To accomplish more I need to do less.

This is a realization I’ve had in my business. We accomplish so much more and help so many more people when I will myself to do less. That sounds contradictory at first. How can one accomplish more while doing less?

When I started Parker Financial I did everything. I organized our workshops, did my accounting and bookkeeping, input data to the database, met with clients, made notes, did the financial planning, made recommendations, helped clients implement the recommendations, completed paperwork, took care of all the follow up, made copies, shredded documents and on and on and on. As Parker Financial has grown I have to do less of these items in order to accomplish more.

Today we have realized my time is best spent meeting with clients and prospective clients, and taking care of activities that only I can do such as, public speaking, hosting the radio show and writing for my blog and books. As I’ve narrowed the activities that are most important and critical, we are able to help more people and accomplish so much more. At some point Parker Financial will either need to stop accepting new clients or we will need to figure out new ways for me to do less so we can accomplish and help more people.

This is also relevant to retirement planning and really an excellent realization for prioritizing time. The reality is we are all given the same number of hours in a day, yet some people seem to be able to experience so much more life in those hours. I’ve learned it’s not because they sleep less, but because they too have come to realize the only way they can accomplish more is to do less.

They hire people to do the activities that are not the absolute highest and best use of their time so they can focus on the things that are. For some people that may be cleaning the roof, mowing the lawn, washing the cars, washing the windows, cleaning the house, cooking, vacuuming, paying the bills, managing investments, changing the oil in their car and so on.

I had the good fortune to meet with a person recently who serves with hospice. She said that life gets to be so crystal clear when people find out they are dying. People focus their time restoring relationships, saying I love you, truly enjoying every moment and in the end she said it really is the relationships that people are most concerned with.

What if we could adopt that type of mentality every day? To wake up and know that we are dying. This might be the very last day we have on this beautiful planet. How would we spend our time? What would be most important? Who would you want to be with? And how much of your precious time would you spend mowing the lawn and washing your dishes or managing your investments?

I’m often humbled that most of the people who hire us are incredibly intelligent. Many of them could probably manage their investments better than we can.  But they have come to a point in their lives where they focus on what is most important. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn from you our clients, and I am humbled by the opportunity to serve in such a way that they can say they are being a good stewards of their resources while at the same time focusing their time and energy on what is really most important.

If you are getting ready to retire,  remember … to accomplish More of what really matters … YOU need to do Less of what is not the highest and best use of your time.

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