Have you noticed my colour selection here?
They gave me the colours, but anyway.
So this is people, don't we all want free days?
And focus, and it's green of course and the buffer.
Now I've been saying free focus and buffer for a long time because I studied Dan Sullivan's
stuff and it's brilliant and all that stuff.
But I'm going to say free buffer and focus.
Put your free days in first, because if you don't you'll never get them, right?
There's always lots to do, because as I say we stretch the work out to fit the time.
So put your free days in first, how many vacations would you like to take?
It takes three weeks to totally recharge.
Now I recommend, okay, one three week and then either one one-week and two two-weeks
or two one-weeks and one two-week or something like that.
But I recommend one three-weeks, you don't have to do it this year, but I do encourage
you to get into that.
It takes three weeks to fully recharge, then get away seasonally after that like every
90 days, and going to a trade show.
You're still doing business but you're getting away, but that's what I'll say to people who
are like, come on, I've only ever taken one one-week vacation, some people haven't even.
Some people haven't even taken one one-week vacation.
So there are four holidays right there, and you book them in, now that's your homework.
Exactly which days where you're going, make a commitment, buy a ticket, I mean buy your
flight.
You can always rent a hotel room and cancel that within 48 hours, right?
If you didn't show up and I want to tell these hotel rooms to get tighter on that, maybe
a two week cancellation policy, but still people put it in their agenda and cancel that.
I mean I know that, I do that, because I’ll say, you know I want to go to that, maybe
it's not a priority, by the time comes for the conference or something like that would
be fun, but it's not a priority, right?
But if it's vacation, that's the priority.
So you need to make some kind of commitment that's going to cost your money to cancel.
Pick your dates, strike them right out, they're in your calendar, fill them up, gone to wherever.
Then your buffer time, how much time do you need of buffer time?
So what happens in buffer time?
It's things that don't happen all the time.
Okay, so it might be recruiting.
You might not be hiring too many people regularly, bigger companies they have time in there every
single week for recruiting, because they're constantly bringing on more people.
And when you've got 60 people to bring on one more person is nothing.
And when you get bigger jobs, you need to bring on like 5 or 10 more people constantly
to work through these jobs, because you bring them on and they might not make it through
the three months.
So don't hesitate to bring two people on at the same time and see which one makes it through
the three months and which one doesn't.
So recruiting is something, with a smaller company, that may want to put into your buffer
time.
Cleaning your environment, that's huge.
It's huge for most companies, you're up leveling yourself, you want an up-leveled environment.
So a lot of people move into a new building, they'll buy their building (that's their retirement),
and they'll buy the building and be moving into that, so that then doesn't become buffer,
that goes into the focus time, because that's all about making more money when you get into
this new environment, this new building and you're going to be will be growing and all
that stuff, right?
It’s in the focus.
But the buffer time is something that doesn't happen all the time, could be as I say cleaning
up your environment, putting up some shelves, getting those books organized and all that
sort of thing.
So how much buffer time do you need?
That's a personal thing, and it may be that you need more later and it maybe that you
need less later, you just need to be cleaning out the old cobwebs for a while, and you need
less time later.
So identify what you need.
I contend that one day a month is probably good, but you may want to break that down
to four mornings a month or two half days or something like that, okay?
Now the rest of the time is focus time.
And what's focus for you?
Focus for you is not the same focus for your team.
Your team focus is in the business, some of yours is in the business, a lot of it is on
the business.
Sales for example is huge.
For any business needing money sales is number one for the entrepreneur.