How to invest your time like money

And with this balanced budget in hand, you canthen set up the structure to consistently invest your time in what’s most important.. My first book provided an overall look at how to achie

How to Invest Your Time Like Money

ELIZABETH GRACE SAUNDERS

Harvard Business Review Press ● Boston, Massachusetts

Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org Copyright 2015 Grace Communications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Dedicated to everyone who longs to have enough time for what’s most important

Dedication

1 Take Control of Your Time and Your Life

2 Identify Your Time Debt

3 Create a Base Schedule

4 Set Up Automatic Time Investment

5 Maximize Your Time ROI

Epilogue: Remember What You're Working For

In Gratitude

About the Author

1 Take Control of Your Time and Your

Life

Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

—Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive

“There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

You likely recognize this statement You may have muttered it yourself, frustrated

by your consistently packed schedule and competing demands Day after day, both atwork and in your personal life, you find yourself juggling too many projects at once andstruggling to find the time to do the things you deem important, leaving you stressedand agitated How can you manage your time more effectively, in ways that you’ll findboth productive and gratifying?

Most time management methodologies fail to give you the sense of accomplishmentand satisfaction you crave because they encourage you to stuff more into an already

overflowing schedule This creates the false hope that if you only worked harder, faster,longer, and smarter, you could do everything you want and make everyone happy That’smore or less the equivalent of racking up credit card bills instead of learning to cut costs.When you’ve tried these strategies—and failed to do the impossible—you feel worsethan before because you have not only not gotten everything done, but felt miserable inthe process

Fortunately, there’s a better way

If you’re frustrated and tired of feeling as if you have no control of your time and all

of your attempts to manage your time have failed, you need to learn the skills to investyour time like money When you do, you’ll finally have enough time for what’s most

important

When you invest your time as if it were money, you look at the reality of how muchtime you have available and the truth of activities’ time cost You then make decisionsthat allow you to get out of time debt And with this balanced budget in hand, you canthen set up the structure to consistently invest your time in what’s most important

This book provides a detailed look at how to learn these skills It explains exactly

how to both put these concepts into action and overcome the resistance that is likely tocome up in the process of change In addition, once you’ve achieved a level of mastery ofthe process, you’ll learn to maximize the return on investment of your time and assessyour big-picture growth.

As an expert on effective time investment, I’ve worked with training and coaching

clients on six continents, contributed to a number of publications, including Forbes, Inc., and Time, and appeared on ABC, CBS, and NBC My first book provided an overall look at

how to achieve more success with less stress through effective time

investment.[1] Through my work helping real people solve real problems, I’ve discoveredthat not having enough time for the important things is one of the biggest sources ofstress That’s why I’ve provided in this book an in-depth guide for allocating your time sothat what’s most vital receives the appropriate amount of attention instead of gettingpushed aside for other competing priorities

Time, like money, must be invested to work for you now and support your ideal

future For some of you, coming to terms with your ideal time allocation and then

moving from your current reality to your desired future state will require radical cuts,such as resigning from jobs, leaving graduate school programs, or ending relationships

Or it may include significant additions, such as starting positions, training for new skills,and adding more people to your life

But for the vast majority of you, very little will need to shift in terms of your external

circumstances; instead, what will need to change is you Your mind-set, your decisions,

and your routines determine whether you remain stuck or move forward and decide tointentionally live your best life

At the outset, this will require some work, as you do when you take a couple of hours

on a Saturday afternoon to set up your retirement plan so you get 10 percent returns inmutual funds instead of 0.5 percent in your savings account (or just spend all the

money) But taking the time now will set you far ahead of your peers and make you farmore satisfied with your life Strategically investing your time will lead you to have

enough time to be your best self, do your best work, and fulfill your potential

In the following chapters, I’m going to reveal the time investment strategies thathave transformed thousands of people’s lives But in order to see the kind of change inyour life that we both want to witness, we first need to tackle three common

subconscious barriers that can block your success

Overcome Your Barriers to Success

If you’re skeptical, fine If you’re unsure, no worries If you’re a bit apprehensive, that’snot a problem All of these emotions play a very natural role in the process of change As

