How to Defeat Your 5 Time Assassins

Entrepreneurs are addicted to chaos. We operate best in chaotic environments, which means one of our greatest strengths is that we know how to handle pressure. With that people said, it’s also often our biggest fault as we can sometimes find ourselves seeking to create chaos. As business owners, we’re often the only ones standing in our way.

I recently came across some fresh wisdom from entrepreneur and coach Dan Martell that revealed the 5 biggest success-blockers that we all face. He refers to them as “time assassins” and I found the entire concept so valuable, I just knew I had to break it all down for you too.

The idea is based on 5 different personality types – 5 different assassins that kill your success.

Now as we go through this list, bear in mind that they’re not mutually exclusive! You can adopt any or all of these 5 traits at any time, so as you make your way through them, keep an eye on which ones relate most to you.

Let’s get into it.

Here’s Dan’s list of the top 5 time assassins:

1. The Staller: Sabotages their own success by hesitating on big decisions.
2. The Speed Demon: Makes rapid decisions based on whatever’s easiest/quickest/cheapest then has to start over because of it.
3. The Supervisor: Fails to train their team properly and ends up micromanaging instead of empowering.
4. The Saver: Doesn’t understand the value of spending money to make money and hoards a nest egg instead of investing it into growth opportunities.
5. The Self-Medicator: Turns to vices like food or alcohol to reward success, but then rushes to the same vices to escape failure and disappointment.

Sound familiar?

Let’s do a short exercise to help you hone in on your biggest success-killer(s).

Take a minute to recall the last big decision you made (or didn’t make). Write it down.

Now, which of those 5 personalities were involved in your decision-making process? Did you end up making the decision at all or did you stall to the point of missing the opportunity altogether? Or did you stall for so long that you were forced into a speed decision you later regretted?

Do the same thing for the last 3 big decisions you made. What was the opportunity in front of you and which personality sounds most like how you responded?

Did you notice a pattern? Are there one or two different response methods you often fall back on?

The whole point here is to see which of these 5 assassins are popping up the most often. From there, we can figure out how to kill the assassin!

This is starting to sound like a real-world video game… Now, let’s get to the next level!

So how do we take down this assassin, this kryptonite that’s keeping us from performing to our highest standard? It’s a lot simpler than you might think.

What’s important here is to remember these are personality traits we’re trying to better, they’re habits we need to break. How do you break a habit? With consistency.

The key to taking down your success assassin is creating a visual reminder that you’ll see regularly. Plant something in your office, on your bathroom mirror, wherever you like, that will remind you not to behave like that pesky assassin on Dan’s list.

For example, if you’re a staller, maybe you change your phone’s lock screen to read, “DON’T STALL!”

So next time you approach a significant decision, you’ll be on guard for that toxic trait you’re tackling. Moving forward, you’ll begin to instinctively check in with yourself and ask, “Am I stalling?”

The key to unlocking the next level of success is simply getting out of your own way! Nip bad habits in the bud with early recognition and consistency, then watch yourself become the huge success you know you can be.