“Gavin’s Law: Live to Start. Start to Live.”
Excerpt From: Richie Norton. “Anti-Time Management: Reclaim Your Time and Revolutionize Your Results with the Power of Time Tipping.”
“When my brother-in-law Gavin passed and later my son Gavin passed, a mentor asked me what I’d learned from their short lives. I articulated what I now call Gavin’s Law—Live to Start. Start to Live. This life motto has been shared in my works with millions of people around the world. Trauma has a funny way of changing the way you think. The loss of the two Gavins in my life forced me to reconsider how my own life was structured. And during those moments of quiet self-reflection, I considered how those words I hold dear to my heart, “Live to Start. Start to Live,” had started to shape my daily life.
As those words molded me and guided my decisions, I saw how others were also starting to do the same in their own way. Family, friends, and acquaintances were transforming through their own life challenges and inner struggles. Their values were shifting, and their choices about their attention and time were also shifting.
I’ve been fortunate to hear from some of my readers how the principle of Gavin’s Law in The Power of Starting Something Stupid has helped them put family, friends, and dreams first as a choice, not at the expense, of meaningful work. Money and meaning can go hand in hand.
There’s an undeniable energy that comes with Gavin’s Law. Living to start the ideas that press on your mind and starting to live those ideas in real life is truly the experience of a lifetime.
But It’s Not About Time, It’s About You
I created an acronym for the word time to keep my attention on high priorities and opportunities while staying with and enjoying the present:
TIME: Today Is My Everything
I wrote this book to help you create high-trust environments with attention to time—the mother of all resources—for greater contribution in the service of others while leading a life of meaning and joy despite tragedy.
Time management is a seductive promise.
It sounds like you’ll have more time if you apply the principles of time management. Yet . . . nothing could be further from the truth.
Why Do You Have Less Time Under Time Management?
The dictionary definition of the word management literally means “control.” Time management means “time control.” However, whose time is being controlled, by whom, and when is what matters to Time Tippers. Time management does not mean you have control over your time. Time management usually means your time is controlled by someone else.
Time management means you don’t have control of your time.
Let me be clear. Time management has nothing to do with you controlling your own time.
Period.
Industry deliberately designed time management so a manager at work could control you and your time, what you do, where, and when.
Welcome to your run-of-the-mill job.
In fact, your vacation time, the hours you work, your breaks, when you retire (or not), and where and when you do your work—even if it’s from home—are carefully calculated factors of time management (and often paired with a reward system of titles, roles, bonuses, employee of the month, and the like to enforce it).
Time management has great branding around it but doesn’t live up to its promise.
Is it any wonder how people might manage their personal time using the professional time-management tools available to them only to end up with more work and less available time?
Your list of things to do does not need to be the same list as things to be done.
Under traditional time management, personal productivity is pernicious to professional productivity.
That means, under time management, the more available time you create means you have more work to be done! To top it off, time managers make sure it stays that way by design—counterproductively discouraging high producers.
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.
Efficiency metrics can show improvements in productivity despite a lack of production.
Anti-time management looks at things differently.
Productivity (efficiency) and production (value conversion) are not necessarily the same thing. The formidable efficiency dance disappears when you stop wasting energy on things that don’t matter. You can get things done and be done.
Traditional time management worked for its past designed purposes.
Virtues are virtues until virtues become vices.
Time management has become a vice.
All Management Is Time Management
How the manufacturing term time management slipped into self-help mainstream vernacular is a mystery—unless, of course, industry realized they could be more efficient if employees could do better at managing their weekend time to increase the workweek output. Lightbulb moment?
Anti-time management helps you reclaim your time so you have a greater choice (and responsibility) in the matter of how you do life.”
What controls your time more than any one person or system are the choices you make….The consequences of your choices can either multiply or divide your available time.
Look, it’s not wrong to be responsible and accountable to someone else for your time. Working together is key to getting great results. Working with employers, customers, or clients reliably throughout your career can and should bring you great purpose and joy. The key in your personal decision-making process at work and at home for greater autonomy is to remember that everything you agree to is a choice and so is its consequence—unintended consequences be damned.
When a consequence is viewed as a choice, you have a greater mental capacity to change your circumstances with different choices—even preemptively.
Own the amount of time you spend at work as a choice, not a consequence.
Don’t play the victim of your job.
Hard work is a high.
About The Author
RICHIE NORTON is an award-winning author and serial entrepreneur. An executive coach to CEOs, he is featured in Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc., Entrepreneur, and The Huffington Post. He is the CEO and co-founder 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. Norton is the author of several books including The Power of Starting Something Stupid and Résumés Are Dead and What to Do About It.
Richie Norton’s latest book, “Anti-Time Management: Reclaim Your Time and Revolutionize Your Results with the Power of Time Tipping” releases on August 30 and it is currently available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and MORE. For more information about Richie Norton, visit www.richienorton.com or follow him on social media. He’s @RichieNortonLive (on Facebook); @Richie_Norton (on Instagram), and @RichieNorton (on Twitter).
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I had my 30th birthday over the weekend and was spoiled with a bunch of packages so I did an unboxing video of all the goodies I hauled. Thank you so much to everyone that sent me gifts! You made my day that much more special! Check out the books I got and let me know if you have read any of these in the comments below!
Check out the video below:
