You just finished up a customer’s home. You thank them for their business, get paid, and you get back into your truck to make the 15-20 minute drive back to your office.
What now?
Many people will reach over to that radio button and turn it on to listen to music… or news… or weather… or sports.
But why???
Music is entertaining but it drowns out your thoughts.
Weather and sports don’t matter much.
The news can just bring you down.
You’re wasting 15-20 minutes of really valuable time! A lot of people will get home in the evening and think “if only I had an hour to myself to work on my business” and yet they do have that time and don’t realize it! If you make three 20-minute drives today, you’ve got an hour of time! A 30-minute commute every day turns into 2.5 hours in a 5-day work week of recovered valuable time, and you can get through a whole audiobook on CD very quickly! How powerful is that?
Know what you should do instead of listening to the radio? Use the time to grow your business: Listen to audiobooks or podcasts that will give you ideas and strategies to grow your business. This one is a simple habit that you can put into effect right away and see results just as fast! I call it “windshield time.”
(Here’s a good place to start: the CEO Warrior podcast!)
Here’s the specific habit I recommend:
#1. Get a pen and paper and keep it handy in your truck. (Never write anything down while driving but it’s okay to pull over if you need to… you don’t want to lose those golden ideas!)
#2. Find an audiobook or podcast that has great value and listen. Of course, you won’t be able to listen to the whole thing at once, and that’s okay. Listen for a few minutes and then when you get to your destination, write down one or two insights you gained.
#3. Immediately turn those insights into action! Don’t just collect ideas to implement later; try to implement something from your listening as quickly as possible.
Pro tip: if you don’t always want to listen to books or podcasts then another thing you can do is phone calls. Get a Bluetooth or hands-free phone system for your vehicle and get those phone calls and messages out of the way!
When I plug in I kind of feel like I’m going into a battle station out on the road. This is that time to get ahead, to use the time to positively effect your business and the results that you are achieving.
Anything that you can do to be more efficient is great… use these spare minutes of the day can drive your business forward.
