“A People” Access
When you’re in the presence of “A people,” the more opportunities open for you. Those “A people” are your game changers.
You should pre-designate these people, so when they say, “Hey, can you be in Vegas tomorrow?” you do not hesitate and start enumerating the various reasons you can’t drop everything – appointments, kids, spouse, dog, etc. – and go. Instead, the answer to “A people” should always, “Yes!”
When your game changer calls, you drop everything, especially when it means being in an A place with an A activity. There’s also the benefit of excitement that goes along with it. It brings an energy that allows the interaction to unfold organically and without effort. You find it’s easy to be present.
On the other hand, when you’re with B people or lower, it takes a lot of effort to be present during the meeting or activity, and you probably find yourself going along with the flow. Going along with the flow means you are operating by default, not design. Also, when effort is there, fatigue is always right around the corner. When fatigue is around the corner, our engagement time is shrinking. When we’re with someone who’s inspiring and feeding us energy, effortlessness arises and you go further faster and with less fuel. You are in alignment.
Being out of alignment or fatigued brings me to the idea of effective time. If we’re honest, we have between 90 minutes and three hours of effective time each day. A-level attention is finite, no matter how much you may love what you’re doing. So instead of attempting to extendyour effective time, let’s focus instead on where we’ll get the best probability of return. Discern when this happens in your day, week, month, and year and plan accordingly. This keeps you centered. This keeps you in alignment with your design and your designed goals.
You can also leverage effective time by reducing extraneous stimulation that sucks up your attention when that attention should be applied elsewhere. (“What you give attention to, you get more of.”) Need I tell you that social media creates an exorbitant amount of unnecessary stimulation?
So with the idea of you’re a-person game changer and leveraging effective time in mind, take the time to sit down and itemize who your game changers are. As I said, you must pre-designate these people and have clarity about who they are because you never know when the opportunity with them may arise. If you aren’t prepared with clarity, when they pose that Vegas question (or whatever it may be), you are going to likely default to the excuse or excuses why you can’t answer in the affirmative and take advantage of the opportunity before you.
Next, determine where your effective time typically occurs on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedule. It may be first thing in the morning, on a Monday, mid-month, and outside of summer. You cannot leverage your finite effective time if you don’t know when it occurs.
Take time now to determine who and when, so you can operate by your design rather than allowing default to take control.
