Time and Money: How to Make Your New Year’s Goals Real

I have often said that if you show me your calendar and your bank statement, I can tell you what your values are. That's because, as I pointed out in a previous article, a person's actions always tell the real story, and there are no actions more revealing than how you spend your time and your money. But examining your priorities in this way is not just an exercise to be performed in retrospect. Once you realize that these are the forces that drive so much of your world, it makes sense to use that knowledge proactively. And that leads me to my next year-end mindset reminder:

Be Strategic with Time and Money

There are a lot of things people say they would like to do—as soon as they can find the time or when they can afford it. But the reality is, the most dramatic advances in life occur when you approach things the other way around. Instead of waiting for the time and financial resources to become available, you make them available for the things that you have decided are important. You take these most precious commodities and you assign them their roles. You make them work for you.

Is it your goal to get aligned at a higher level with your team? Then get those team meetings and educational sessions in the calendar now. Have you been promising yourself you would spend more time with the family? Block out those hours. I know that many people think it feels strange to book time with family as if you were making an appointment for a haircut, but the fact is unless you make it concrete, that time you intend to spend is going to continue to slip away. (I'll have much more to say about strategic calendar planning in an upcoming article in the next Quarterly Digest—be sure to look for that.)

The same goes for economic priorities. If you wait for financial conditions to feel right before you move forward with things like facility upgrades or an ambitious CE plan, you can end up waiting forever, as there will always be other ways to use that money. If you are serious about making a commitment—as you do for vacation reservations, for example—you put your money down up front.

Time and money—like it or not, they are the determining factors in so much of what you do. So taking charge of your life depends on taking charge of these drivers. If it's something you really want to have happen, get it in the calendar and get it in the budget. That's when it stops becoming a wish and it becomes real.


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