I work with clients, I expect many sensations and feelings to come up, and I encourageindividuals to acknowledge them and accept them In time, their internal resistance

subsides as they experience the transition from barely believing they can change to

enthusiastically celebrating that change

But to have the mental and emotional capacity to even begin changing your timeinvestment choices, you must address and overcome these three critical barriers:

Stop blaming others

Disconnect success from suffering

Quit defending your past

Stop Blaming Others

The first state of mind that I won’t let my clients—or you—stay in is one in which theyblame others for their time-pressed situation When you fall into this unhealthy dynamic

in your relationships, often explained by Dr Stephen B Karpman’s drama triangle, youend up taking on one of three roles: the victim, the rescuer, or the self-protector.[2] From

a time investment point of view, this is what the different roles look like:

The victim constantly feels helpless because he believes everyone is heaping more

requests or demands on him, and there is nothing that he can do about it

The rescuer feels anxious about another person’s inability to handle his situation and

rushes in to help She later feels resentful that she’s spent so much time helping

others that she has no time for her own needs

The persecutor, or self-protector, expresses anger toward requests from others, fearing

he’ll become overloaded and wind up a victim

Sound familiar? Each one of us can fall into these roles when the situation is right—

or wrong Maybe you’re the victim at work where you take on whatever colleagues throw

at you, but you’re the self-protector at home who bristles when a family member

suggests you clean up the kitchen Although it’s natural to want to point to an externalsource as the cause of your difficulties, it’s not helpful To invest your time effectively,you must take ownership of your life and responsibility for changing yourself, regardless

of whether anyone else changes Here are three practical steps to break down this barrier:

Observe your reaction Become aware of how you respond when your time

investment becomes misaligned with your priorities Do you become a victim and pity

yourself? Everyone always piles too much work on me Do you jump to the rescuer role and take over-responsibility for others? Everyone just constantly requires my help Do you revert

to the self-protector and get angry at others? How dare they ask this of me?

Recognize your role When you have these responses, you’re taking the lazy way out.

You are claiming that you’re doomed to act out the characteristics of a certain persona inyour relationships instead of choosing your own response to a situation You give awayyour power and feel as if you’re at the mercy of external circumstance or who you “are,”that is, “I’m just the person who always has to pick up the pieces when everyone elsedrops them.” It’s very similar to when people who find themselves in debt blame thecredit card companies instead of accepting that they had a choice in spending more

money than they had The way to break out of this cycle is to stop blaming others andpassively falling into a role Instead, consciously decide to respond in a more healthy way

to the people around you

Commit to self-mastery Regardless of how often you’ve fallen into a role in the past

in certain situations or with specific people, you have the opportunity to make the futuredifferent What that requires is choosing a healthy emotional response

Instead of becoming a victim, choose to take ownership This could mean speaking

up when you feel that someone makes an unreasonable request, so that you don’t end upoverloaded It could also mean setting clear boundaries to prevent taking on too muchfrom others

Instead of playing the rescuer and feeling compelled to jump in when you don’t

believe someone can handle a situation, show respect for your own time and the time ofothers Don’t volunteer to help with an extra project if it would mean that you wouldn’thave time for self-care like exercise Or help someone put together a strategy for how shecan get the work done herself instead of swooping in and completing a project for her

Finally, instead of defaulting to the self-protector role and getting angry at anyonewho suggests you do anything more, respond with empathy toward yourself and others.Recognize that other people have time pressures too, and that there could be a legitimatereason why they made the request Also, show empathy toward yourself and realize thatyou’re afraid of being overloaded and need to set appropriate boundaries to preserveyour sanity

By taking responsibility for your time investment choices, you stop wasting energy

on fruitless power struggles and start directing it to a productive response toward the

people and situations around you With that focus, transformation can occur.

