My best trick to find enough time for my business, my marriage, and my kids comes down to priorities

Grant Cardone

People constantly ask me, “How do you get everything done?”

Easy: I write down the parts of my life that I want to be great in, and then I become obsessed with making time for them rather than making excuses.

Case in point: I am committed to making time for my family. To pull this off, I have to be smart about it. I get my young children up each morning and we go for a drive to the local coffee shop, where the three of us hang out together. After fifteen to thirty minutes of quality time, they’re done with me. When we return home, they eat, and then we all get ready for school or the office.

Kids don’t need hours of your time; they just need some of your time. By being both committed to spending time with my kids and creative about how I do that (by hanging out with them in the mornings instead of at night, for example, or taking them to the gym with me), I make my time fit my needs. I don’t manage time — I make time.

By the way, it’s not just about what the kids need — their parents need time together too. My marriage doesn’t exist in a vacuum, either; running businesses, a marriage, a family, and the rest of life is a challenge.

My wife and I do as much as we can together at the business; we look for opportunities to work together and grow the brand. We take what each of us is good at and then each invest energy in that. I don’t ask her to make sales calls; I let her do what she is good at, which includes producing projects with Grant Cardone TV and more.

One way we optimize time is to spend time together while building the business. For example, we typically don’t go out to dinner just the two of us. Instead we invite employees or customers to join us, so we optimize that time too. I don’t see a point in spending money on a nice dinner for just the two of us. I’d rather spend four times the amount on a dinner that will produce more opportunities for us and our business. And honestly, one date night once or twice a week won’t build a strong marriage. We have a strong marriage because we’re on the same page 100 percent of the time, including in how we view time.

As I mentioned earlier in the book, blank space in my calendar leads to boredom, which has gotten me into trouble in the past. To avoid that, I'll up my time with appointments and activities. Today, at fifty-eight, I literally run from one meeting to the next. When I fly into a city to do one meeting, I will stack my calendar with other meetings in that area.

Also, stop wasting time on tasks that don’t matter and don’t fuel your obsessions. For example, someone else should mow the lawn and wash the car, if those chores don’t get you closer to your goal. Pay someone else to do tasks that aren’t a part of your obsession.

Your time and your focus are precious, so treat them that way. There’s time to do it all — when you make time and quit managing it.

Republished with permission from "Be Obsessed or Be Average," by Grant Cardone. Copyright © 2016 by Portfolio/Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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