When Walt Disney was asked how he built the first Disney theme park in just 365 days, he gave a simple yet profound answer: “We used all of them.”
Future business success will be determined by your highest and best use of time. The most effective leaders master what I call the time gambit. This is a strategic sacrifice of time today for exponentially greater results tomorrow. This connection is accelerating, creating immense opportunities to stand out. From my work with top executives, three time disciplines make the biggest difference.
1. Prime Chunks Rule
In any high-performance endeavor, only a few critical moments determine success. An airline pilot crossing the Atlantic needs peak focus for takeoff, landing, and emergencies. This is less than 10% of the total flight. The same applies to leadership. What are the few activities that define success in your role, those that only you can do? Organize your time to give them the focus they deserve.
2. Break Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. Most meetings, for example, last exactly as long as scheduled, regardless of whether the objective is reached sooner. A high-performing client of mine, once overwhelmed with back-to-back meetings, cut all her meeting times in half. The results? Identical or better outcomes, and significantly more time for high-impact work. Nothing sharpens focus like a looming deadline.
3. Master Strategic Quitting
Your success depends not just on what you do, but on what you stop doing. Doing more is not the answer to having too much to do. One client of mine spent countless hours crafting elaborate, beautifully designed proposals, yet conversion rates were abysmal. We eliminated the fluff, streamlined the process, and doubled his win rate, freeing up time to engage more prospects. Excellence in irrelevant work is still a waste of time.
The physicist John Wheeler once said, “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once.” You can’t manage time itself—only how you use it.
This year, you have 365 days. The question is: How will you lead by making the right sacrifices to create extraordinary future results?