It will take practice to notice if you start to fall into a role and then choose anotherresponse instead But, in time, the helpful thoughts will become automatic You canreplace harmful thoughts with the helpful thoughts outlined in table 1-1.[3]

Disconnect Success from Suffering

Once you’ve stepped out of the bonds of a role you must play, you have the ability to

uncouple success from suffering For many people, the association between these two is

so firmly entrenched that it hasn’t even crossed their minds that life could be different.Here’s how one of my time coaching clients described her mind-set when she first beganher coaching program with me:

I have huge fear issues—one of which is the fear of failure and another is the fear that I will slow down or accept so little that I won’t be able to achieve great things or do a good job in things—essentially this is who I am (who I have defined myself as) are my achievements To

think of letting go of being able to do these things scares me…

Peaceful and accomplished are like two different ends of the spectrum: accomplished to

me means rushed, overwhelmed, and never enough Peaceful seems wasteful—unattainable guilty pleasure and something that happens when you die My biggest challenge is me, not letting go of the everything that I have and want.

Does anything in my client’s story sound familiar? If so, I have good news: she haschanged, and so can you

The key to setting yourself up to have enough time for what’s most important lies inovercoming your internal belief that there’s nothing you can do to improve your

situation In psychology circles, this mental framework often has the term “learned

helplessness.”[4] Different from playing the victim, where other people cause you to feelout of control, learned helplessness is a way of perceiving the world in which you becomeinappropriately passive following exposure to uncontrollable events in the past Thisexperience changes the way that you think about your ability to control similar futureevents For example, you may have grown up in an environment where your caregiverstold you they had to work crazy hours to put food on the table Now that you’re the oneproviding for a family, you automatically fall into the habit of overworking because youdon’t stop to consider that it could be possible to work a reasonable number of hoursand be prosperous

Research shows learned helplessness can develop within minutes, but you can breakout of this self-imposed jail.[5] As one of my time coaching clients put it, this mental shifttakes you from the trunk of the car into the driver’s seat Here’s how to stop unhelpfulassociations from holding you back:

Identify the past message To help you overcome the assumption that the future

must repeat the past, it can be helpful to isolate which seemingly uncontrollable

situations led to you becoming passive There are typically three main sources: the first isyour parents’ or primary caregivers’ explanation of events For example: “My dad alwayssaid if he didn’t work such long hours that we would end up on the streets.” The secondcommon source is the adults who cared for, taught, disciplined, and critiqued you as achild, like a teacher: “My teacher told me if I didn’t study for hours, I would fail.” Thefinal source is difficult life events For example: “My company did a massive downsizing,and all of a sudden, I needed to do three people’s jobs When I tried to talk to my bossabout the issue, he told me that I should shut up and be grateful to have a position Since

then, I never felt safe to share with him—or any future boss—when I was overloaded.”Once you’ve pinpointed the source, then you can more clearly see why you have certainattitudes about time, and you can create a clear divide between where you were then andwhere you are now.

Observe reality Because you may have processed the world through this mental

framework for a significant amount of time, it is your reality As a result, the fear thatsomething tragic will happen if you try to take time for all the activities that are

important to you seems very palpable A powerful way to deconstruct this framework lies

in overcoming your “confirmation bias” toward only looking for evidence that successhas to involve suffering You can open up your mind to new possibilities by asking

yourself, “Can I find any example of the opposite being true?” and “What is differentbetween my current situation and the one in which I developed this sense of

depriving themselves of little luxuries they can now afford, you’ll need to grow

comfortable with the concept of having a sane and sustainable schedule with (gasp!) free

time It will feel strange at first, but in time you’ll get used to it

Clarify the current issue Once you have given yourself permission to hope that

stress and achievement don’t have an irrefutable link, then you can start to define exactlywhat you would like to see change For example, maybe you would like to see fewer

spontaneous team meetings Maybe you are constantly interrupted by questions fromyour staff Or perhaps you need clarity on where to focus when you have many

competing priorities These are concrete items that you can attempt to change that canhave a direct impact on your ability to be successful in your goals and not be stressedabout time

