That’s the motivation for our post. Only we’re not thinking about leftover food. We want to talk about YOU – your time, your attention, and your love.

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A time trap
This is an easy trap to fall into. See if you can relate to this:

You get up and get ready for work. You grab a cup of coffee for the road and get into your car to drive to the office. Finally, you get to work. Next thing you know, it’s time for lunch. You eat at your desk while you keep working. You look at the clock. Where did the day go? Time to go home. You rush out to your car and hit the road.

It’s late. You’re tired. Better get to bed.

Leftovers and scraps
You may have a different scenario, but is the net result the same? We unintentionally take for granted the people who are closest to us.

Our family often gets our final burst of energy, if we have any energy left at all. They get our leftovers.

But there’s yet another party that we haven’t considered. We may only have scraps left for this party. It’s …

You.

3 tips to give your best to the best in your life

Put it on your schedule
Treat family time like any other important activity – put it on your schedule. When you put it on your schedule, it becomes a priority. If it’s not on your schedule, it’s likely that it will get pushed aside to more urgent, but perhaps less important, activities.

Plan an activity
Now it’s on your schedule. But if you don’t have anything planned, it is easier to push it off to another date and time. So plan to do something, anything. Go to the movies. Play games. Attend a concert. Go to a museum. It doesn’t matter – if you have an activity planned, you’ll be less likely to let the day’s events get in the way of this important time together.

Make it a regular event
Now schedule a regular event every week. For example, a couple could schedule a “date night.” You and your spouse may decide that you’re going to go out on a date every Thursday evening. It may not always happen on Thursday. So “make it up” on Friday. By having it planned regularly, it’s more likely to happen sometime during the week.

We don’t intentionally neglect our loves ones or ourselves. The problem is that we don’t intentionally make time for them. The result ends up being the same.

Instead of giving our leftovers to the most important people in our lives, we should give them the main course by planning time with them just like we do everything else that’s important to us.

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We really appreciate that you stopped by today! Join us next time as we offer up a great reality check for your spending decisions. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00275-112808.mp3

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(Image by Marshall Astor, CC 2.0)

We had some fun with sound effects on The Bigg Success Show today. You can read our summary here, but you might have more fun listening!

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With Halloween approaching, we felt we should warn you about a monster you may not know about. This monster lives off of your most precious resource – time. It’s downright frightening how much of our time can be wasted.

See if you can relate to any of these haunting situations:

Chatty co-worker

You’re working on that bigg project. You reach a point where you just seem stuck. Maybe getting away from your desk will help. So you get up to stretch your legs and grab a cup of coffee. You’re in the break room when that chatty co-worker walks in. Fifteen minutes later, you’re finally back at your desk.

You’ve been bitten by Count Clockula!

He lives off wasted time, sometimes using other people to feed his ravenous appetite.

E-mail alerts

You’re busy working at your computer. You see the alert that your friend just sent you an e-mail. You can’t resist. You have to see what it is. It’s a fun video. Well, you might as well watch it now. Wow, it’s funny. Better e-mail your friend. Five minutes later, you’re back to work.

Count Clockula got ya again!

He sucks your time away by tempting you with things that are appealing. They seem like more fun than the important things you need to work on.

Lost keys

You’re running late for work. You rush into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee for the road. You grab your laptop bag. Your keys! Where are your keys? You can’t find them anywhere. You look everywhere. Ten minutes later, you find them underneath yesterday’s mail.

Count Clockula strikes again!

By keeping you from paying attention to seemingly little things, he can suck away a lot of your time.

Misplaced files

You have a meeting in five minutes and you can’t find the file you need. Where did you put that file? Is it in this stack? No. How about this one? No. You keep looking. If you don’t find it soon, you’ll just have to go without it. Ah, there it is – at the bottom of that overflowing “In” box.

Closely related to the last issue, Count Clockula thrives on disorganization.

Meetings

You went to yet another meeting. The project leader was late. Then he didn’t keep the group on track. The conversation just floated from one issue to another without accomplishing anything.  

Count Clockula sinks his teeth in again. He thrives on dead time – where groups of people are completely unproductive. 

Media

You have a major report due in a couple of weeks. As you were doing some research for it, you found a great site full of information. You spent a lot of time there. Sure, it was still research, but it was more than you needed for the project.

Count Clockula flies again! Sometimes he overwhelms you with his charms.

Lack of focus

You don’t really have a sense of direction. Sure you think about your goals near the end of every year. But you don’t keep them in front of you like you should.

It’s the worst bite Count Clockula can deliver.

How can you allocate your most precious resource effectively if you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish?

Word of warning

We’d be remiss if we didn’t warn you about one more thing. Unlike other vampires, Count Clockula doesn’t just come out at night – he’s out all the time. Beware!

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Next time, we’ll chat with Seth Godin about his fantastic new book, Tribes. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00252-102808.mp3

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