Lesson: Networking for Success with Adam Rifkin

Step #7 Time: Slow down, think about what you want to do next, be mindful

How do you learn how to use your time most appropriately? I think that the answer is trial and error. Basically, nobody makes perfect use of all their time but you learn as you go. You think of it as a system where every day you're granted a new block of time and you want to make the most use of that time. You learn from what's happened in the past. You learn from, if I invest time in this person, does it help the person?

Does it help the whole ecosystem? Does it help other people? Does it help me? By doing it over and over again, you can really start to get a good intuition for which favors are worth doing, which people are worth spending extra time, investing in. It's an ever learning cycle. Even now, after doing it for more than a decade, I'm still learning everyday. I think the key is to commit to knowing that you're not going to spend all your time perfectly but that you're going to keep learning.

It's a balance. In a startup, the number one rule is to survive so anything that's not going to enable your survival, it's clearly not a good thing. But we outlast our startups and so we can't do anything that will benefit us in the short run but actually hurts us outside the context of startups. So every founder, every entrepreneur has to play this balancing game where you do what it takes to survive but not if it's going to be bad for you in the long run and there's no rule book, you actually have to figure it out as you go. This is why it's challenging. It's also why it's invigorating.

Well, you have more time than you think. You think you don't have any time, you have to get right in there and do everything right away and that's not necessarily true. Your professional career is a progression. Every relationship you have with a person is a progression and so it's much more important to be mindful of what you are doing than it is to just try and do everything. It's more important to think about that long term when you arrive because everything that you do can build on everything that came before it as long as you see it as a progression. The advice that I give to people the most is to slow down and really think about what they want to do next because they don't have to do everything. It's more important to be mindful of what they want to do and then go and do it.