Experiment Finally, break the link between success and suffering by experimenting

with exerting your influence on the issues you identified and seeing what happens Forinstance, you could set up regularly scheduled team meetings so that fewer spontaneousones arise and fewer questions come up throughout the day Or you might compile a list

of all your projects, estimate the time it takes to complete them, and then ask to have adiscussion with your manager about where to focus your time If you find that one

experiment doesn’t work, try another Many of my time coaching clients take these sorts

of steps and discover that they in fact do have the ability to succeed without sacrificing

their health and sanity It comes down to having the belief that you can do something tochange your situation and then acting on that belief The helpful mind-sets in table 1-2can help you in taking some courageous first steps

Quit Defending Your Past

After going through the exercises to overcome the last two barriers, you may feel a sense

of release and empowerment and be ready to move ahead with taking control of how youinvest your time Or you may have one final hurdle to jump: defensiveness about thepast If you fall into the second category, you’re likely thinking something like this:

But, Elizabeth, you don’t understand my situation It couldn’t have worked out any other way I had to sacrifice this much to get to where I am today.

As vulnerability researcher Brené Brown explains in Daring Greatly, “When I feel

self-righteous, it means I’m afraid.”[7] There is a lot of fear in moving forward and

vulnerability in discovering that what you’ve done in the past—and the choices you’vemade—may not have been for the best Your defensive response has nothing to do withthe truth of the message and everything to do with your fear—of guilt, of remorse, ofembarrassment Of admitting to yourself and potentially others around you that life

really didn’t—and doesn’t—need to be so hard

I’m sure you did the best you could with what you knew how to do in the past Butthere is a very high probability that by knowing more now, you could be capable of

having enough time for what’s most important in the present and the future

I can relate to those feelings Before I understood how to live a balanced life, I had

no boundaries around my work When someone questioned why I was working at allhours of the day or night, I would justify my actions with a response like, “You don’tunderstand I’m an entrepreneur I have deadlines I need to meet, and I can’t just check

in and check out.” But once I stopped being defensive and started honestly consideringthe truth of what people said to me, I discovered that my life really could be different.Breakthrough occurs when you stop defending your past and start accepting it—andyourself Here’s how to let go of defensiveness:

Pinpoint the pain What exactly makes you afraid of learning and changing? Is it

guilt that you didn’t know about how to be different before? Is it fear that you will fail? Is

it embarrassment that other people might have been right? Is it dread that you’ll have toface an uncomfortable family situation or a messy project that you were neglecting whenyou really do have time? To move forward, you need to account for your present state.Make a list of what you’re afraid you might experience or how people might respond ifyou actually did start to have your time investment under control

Accept the past and forgive yourself What’s happened has happened You don’t

need to hide it or explain it or justify it or defend it All you need to do is to honestlyaccept it If you find it necessary, forgive yourself for past wrongs done to yourself orothers For example, you may write or say out loud something like, “I forgive myself formissing significant events in my children’s lives,” or “I forgive myself for not settingboundaries so my health suffered,” or “I forgive myself for making risky financial

decisions that made me feel compelled to work crazy hours.”

Live in the present Once you’ve accepted the past, let it go When you find yourself

mentally replaying events from the past that you can’t change and you’ve made amends

for them the best you can, you need to stop yourself You could write down the past issue

on a piece of paper and burn it Or delete painful e-mails in your inbox You could stopbringing up the events in conversation Or simply shift your focus to something else youcan control in the present We can learn from the past, but all we have the ability to

change now is the present Investing your time effectively requires that you ask the

question, “What can I do now?” and then act on it The mental shifts shown in table 1-3can help

Now you’re mentally and emotionally primed to authentically evaluate your timeinvestment So, it’s time to take a serious look at whether you’re in time debt and, if so,how you can move toward a balanced budget

1 Elizabeth Grace Saunders, The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less

Stress (New York: McGraw Hill, 2013) ↵

2 Robert Taibbi, “The Relationship Triangle,” Psychology Today, June 21, 2011, accessed December 31, 2014,

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fixing-families/201106/the-relationship-triangle ↵

3 Melody Brooke, “The ‘Cycle of Compassion’: A Way Out of the Tangled Web of Trauma and Dissociation,” accessed December 31, 2014, http://www.readbag.com/melodybrooke-docs-the-cycle-of-compassion ↵

4 “Learned Helplessness: Why Bother?” Emotional Competency, accessed December 31, 2014,

http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/helpless.htm ; and Christopher Peterson, Steven F Maier, and

Martin E P Seligman, Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control (Oxford: Oxford

2 Identify Your Time Debt

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six,

result misery.

