28 Apr Gusty Goals
By the skin of my teeth I’m going to complete today’s entry. If you have been following these posts, you’ll already know that from time to time I can work some pretty crazy hours. And if you live in Pennsylvania you would have witnessed a significant wind storm today that lasted for several hours. The storm had an adverse impact on the electric system, which resulted in another long day. But I’m here now (11:37pm) and I am going to meet my goal of posting everyday!
1. Today started pretty awesome. I got up at 04:00am, listened to some life coaching sessions, checked in on my ads, and even wrote a few emails to my subscribers. Right at 06:00am, I made my way to work, and we were off to races right at starting time. Things were going great. We had a head start on the day from yesterday and I know everyone was anxious to wrap up early being thats it’s Friday. We had two poles to renew, and most of the work would have to be done from the pole (meaning climbing gear and doing it the good old fashioned way) instead of a bucket truck because of how far the poles were from the road. First pole, we nailed it. In and out nice and easy. On to the next. This is the part where the wind became more of a factor than we were expecting.
As I had just reached the top, the gusts were easily reaching 30-40mph. Not a great feeling. So the decision was made to stop the job for safety’s sake. Sometimes you just have to know where to draw the line, and today that line was very clear for me. Right around the time my feet were back on the ground, 12:30pm roughly, we got a call regarding three poles that had blown over along a major state route. With no time to waste, we packed up our gear and made the trek. Unfortunately for a traveler, as the wind took the poles down, one of the poles actually fell on to a vehicle in motion. I was told that the driver survived and managed to safely exit the vehicle with energized conductors surrounding him. Thats scary. In any case, we made quick work of replacing all three poles that were damaged and we quickly moved on to the next job.
Upon arrival to the last and final job, at approximately 7:15pm, we discovered a massive oak tree down across the road and wire everywhere. Once, the tree was removed from the road way, we quickly went to work making repairs and ultimately restored electric to around 20 customers. Again, with no time to waste, we had to hustle back to our starting location to wrap up a 16.5 hour work day.
2. Working overtime is a great way to generate extra cash flow, but it also hinders me from the things I want accomplish. For instance, writing this blog, my workout, seeing my children before they go to bed, and even how I eat. There’s definitely a trade off when it comes to working overtime. You are now sacrificing more time in exchange for a better paycheck. The way I view overtime now is vastly different. I used to live for overtime opportunities. I was always the most eager to stay late and earn an extra buck. Most of that fueled by my desire to acquire material riches rather than abundance and most importantly, more time! But now I look at overtime as a detriment to my physical, personal, and professional goals. Working beyond my regularly scheduled hours disrupts everything I am working so hard to establish and keep together. I’m not saying that I wont be grateful for the paycheck when it arrives, but the time lost is worth far more than the money gained.
3. I finally realize that the time, not the money, is what’s most important. The time is always now, and time is always in short supply. Working for someone else 17 hours a day isn’t exactly how I intended to live my life. Now that I am aware of principles like “Take The Stairs” and “The 10X Rule” I am hyper-focused on growing my business and breaking free. To clarify, I do not suggest that you quit your job or stop working overtime. But in order to continue to accomplish all of your goals while juggling such a high demand from your employer, you will have to 10X your way of thinking and find ways to get it done!
Even though I was exhausted, and even nodded off a few times writing this entry, I still showed up and gave it my all after a 17 hour work day. Considering my profession, to write entires in this blog once a day for a year may be slightly out of my reach. But I always want my goals to exceed my results. This way, I’ll always know that I am thinking big and heading in the right direction. The cliche holds true, shoot for the starts, you might just hit the moon.
I hope you have an awesome weekend and I’ll see you back here tomorrow to fill you in further on how the storm clean up is going.
Cheers to your success!
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