How to Protect Your Most Precious Asset

Money and investments are certainly high on the list of precious assets. However, you can earn back money you lost or find new investment opportunities.

Another precious assest is professional relationships. Your professional network is extremely important to your success. However, to a large extent, your network is in fact renewable. You can repair wounded relationships and you can continue to grow your networks by meeting new people.

The same goes for a third asset that is precious: health and vitality. While we take the importance of our health and vitality for granted, to a large extent we can make healthy choices that renew our health, vitality, and energy. With the right diet, exercise, and stress management, we can bring fresh focus, discipline, and enthusiasm to our work every day.

While money, professional relationships, and vitality are mostly renewable, there is one asset that is not. Because it is so finite, it is more precious than any other. Time. Every second we use is a second that we cannot get back.

And yet, we act like we don’t know this. We spend time doing things that could be delegated. We are constantly reacting to fires that really aren’t. We are doing things that don’t have high strategic importance. Sitting in meetings that we aren’t needed in. You are starting to get the idea of how your most precious asset, time, is in the control of others, not yours.

As a result, we feel overwhelmed. We lose our focus. Ironically, our other assets suffer as well. We are stressed and lose energy and vitality. We do not relate as well with others, because we are distracted and cannot give our full attention. We make poor decisions that cost money.

Ask yourself these questions to get a sense of where you are spending your time.

• What are your biggest issues with time management?
• What are things that you could be doing but can’t because of your current use of time?
• What are examples of where you are spending time on things that don’t have high strategic value or importance?
• What are examples of where you are spending time on things that others could be doing?
• What are examples of where you are doing things more perfectly than they need to be done?

Time is indeed our most important asset. Be sure that you treat it as such. Measure how you use it. Analyze your decisions. Make new, more strategic choices going forward. Do what it takes to set boundaries to execute those choices.

In the case of time, you can’t get it back. Take control of your time and deploy it appropriately.

If you want to see how you are spending your time, click here to download my Time Assessment form.

If others are in control, not you, please reach out and we’ll get you back in control of your most precious asset, time.