How To Deal With Time And Energy Vampires

We’ve all met them. We’ve all worked with them. The people who are completely oblivious to anyone else’s projects, time commitments and priorities apart from their own. 

The people who will happily hold you up and talk to you incessantly about their earth-shattering problem or issue, all the while ignoring the impatient look on your face, or the glancing at your phone or watch or your polite attempts to remove yourself from the interaction and get back to your priorities. 

The reality is that they are probably a really nice person with genuine concerns or problems. But they just don’t get it so they? 

You’re here to make sh!t happen. You have a vision for your life, a vision for your career and a vision for your team - and you know that your time is precious.

You don’t want to spend precious minutes or hours getting dragged into small-time drama and victim mentality. You have no desire to waste your energy and your attention units on insignificant and idle chit chat.

You want to create. You want to build. You have a vision so big for your life and your career that you need to - scrap that, you want to - invest as much of your most precious resource - your time and your energy - into your endeavours. 

You want to spend your time tackling the big picture things that will move the needle the most for you and your team in moving you toward your goals and your vision. 

Anyone on a mission to do and create big things will be undoubtedly meet these time and energy vampires and in order to protect your time and energy you will be required to stand your ground and stand up for your goals and vision. 

It will be hard (particularly if these are people in your team and DEFINITELY if you are a people pleaser) to set strong boundaries with these people. You may be required to be less polite that you’re used to being to remove yourself from the situation and to draw a firm line around your priorities. 

But I all comes back to your own sense of self-worth and self-respect and what you’re willing to do to save your time and energy and focus them on the things that matter the most to you. 

If you allow other people in your life to dictate how, where and when you direct your time and energy - you will forever be chasing your vision for your life and career - as opposed to living and owning it.

Hope this helps. 

Josh ‘Vampire Killer’ Stone