Anti-Time Management

Reclaim Your Time and Revolutionize Your Results With the Power of Time Tipping

Rating

4/5

Date Started

9/19/2023

Date Completed

10/2/2023

Five Powerful Quotes from the Book

Quote 1

“The Paradox of Getting Things Done: The more you get done, the more is given to you to get done. Traditional productivity management piles on more work without additional pay to workers. Excess capacity at work creates an efficiency tango between management and workers. Management tests employees to see how little pay they can bear and still get the job done. Employees test management to see how long they can stretch out work before they get fired. What might effectively take one hour to get done could be efficiently cut up into tiny, bite-size pieces, and spread out over an entire day, week, month, or even year, requiring more managers to watch workers every step of the way…

“Corporate culture is 99% work signaling, and 1% working. I asked executives for thoughts on what I call ‘unproductive symbols of productivity at work,’ like staying late at the office to show goodwill when the best thing would have been to get the work done on time. A Fortune 100 company executive surprised me with this answer: ‘Leading a team of about 180, I frequently get people trying to make sure they are hard workers by letting me know how many extra hours, either directly or indirectly, they are working. I appreciate dedication and commitment, but I don’t think of this as a mark of being productive or effective for that matter. What they don’t understand is that I’m asking myself one of two questions: Are they slow and not up to the task to which they’re assigned? Or are they not asking for help when they should be?’ …

“Recognize this: If you have a blatant disregard for your time, so will everyone else. You are a natural resource that corporations will deplete if allowed. You wouldn’t be the first to lose your best years to the company. It’s up to you to replenish your time.”

Quote 2

“Ask yourself these six baseline questions. I adapted these questions for your time tipping purposes, directly from Alcoholics Anonymous for apparent reasons. Instructions: Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ 1. Have you ever decided to manage or balance your time better, but it didn’t last? 2. Do you ever envy people who can spend their time more freely than you? 3. Have your time management abilities, or lack thereof, caused trouble at home? 4. Do you tell yourself you can stop working anytime you want to, even though you keep working, even against your own expectations? 5. Have you ever switched from one habit or program to another, hoping that this would make you more efficient, effective, or successful? 6. Have you ever felt like you worked all day and got nothing done? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you are not alone…

“You could identify wasted time in ghost stepping by asking yourself questions like these: What would I do if I had only an hour to get this done? What would I do if I could work only an hour a day? What would I do if I worked only an hour a week? These questions, while you may not think they are realistic, help you identify both what is actually necessary to be done and by whom, to achieve your ultimate goal beyond the immediate goal…

“Three time tipping questions. Use these questions for greater autonomy when you create your economic mode. Will I be paid based on results, not how much time it takes to do it? Will the work be valued at a monetary amount that is worth my time and energy? Will I be able to provide the result from anywhere I choose, not a specific physical location. If the answer is ‘yes’ to all three of these questions, then the work is likely in line with your final cause values, and you should move forward with it. If the answer is ‘no’ to any of these questions, and you still want to do the job, you need to get creative and work through the time tipping framework to increase your ability for the project to create time for, not take time from, your final cause…

“Your questions are the precursor to your future. Consider these questions: What’s the first thing that pops into your mind? Are you waiting to have more money so you can have more time? Right now, is most of your time going to your final cause priorities, or not? Are your friends and family taking a back seat to your work? Asking better questions may create an intentionally uncomfortable gap between what you want and how you’ll get there…

“Questions beget questions, but aligned questions support inspired action. Ask questions that can change everything. Consider these three legendary questions and apply them to your own situation.

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others? Martin Luther King Jr. said: ‘Every person must decide at some point whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism, or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?’

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today? Steve Jobs said: ‘When I was seventeen, I read a quote that went something like – ‘if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me. And since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself – ‘if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.’

“What, if anything, about the way people are leading today needs to change? Brene Brown asked: ‘What, if anything, about the way people are leading today needs to change in order for leaders to be successful in a complex, rapidly changing environment where we’re faced with seemingly intractable challenges and an insatiable demand for innovation?’”

Quote 3

“Imagine the heroic work you do to meet a deadline. Think of how you’d work differently if you know you can’t check in at work for the next week or two. Now imagine if you applied some of that thinking around your future. No one is more productive than a procrastinator with an impending deadline. The difference between an operator and an owner is in how they spend their time. You can architect your time differently by organizing what you want in life and still getting the work done.”

Quote 4

“Apply this example to your own life and change the numbers as needed to see a new vision of what’s possible. Revenue: The moment you realize that $1,000,000 is 1,000 people paying $1,000 is the moment your head should start spinning. The moment you realize that $100,000 is 1,000 customers paying $100, the moment you realize that a $60,000 annual salary is only 2,400 ebooks at $25, the moment you realize that $25 times 200 of anything for twelve months is $60,000, is the moment you realize you could have ten of those tiny ventures making a major dent for good in your life and in the lives of others…

“Change how you’re paid takeaways: There are tons of ways to make money, yet regardless of how much you’re paid, how you get paid dictates your lifestyle. Listen back to that last line – internalize it. This is important because even those who leave jobs to become entrepreneurs mess it all up when they create another job for themselves. The good news: the gospel of pay is that you can change your life by changing how you’re paid. Your way of living is directly tied to how you’re paid, where you’re expected to be, and how you deliver on that obligation.”

Quote 5

“I really wanted to start making my own money. I thought the best way to do that in my small town was to get a job at the grocery store or gas station or pick up trash at the county fair. I told my dad I wanted a job, and to my surprise he said, ‘You don’t want a job.’ I asked why not, thinking that getting a job was a super responsible thing to do. He told me that I’d be working my whole life and right now I should focus on school and having fun. But I persisted and explained that I wanted to be able to make and spend my own money for more freedom.

“He then came up with the most random plan. He told me to go to the watermelon farms and ask if I could buy all the irregular sized and shaped watermelons. He said that the farms couldn’t sell them to the grocery stores – they’d go rotten and be thrown away. My dad gave me seed money to go and negotiate for the watermelons. My younger brother, Eric, and I drove to the farms in El Centro from North County San Diego, California. We took out the back seats of our family van and bought enough watermelons to fill it all the way up – about 100 watermelons.

“When we got home, I reached out to neighbors and friends’ parents and told them we had weird looking watermelons for sale. I told them they were delicious and cheaper than the ones at the store. It was almost the 4th of July, and Eric and I set up a stand at the park so people could come pick them up while we sold them to anyone walking by who could heft a watermelon around. Eric and I sold out. We made more money than we would have made the entire summer working for minimum wage in a few hours.

“I was planning on giving away my summer, but my dad thought differently about time and money. When I think back on this experience, I think it was a turning point that changed the trajectory of my life. I learned I didn’t have to create time for money, I learned I could think way outside normal patterns of thought to achieve a goal. In this case, having money and the freedom to spend it, didn’t have to look like a job. I believe it was this experience and others that helped shape me to have a mindset where my family and I can travel the world, take in foster children, and work on passion projects that don’t have anything to do with money at all.”

About the Book

Original Date Published

August 30, 2022

Anti-Time Management: Reclaim Your Time and Revolutionize Your Results with the Power of Time Tipping – Audiobook | Ebook | Hardcover – “From great personal loss, Norton shares how he and his family live with no regrets and how attention prioritization and time creation are learnable skills despite hardships. Anti-Time Management will help you be present for the people, projects, plans and priorities that matter most. Like light through a prism, you can purposefully create asymmetrical results by making small intentional decisions on one side of your life or work to create brilliant strobes of possibilities on the other.”

About the Author

Richie Norton – “Richie Norton is an award-winning author and serial entrepreneur. An executive coach to CEOs, he is featured in Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc., Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Business Insider, Huffington Post and more. Pacific Business News recognized Richie as one of the Top Forty Under 40 “best and brightest young businessmen” in Hawaii. Richie is one of the world’s leading thinkers and Top 100 coaches as honored by MG100. He is the CEO and Cofounder of PROUDUCT—an INC. 5000 company—a global entrepreneurship solution helping businesses go from idea to market with full-service sourcing, product strategy, and end-to-end supply chain. He is the author of several books including Anti-Time Management, The Power of Starting Something Stupid and Résumés Are Dead and What to Do About It. Richie was born and raised in San Diego before moving to Brazil and then Hawaii. Richie is happily married to Natalie. They have four boys (one son already made his way to Heaven) and they have cared for three beloved foster children. They live on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, with their little dog, Velzy.”