—Wilkins Micawber, David Copperfield

When I take a deep dive into time coaching clients’ schedules, I consistently discoverthat people misdiagnose themselves as having a “productivity” problem when, in fact,their bigger issue is an overcommitment problem When they have committed to moreexternal projects and personal goals and obligations than they have hours for in the day,they feel the massive weight of time debt One of my coaching clients suffered from ahuge amount of false guilt until he realized he had the unrealistic expectation that hecould fit 160 hours of tasks into a 40-hour workweek

Effective time investment begins with accepting the reality that time is a tangible,finite resource This acknowledgment frees you to make choices about what you will andwon’t do so you can invest more in what’s most important, feel good about what you do

and don’t get done, and still have disposable time left to relax and enjoy yourself As one

of my time coaching clients put it, “I’ve realized there’s only X amount of time, so I need

to invest in my priorities and understand that when I choose one activity, I’m not

choosing another.”

In this chapter, we’ll go through a step-by-step method for figuring out if you’re intime debt and, if so, how to match your expectations to a realistic and balanced time

budget

The Time Investment Formula

The single most important factor in feeling like a time investment success or failure iswhether or not your expectations of what you will accomplish align with how much timeyou have to invest This time investment formula provides a mathematical way to

understand the relationship between your expectations and your actual time budget.Once you have this data, you can then determine exactly what you need to do to get to a

balanced budget in which you have enough time for what’s most important.

Look at the right side of the time investment formula On that side, there’s one fixedvalue, the twenty-four hours in a day, and one variable, the amount of time needed forself-care For the purpose of this exercise, “self-care” is the most basic of wellness

activities you do on a regular basis: sleeping, eating, and personal grooming, that is,showering, brushing your teeth, and so on

Here’s an example of this breakdown:

necessities in order to get the most accurate tally of your available time per day

Once you have quantified the “fixed expense” of self-care, subtract it from four hours to come up with your daily time budget There can be some variability in thisnumber from day to day, but you want to determine your sustainable baseline

twenty-After you’ve calculated your time budget, total up the time costs related to yourexternal and internal expectations External expectations include commitments to others,such as spending a certain amount of time at work or attending family events; internalexpectations are commitments to yourself, such as wanting to exercise or read Here aresome potential areas to consider:

If you have a fair amount of variance from day to day, it may be more effective foryou to craft a weekly time budget To come up with your weekly time budget, multiplyyour daily time budget by seven

Then, figure out the weekly time cost for your internal and external expectations Forexample, allocate forty-five hours for work to reflect the fact that, on average, you investthat much time in the “work” category each week—both in and out of the office—andonly five hours for side projects.

Take time to write down your numbers for each category of your life and then totalthem If you’re unsure how you spend your time, look back at your calendar or planner

If those don’t provide an accurate enough reflection of your time allocation, write downyour expected time allocations for the upcoming week

Now comes an important moment of truth: it’s time to determine how closely yourexpectations align with the reality of your time budget Plug your time costs for externaland internal expectations into the left side of this formula and your calculated daily orweekly budget into the right side of the formula

Then fill in the blank between the two sides with a “>,” “<,” or “=” sign

If you’re like most people, you’ll end up choosing the first of the three options—thegreater-than sign—because you’ve made more external and internal commitments thanyou can realistically keep This has created a lot of guilt and stress for you in the past Butnow that you’re aware of what’s happening, you can adjust for the future

Balance Your Time Budget

Since you’ve committed in chapter 1 to taking an empowered, nondefensive approach to

this process, your next step is not to conveniently stop reading this book or

grumble about the fact that there are only twenty-four hours in a day Instead, ask thesekey questions:

What does this insight mean? We went through the preceding exercise so you could

see the quantifiable reality of what is possible versus what you wish was possible Thisinsight creates an awareness of the need for intentionality and precision in what you do

and don’t allow into your schedule The fact that the total of your internal and externalexpectations adds up to more hours than in your time budget means that you’re living intime debt: either literal time debt to others or emotional time debt to yourself.

