More Marketing Time: How to Procrastinate Your Way to Success

Do you spend too much time on insignificant tasks?

Want to have more time to do what you do best?

To learn how to multiply your time as a marketer by procrastinating, I interview Rory Vaden.
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The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I interview Rory Vaden, the co-founder of Southwestern Consulting, an organization designed to empower sales pros. He's the author of Take the Stairs. His newest book is Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time.

In this episode Rory will explore how busy marketers and business owners can get ahead by procrastinating.

You'll discover how the principles of time management have changed over the years, as well as why and how to embrace the focus funnel.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
More Marketing Time
Rory's backstory

Raised by a single mother who sold Mary Kay cosmetics, Rory grew up around women who taught him the principles of success. Rory says it also means he knows more about makeup than cars.

During college at the University of Denver, Rory was recruited to work in a program called Southwestern Advantage, where he sold educational children's reference books door-to-door and eventually managed salespeople. He says that's where he developed a passion for sales.

In 2006, Rory and three others started Southwestern Consulting, with the mission to help salespeople achieve their goals in life. They now have 115 team members and are working with more than 1,000 people.

Rory's first book, Take the Stairs, is all about the psychology of overcoming procrastination, improving self-discipline and getting yourself to do things you know you should do that you don't feel like doing. It answers the question, "How do the most disciplined people in the world get themselves to be disciplined?"

Rory's second book, Procrastinating on Purpose, addresses the question, "How do the most successful people today think about time and do they believe the same clichés we often hear about time management?" Rory says a lot of them don't.

Listen to the show to discover what launched Rory's speaking career.

Why people struggle with time management

Rory says there is no such thing as time management, only self management.

In the world we live in today, time management isn't just logical, it's emotional. Our feelings of guilt, fear, worry and anxiety, as well as our desire for success and our need to feel valued dictate how we spend our time—as much as our inbox, our to-do list and our calendar do. There's also a new type of thinker that has emerged: the multiplier.

Rory shares the history of time management.

Era one time-management thinking is one-dimensional. It was developed in the 1950s and 1960s, and was all about efficiency. All things being equal, doing things faster is better. However, there is a point of diminishing returns with efficiency.

Era two time-management thinking is two-dimensional. This was ushered in by Dr. Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, in the late 80s. Dr. Covey gave us the time-management matrix. The Y axis was importance (how much something matters) and the X axis was urgency (how soon it matters), so it was a way to score tasks and prioritize based on their score. While prioritizing is a relevant skill today, there is a massive limitation—nothing about prioritizing creates more time.

Rory believes you cannot solve today's time-management problems with yesterday's time-management solutions.

People who are multipliers, Rory says,