This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The 10X Rule" by Grant Cardone. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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What are the key 10X time management principles to know? How can tips about time from The 10X Rule help encourage your success?
10X time management principles focus on maximizing the time you have. You are trying to ensure that you’re spending as much time as possible on progressing towards your big goals.
Read on for more about 10X, time management, and maximizing success.
Tips From 10X on Time Management
The focus of so many seminars and self-help articles on time management undermines 10X thinking. People think in terms of having a shortage of time and needing to achieve balance by giving up things they want. Instead, focus on maximizing your time by devoting it to 10X-level goals and action.
Balance Versus Abundance
When people think about improving time management, their goal is usually balance. However, it’s either/or thinking that limits your success—for instance, you might think you can’t have a successful career and be a good husband or father at the same time.
But you can have success in every area—career, family, health, hobbies, and psychological well-being—simultaneously. Rather than asking how you can improve time management and balance, you should be asking how you can have everything you want in abundance.
When you achieve 10X success, you have what you want at such levels that you aren’t at risk of losing it. If you’re unhappy or worried about any area of life, your problem isn’t balance, it’s lack of success. Remember, success is your duty: Stop thinking about trade-offs and start thinking in terms of having everything.
Maximize Your Time
Most people who worry about time management don’t know how much time they have available, or what’s most important for them to do in that time—which means they can’t manage it. However, instead of managing your time, you should focus on maximizing it. You’ll always have a shortage or imbalance if you don’t do enough with the time you have.
Cardone notes that people who are impressed with what he gets done often ask him whether he ever rests. But the reason he accomplishes so much isn’t that he forgoes rest—it’s that he knows how much time he has and what his priorities are, and he assumes responsibility for pursuing his goals with maximum effort in that time.
To maximize your time, you need to:
- Focus on your priorities: Make success your duty by setting clear priorities (10X goals). Decide how much success you want, in what areas. Then spend the majority of your time on actions that create the success you want in these areas.
- Understand how much time you have and how you’re using it: Track what you’re doing with your time so you can identify and eliminate activities and habits that aren’t contributing to your goals. Anything you’re doing that’s not contributing to your success is wasting your time.
- Increase or multiply your time with the 10X Rule: You can, in effect, increase time by getting more done in the time available. If Cardone can make 15 phone calls in 15 minutes while another person takes an hour to make the calls, he has 45 more minutes available to him than the other person has. Most people aren’t fully productive at work—if you work harder, it not only creates more time, but also generates more rewards so your work is more enjoyable.
When your life changes and you adjust your priorities, then adjust your schedule so you’re still doing what’s most important and maximizing your time. For example, when Cardone and his wife had a child, they reset their family priorities while maintaining control of their time. Cardone began getting up an hour earlier each day to spend time with his daughter before work while his wife got additional sleep. Also, by getting the child up earlier, they could put her to bed earlier so they had time with each other. Their solution accommodated his work priority of ensuring his family’s financial success, as well as his priority of spending time with his family.
If you start by committing yourself to success as a duty and maximize your time by performing at 10X levels, you’ll have the time you need to achieve success as you’ve defined it.
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Here's what you'll find in our full The 10X Rule summary:
- How to set goals that are 10 times bigger than average
- How to use extraordinary thinking to achieve extraordinary results
- The 3 myths that will sabotage your chances of success if you let them
