The Wall Street Journal offers up an interesting read about work/life balance from Dr. Henry Cloud.  Every time I receive a call from one of our customers at 8:30pm I think of this topic.  Here is the full text of the quote referenced in the title:

I think the first thing is to be aware that you basically have two things available to you to create your vision — in work and in life. First, you’ve got your time. Second, your energy. The second thing, energy, you might not be aware of because of people and activities getting the best of your energy, or the wrong people and wrong activities taking more of your energy than you might be aware of. There are interpersonal issues that cause this. You have to become aware of those and work through those and regain some structure. Technology has destroyed time and space boundaries. We’ve got to put some practice into place to regain them. The way to address it is to clarify goals. My contention is there are a lot of people running around with time-management software and planners and all that stuff, but they are so fragmented and out of control that they don’t understand that they have issues that make them unable to do what their planners tell them to do.

I love the last sentence in that graph.  The vast majority of highly successful salespeople we encounter have specific, written goals.  These salespeople tend to have laser-like focus on these goals and they stay committed to achieving them.  In a sense, they have a defined purpose.

The other group, so to speak, tends to get bogged down in meetings, mind-numbing research, personal tasks or other such “distractions.”  At the end of the day, top salespeople view goal time (approximately 8am to 5pm) as their most precious allotment of time.  They guard it diligently and use it efficiently.

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