VampiresUnless you have been living under a rock for the past year either your wife, girlfriend or 9 of 10 females you know have read the Twilight series. For the boys reading this post it’s a romantic series about Vampires much the same as the True Blood series on HBO.

So you are asking what do Vampires have to do with elimination. Well the other night while reading my wife asks me whether I believe in Vampires and I said, “I sure do and I have even killed a few in my 40 years.” Of course she laughed but the point I am making is what is sucking your life, energy and time and how do you get rid of it short of holy water and sharp sticks.

In my old life (back when I was a captive agent) it was people I gave my cell phone out to, yes my ex-DM told me it was smart to give out my cell phone to everyone, Wrong! For many, it’s the staff person that pops their head in every 5 minutes asking a quick question, for others it’s your email, blackberry, Iphone that you have to check every time it dings. All are time Vampires sucking the life out of you and your business, and like a plague they all must be eliminated.

How do you do this, one step at a time. First make a list all the things that suck your time. One by one go though the list and find ways to eliminate them from your life. I started with email. I took off the little chime that rang every time I got an email, then I started shutting it down completely for one hour at a time. I saved hours a day by not checking email every time the bell rang and thus, taking me off task.

I could go on but I have one more item I know many of you out there need to eliminate. It’s so important I have created a support group. The groups called ilovetoopenthemail.com. Yes it’s the mail, I know agents who love to run out and open each piece of mail their agency gets. If this is you, please know I feel your pain but there is hope and together we can work though it.

In the next post we will look at how to Delegate more, the second component in our keys to success.

RL