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Are you mortgaging your time?

By JNSwanson

Broken clock

Have you already mortgaged all your available time?

We mortgage our time when we say yes to a project.

If we say yes to too many projects, we can create a huge debt, more than we could ever get done with the new time we get.

There are catastrophic strategies. We may have a breakdown. We may declare time bankruptcy and walk away from our lives.

Or we can start into a process of refinancing, renegotiating deadlines, deciding what the minimal acceptable quality is. As part of that, we can ruthlessly eliminate the time leaks (which helps with time income) and we can refuse to take on any more time debt.

I would like to flesh this out further, but I can’t. I have time mortgages of my own I’m paying down.

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About JNSwanson

Jon has been a regular reader and occasional contributor around here since 2006. Jon works as a pastor, but he understands business better than many so-called business people. He gets that it is about people, relationships, service, and yes, even love.
  • When the planes are coming in to land - July 18, 2016
  • Are you mortgaging your time? - April 24, 2013
  • A customer service story - September 12, 2012
  • What to do when a blog post is suddenly popular - May 2, 2012
  • Review: The official guide to QuickBooks 2012 - January 23, 2012
  • Two discussion questions for you - December 8, 2011
  • From scrap metal to skilled crafts - November 23, 2011
  • How a small business can be huge - November 16, 2011
  • Banding together - October 12, 2011
  • Show the love - October 1, 2011

April 24, 2013 Filed Under: mistakes

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Comments

  1. Tracy Brown says

    April 26, 2013 at 11:06 am

    Hi Jon,
    I definitely understand that feeling, and an interesting concept you used: mortgaging your time!
    I’ve been feeling the crunch myself lately. The past several weeks I’ve been watching how I schedule my monthly tasks. I realized that I had a habit of scheduling everything towards the beginning (projects, client tasks I’m responsible for, networking, etc.). I’ve begun to spread things out and assign each category to a better part of the month. It’s challenging, and I’m still working on it!
    I hope you will be able to create a better space and schedule for yourself as well. I’d love to hear if you came up with new methods of balance!
    Have a good weekend,
    Tracy

    • Becky McCray says

      July 22, 2013 at 9:35 am

      Tracy, two tools I use to keep better in balance are my project folder and my weekly planner. I explained the project folder here and the weekly planner here.

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