What do I do? Start by making macro- and micro-level cuts so that you have a

balanced budget and therefore a balanced life Given that you have a limited time

budget, you will not have the ability to do everything you would like to do, regardless ofyour efficiency The moment you embrace that truth, you instantly reduce your stressand feelings of inadequacy By the end of this chapter, you want to get to a point whereyour expectations match your time budget

Macro-Level Strategic Decisions

People who are penny wise and pound foolish, meaning they focus on saving a few cents

on a loaf of bread but then don’t negotiate a good price on big-ticket items like a house

or car, end up worse off financially than those who do the opposite The same is true withyour time investment That’s why I emphasize big wins that could save you hours or evenweeks of your time, instead of only shaving off a minute or two here or there

To start this process, look at your list of external and internal expectations and see if

you can immediately cross off anything As Arianna Huffington says in her book, Thrive,

“You can complete a project by dropping it.”[1] For example, you may want to resign from

a committee where you no longer receive value You may be able to release yourself fromthis external expectation immediately, simply by sending an e-mail to the organizer Or ifyou have a commitment for a certain term or your boss has asked you to take on a certainresponsibility, you could decide to decline serving for another term or make a suggestion

to your boss of someone who could take over your role Even if you don’t see any

immediate change, these choices will help balance your time budget in the long term Interms of internal expectations, you may want to release yourself from the expectationthat you’ll learn a new language, write a blog, or start a new business All of these itemsare wonderful to do if you have the time, but they shouldn’t make you feel guilty,

stressed, or pressured if you don’t have the time to do them now

Once you cross off optional time expectations from the list, see how closely your

expectations total matches your time budget If you find that you still need to make cuts,priorities-based decision making provides the best method for making rational time

investment decisions that also make you feel good about your choices

Here’s how priorities-based decision making works :

1 Clarify your order of priorities You have a unique set of priorities based on who

you are and what matters to you Write down a list of those priorities and then putthem in order from most important to least important For example, I order mypriorities in this way:

Yours may look similar to the above—or look very different, such as:

Use whatever categories mean the most to you There is no right or wrong But

to get the most value from this filter, you need to approach this exercise from aplace of honesty and authenticity about what you truly think is most important Ifyou do, you’ll have a lot of confidence in your decisions because you’ll know theyalign with your values If you don’t, you’ll find that you’re constantly questioningwhether or not you’re making the right choices

2 Translate your priorities into actions Defining the actions related to your

priorities allows you to plan them into your schedule and evaluate whether or notyour time investment aligns with your stated priorities For example, in my life, anaction aligned with spiritual life is setting aside time each morning to pray andmeditate; an action correlated with relationships is a weekly conference call with

my family Both of these activities have a consistent place in my calendar Yourwellness activity could be going to the gym five times a week, and your work

activity could be devoting fifty hours a week to your start-up

3 Cut activities from the lowest-priority areas This will allow you to reduce your

expectations’ time cost, guilt-free Do this immediately by deleting items fromyour calendar and letting people know that you’re no longer available for certainresponsibilities (or at least develop a phase-out plan) When one of my time

coaching clients made the connection that one hour spent in a nonessential staffmeeting meant one less hour with his family in the evening, he became much

more rigorous in guarding his calendar and removing nonessential activities

4 Make refinements If you still don’t seem to have enough time for what’s most

important, you’ll need to make adjustments to your time allocation instead of

cuts This typically involves trimming down high-priority areas so that you haveenough time left for lower-priority, yet still essential, items For example, you mayconsider your business a higher priority than wellness activities But if bringing on

a new client today would leave you completely sleep deprived for the next twomonths, that decision—which could benefit your business—may negatively

impact your wellness to such an extent that you may choose not to accept newclients or postpone their projects until you’ll have more time for them

