Time is our most precious resource. It’s a non-renewable resource that is continuously ticking away. Our time to have an impact, make a difference or accomplish a goal is limited. We all benefit from downtime and relaxation, but I hope you will agree with me that during our “work” hours we want to make be as productive as possible. Your measure of success may be different than other folks but most likely it involves a number and often the bigger the number the better. Some examples may be:
- Assets under management
- Number of people you are helping
- Number of students you have
- Number of parishioners or converts, etc.
Let’s take the example of monthly salary for example, just because it’s a simple one. Someone that makes $50,000/year has a hard time understanding how someone can make $500,000/year. They may think that to make that amount, they need to work 10 times the number of hours. Obviously, that’s physically impossible. To 10x your income you need to work smarter, not harder. But how?
𝗘𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗲
First, you need to focus like a laser on your core competencies and not do anything else. And this applies to all aspects of your life and not just your working hours.
For example, you can eliminate cooking every day by meal-prepping on the weekend. A drastic example may be to eliminate your lawn mowing duties by putting pavers in your backyard. At your job or business, revisit every single task being done and eliminate anything that does bring enough value.
𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲
Let’s assume now that you have revisited all your tasks and eliminated all superfluous tasks. The next step should be to try to automate all remaining tasks. A prime example of this, and I find it mind-boggling how many people still haven’t done this is to set as many of your bills and your investments on auto-pay. Between my personal stuff and my business, I have hundreds of items a month that get automatically paid. I shudder to think how much time it would take if autopay was not an option. Related to this topic, I cannot wait until Venmo, Zelle, and Cashapp are available for business accounts. I am not sure what the holdup is there.
𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗲
If and only if, you cannot eliminate a task or automate a process, you should then delegate it. It’s amusing to me to see how doctors and lawyers billing at $500.00 an hour, are too cheap to use Instacart or other grocery delivery services. If you have a consulting business and you’re planning to charge your clients $100 an hour, you should never be performing tasks that could be done by someone making $20 an hour. Outsource that activity to virtual assistants or part-time help.
Hopefully, this post generated some ideas on how you can improve your productivity and you have found a least a few places where you can save some time and use it for your core competencies or even better to pursue your off-hour passions.
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