the voice of doom and gloom. I hope you live in good health for over a hundred years. But reality is reality. How you apply the hours you do have is what’s important. All you have is this golden moment—NOW! Right now. What are you going to do with it?
