Feeling morbid?
Go to the website Death-Clock.org and take the quick quiz to find out the exact day you’re going to leave this earthly plane and take a permanent dirt nap.
On the site, there’s a section where they’ve posted responses from people who have used the calculator. One of my favorites: “Not sure I can afford to live to 100 years old… I’ll have to start writing novels or something lucrative.”
Of course, none of us knows exactly what our number is, but we know there IS one. The site predicted I’ll live to 104. I sincerely hope they can figure out how to reverse aging sometime soon because gravity will have won by then, requiring strong clothespins and enough Botox to paralyze a horse to keep from looking like a soggy prune, but I digress…
Point is, the site should get you to stop and give serious consideration to who and what is WASTING your time, aggravating you and causing you to lose focus on the things that are important to you.
If the site’s prediction is correct, I have 51 years left. Given that one third of that will be sleeping, another third working and some significant percentage of the remaining third doing mundane things like eating, working out, showering, laundry, taxes, etc., that gives me only a tiny fraction of time to accomplish something meaningful and enjoy the finite amount of time we have here on this big rock.
It begs the question, how much of whatever time you have left on YOUR calendar do you want to waste?
I’ve come to really resent people who disrespect my time.
When clients book appointments on my calendar, they are required to provide detailed information about what they want to discuss. The call is confirmed by my admin, so the chances of a no-show or someone being late are really, really low.
However, IF someone no-shows (and it’s not due to a major, unavoidable catastrophe), the call is not rescheduled and they lose their privilege of a private consultation. If they are more than 5 minutes late, I leave the meeting and require them to reschedule 2 weeks out or longer.
I also have adopted my friend Mike Michalowicz’s cringe factor rule: If an inbound message from you – be it an e-mail, social media message or phone call – causes me to CRINGE at the thought of having to deal with you, you’re fired. To quote Kennedy, if I find myself lying in bed at night thinking about you and we’re not sleeping together, YOU GOTTA GO.
My rules don’t have to be your rules. That’s not the point. But you should have SOME kind of nonnegotiables about who gets access to you, how those interactions go and how others are permitted to consume your time. If not, it’s guaranteed you’ll get eaten alive.
And don’t feel guilty about protecting your time and mental state. Ever. Time is a super-precious resource that cannot be bought, manufactured, stretched or borrowed. A minute wasted is a minute GONE, never to be recovered. If you permit people to take bites of time from you at 5 to 10 minute increments, over and over again, you could end up wasting HOURS every day. Hours turn into weeks, months and then years.
Same with keeping in a positive mental state. If an employee, client, friend or family member drains your energy and puts you in a BAD mood, negatively impacting your focus and energy, they need to be set straight, the issues resolved or get them outta your life.
Remember, that clock is ticking… So, the next time you’re dealing with someone who is disrespecting your time, being a giant pain-in-the-arse or simply aggravating you, visualize your death clock hanging over their head, your time ticking down and them sucking the life out of you. That ought to give you the C.O. Jones to stand up, hang up and walk away.
Life IS too short.
Every second you delay is opportunity lost.
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