Time is your most valuable commodity. If you’re producing in it, it’s an asset. If you’re procrastinating, getting ready to get ready, it becomes a liability. And that’s exactly what time is for a large percentage of the population, because time isn’t valuable to them yet.
If you get up late in the morning. If you find yourself constantly behind. If you put things off until the last minute, in Latin, that’s called procrastinari: to avoid. I know that word intimately. I wrote a best-selling book about it.
From Procrastination to Production came out in the late 2000s. It got picked up by Career Press, became The Procrastination Cure, sat on shelves in Barnes & Noble stores across the country, and was translated into four languages. Here’s the irony: I never considered myself a great writer. I’ve now written five books, and I did not procrastinate on a single one of them.
But I earned the right to write that book the hard way.
Rock Bottom Wasn’t a Metaphor
In my 20s, I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. I hit rock bottom. I spent a year in prison. I wasted 14 years of my life getting ready to get ready, cheating the system, cheating myself.
When I got clean and sober, which was nothing short of a miracle, I made myself a promise: I would not screw this up. So I went into full production. Full recovery. Full sobriety. I bought into the twelve steps completely. I didn’t procrastinate. I didn’t avoid it. I didn’t half-ass it. I committed.
That commitment saved my life. It changed my life. It led to almost 39 years of sobriety, and on the back of that sobriety, I built two seven-figure businesses. This September marks my 27th year owning Golden Mastermind Seminars, Incorporated, a company I launched in 1998 after years as a direct sales professional. Since then I’ve coached hundreds of clients a year from my home office and spoken from the stage over 1,000 times.
But before any of that, I was completely lost. Cocaine, alcohol, sex. No ambition. By 30, I was suicidal, nearly homeless, living with my parents in a spare bedroom in a small town in southeast Iowa. By the grace of God, I found my way back to California, hit another rock bottom, and ended up in Stockton selling Yellow Page advertising. Still winging it. Still no system, no method, no routine.
Sobriety changed all of that. The brain fog lifted. The trauma my body had been holding onto for years started to release, a process that’s taken nearly four decades of breathing, releasing, and letting go.
Discipline Is the Word
I was a good high school athlete, four sports, over 800 points in basketball, times fast enough for a college track scholarship. But I was never a great athlete, because my time and focus were always split. I was, in a word, a winger. I never had the discipline to focus on one thing long enough to master it.
That pattern followed me straight into business. I took on too many shiny objects, too many obligations, too many duties, and it kept me overwhelmed. I had one six-figure year in 1992 with Herbal Life, and then it fell apart. I followed my upline into a startup that ended in $100,000 of credit card debt. I was putting in the time, but the time wasn’t valuable, it was just repetition without results.
Everything changed in 1996. I started devouring personal development, Prosperity Consciousness by Fredric Lahrman (who later became a close friend), Think and Grow Rich, Earl Nightingale, Louise Hay, Stuart Wilde, NLP, Tom Hopkins, Mark Victor Hansen, Jack Canfield. I studied the people I would eventually share a stage with, Bob Proctor four times, Joe Dispenza four times, John Assaraf ten times.
But studying wasn’t the breakthrough. Discipline was. In 1995, I had a conversation with myself and decided I would become a millionaire within two years. It happened, because I finally stopped splitting my focus and started paying the price of success without knowing the exact cost. The universe doesn’t deliver because you’re a good person. It delivers because you’re skilled.
Collapsing Time
Time is money. Time is results. But that only comes from repetition, preparation, execution, and discipline. If you’re undisciplined, getting up late, not making your bed, not organized, not detailed, you will fall behind. You’ll just wing it.
I’m a recovering winger. I understand it better than most. But changing meant accepting my character defects, Step Four in any twelve-step program. It meant learning humility, Step Seven. I let go of my addiction to walking the stage for recognition and reward, and I told myself: if I walk a stage, it will be because the results earned it, not because my ego demanded it.
If you’re the black sheep who doesn’t fit anywhere but fits in everywhere, the adult child of narcissistic parents, of addicts, of alcoholics, someone who was groomed by a narcissist, there’s a good chance you carry these same tendencies: over-obligating, doing too much for others, putting yourself last, muscling up and winging it because your ego has outgrown your bank account. When recognition matters more than results, your energy is diverted. It’s time to change your philosophy.
Here’s the equation: you devote time, you produce, and production creates results. But if you’re devoting time to scrolling, to three-way calls with broken souls from broken homes, to people who don’t qualify, that time doesn’t rank-advance your business or your life.
What does is commitment. Not force. Not attachment. A relaxed, focused energy that says I am committed, and then lets the results show up because you claimed them.
I block my time in 30-minute increments. I know exactly what I’m doing at 1:30 and exactly what I’m doing at 2:00. That’s collapsing time, being so valuable within a window that you can multitask and create multiple results without ever leaving your desk.
Leverage Is Everything
This morning I coached a 24-year-old former real estate agent and her husband. They’ve already referred me four clients, one of whom does $3 million a year at 26 years old. That same couple recorded a video testimonial. A stranger in the solar industry watched it, booked a 20-minute call with me, and became a client on the spot.
That’s leverage. That’s what you’re building toward, people who collapse time for you while you collapse it for yourself. I asked that 24-year-old if anyone on her team might be a fit. She referred me two more women on the spot.
Any lead that comes by referral is gold. Not silver. Not platinum. Gold. Don’t let it sit around collecting dust.
The Bottom Line
There are a little over four months left in this calendar year. I build my business on a seven-day cycle, money moves into my account every week, I know exactly where I stand on day 28, and I spend as little time as possible on things that drain me without moving me forward. Time with an accountant, an attorney, or the IRS is soul-sucking. I’d rather create new money than chase dead equity.
That’s the mindset: time, production, results, held in a relaxed body. Breathe. Release. Let go.
Ready to stop winging it and start collapsing time? Jeffery Combs has spent nearly three decades coaching entrepreneurs and sales professionals to build seven-figure businesses through discipline, mindset, and production , not hustle for hustle's sake. Learn more about one-on-one coaching with Golden Mastermind Seminars at go.goldenmastermind.com or call me directly at 209-649-1562 for a complimentary 20 minute call today!