I have a client who is one of the top global business people and has Forbes list level wealth.

I’m always trying to learn from him.

I think the one most clear trait he has is the ability to filter out noise and nonsense. He doesn’t waste time, doesn’t spend time with anyone other than high quality people and is ruthlessly efficient in meetings and boiling down what is important. He won’t read long reports or go into meetings without a clear purpose.

I once asked him if he gets bothered by unsolicited business plans. He said he never gets them. This surprised me, since he is well known. I mentioned it to his assistant, she laughed and said “Of course he gets them! Tons! He is just so good at filtering them out mentally that he literally doesn’t even notice them!”

Once we went on a meeting together with an important group. The group gave us each this huge leather-bound fancy package of hundreds of pages of materials, flip books, press kits, annual reports etc. When we got back to the office he dumped the package out, scanned it over in deep concentration like a robot for about 90 seconds, identified the two pages which were most important, put them in his pocket and chucked the rest in the trash, never to think about it again.

Another time I was working to impress him with a detailed 30 page beautiful report I wrote on all facets of various company relationships we were working on – the report was expertly formatted and complete with bios, charts and color graphs. Thirty seconds after I emailed it he wrote back “5 key co…who”. Meaning….just tell me the five best companies, who they are.

I’m amazed at his ability to simplify huge, billion dollar, multi-national ventures into a few sentences. A different client I had once had this few hundred million dollar enterprise which he could describe in such simple terms you’d think it was a corner store.

So my lesson I’ve learned: don’t get bogged down. It’s easy at lower, mid and even pretty senior levels to get stuck in slow moving and time wasting activities. My own weakness is probably holding on to too many plans and activities. When I started my career I was a cold-calling stockbroker. It was so much work to find a client that I still have part of my DNA which never wants to let any opportunity go….even if it’s wasting time I could be spending on something more profitable. I really feel super lucky to learn from some of the best out there. For this one, the lesson is “just do it”.