Being productive means doing more of the things that advance your most important objectives and less of the things that don’t. How to you find more time to do the high-value/high-payoff activities?
You don’t.
You can’t find time. But you can buy it.
We only have so many hours in our day. We have to sleep and eat and take care of household duties. We have family and hobbies and other things we do that add value to our lives. We also have responsibilities, things we simply cannot delegate. Add it all up and there are only so many hours a day for work.
The only way you’ll be able to spend more of your work time doing high-payoff activities is by cutting out something else. You must buy back the time you now spend on low-payoff activities so you can spend it on the activities that matter most.
If you want to be more productive (translation: earn more without working more), the following three-step exercise will help:
Step one: take inventory.
For the next week (assuming it is a typical week), write down everything you do, 24 hours a day, in 15-minute increments. (Okay, if you want to use 6-minute increments, you can, but no padding. . .)
If you’re like most people, you’ll resist doing this exercise. You’ll make excuses, you’ll “forget,” you’ll bitch and moan about yet another silly personal development exercise.
Trust me, it’s worth it.
If you can’t do a week, try it for a day. You’ll see. You’ll be amazed at how much time you spend doing some things.
This simple exercise is a real eye-opener for a lot of people. They find large pockets of wasted time they can easily reclaim to do other, more valuable activities.
Which leads to. . .
Step two: Grade yourself.
Go through your time diary again and put a mark next to all of your high-payoff work-related activities. Write down the amount of time you spent on each. Add it all up for the week and divide by five (or six) days.
On average, what percentage of your working day is spent on high-payoff activities?
Highly productive people spend at least 70% of their time working on high-payoff activities. Most people (who are honest with themselves) find their number is 30-40%.
If you discover there’s room for improvement, it’s time for step three.
Step three: Go shopping.
Go through your diary one more time and circle all of your low-payoff activities. Feel free to skip things like grooming, sleeping, meals, caring for children–things you still have to (or want to) do.
What remains is your shopping list of low-payoff activities. This is where you will “buy” time. Go through the remaining list and ask yourself, “What can I cut down on?” and “What can I cut out?”
The point of this is to help you define your current reality and show you a simple way to change it. Spending a few hours this week doing this exercise is truly a high-payoff activity.