Alternatively, you may place wellness as a higher priority than your business

However, if you notice that training for a triathlon is having a substantial impact

on your business performance, putting your company at risk, you may decide that

a triathlon doesn’t need to fall within your current wellness activities

After balancing your time budget with your current expectations, you can use thissame filter to decide whether to say “yes,” “no,” or “not now” to new opportunities Onetime coaching client described how this shift of perspective allowed her to go from

feeling completely overwhelmed with just her job to feeling more in control, even thoughshe now was attending graduate school in addition to having a very demanding job:

My boss said to me the other day that she noticed that, even with the addition of graduate school, she thought I seemed less stressed than before, something to the effect of, “You are in a very good place.” … For me, it really has been about saying “no” or “not now” or speaking

up for my own needs

For example, if you’re asked to volunteer to put on a community service event and itdoesn’t take away from other areas, go for it But if that service would have a significantnegative impact on your job and your relationships, then for you, the priority-based

decision would be to politely decline based on the fact that you don’t currently have thecapacity in your schedule

Micro-Level Optimization

Once you have made good macro-level, big-picture decisions, then you can look at howyou can further refine your time allocation at the micro-level for day-to-day tasks

However, remember that optimizing on the micro-level may not lead to optimizing onthe macro-level For example, organizing your files perfectly may save you a few minuteseach day, but if it keeps you from moving ahead on important strategic projects, it’s not

an optimal use of time Or only going to the post office when you can do multiple

errands at once may seem more efficient But if you wait to go to the post office until youhave a large block of time and then end up paying your bills late, leaving you to spendtime, money, and energy sorting out the resulting issues, you haven’t optimized yourtime investment or minimized your stress

If you frequently fall into this trap, train yourself to question whether executing asmall task perfectly gives you the ability to invest your time well overall If it does, that’sawesome Go for it! If it doesn’t, aim to be imperfect in the areas where it doesn’t count

as much so you have enough time for what’s most important

Next, when you’re looking at micro-level optimization, ask yourself: Do I have to do

this? If the answer is no, then you have a few options:

1 Delete Just because you thought of something or someone else suggested it doesn’t

mean you have to do it It’s OK to let go of items that would be nice to do, but aren’tnecessary, like reading certain books, doing various home projects, or achievingnonessential goals

2 Delegate If someone else in your organization or home has the ability and capacity

to do something you don’t have time for, let go of that responsibility That couldmean handing off projects completely or breaking them down so you can share theresponsibilities

3 Outsource Sometimes you or someone within your sphere could help, but it doesn’t

make sense from an overall time investment point of view for either of you In thatcase, you may want to completely outsource activities, such as having a virtual

assistant manage your travel booking or a lawn service take care of shoveling andmowing

If, instead, you answered yes to the question Do I have to do this?, ask yourself

another question: Do I have to do this now? If not, then you have a few alternatives that

can keep your time investment in order:

1 Defer Not now doesn’t mean never When you would like to do something but

don’t currently have the capacity, it’s OK to decide with yourself or with others to

reconsider the possibility at a future date Make a note in your calendar as a

reminder of that agreement

2 Pace Another way to optimize your time investment on a micro-level involves

pacing yourself and setting appropriate expectations with others Ask for deadlines

on a new work project that allow you to move forward without having a significantnegative impact on current projects On the personal front, don’t force yourself toget projects done unnecessarily quickly Just because your neighbor remodeled akitchen in a month doesn’t mean you have to

When you work within the reality of your time budget and intentionally cut what’snot a priority, you have the maximum capacity to invest in what’s most important to you

But I Can’t Do That!

After completing these steps, you may feel energized and excited because you see that,through cutting some of the activities at the bottom of your priority list and optimizingthe remaining items, you can achieve a balanced time budget You see what needs tohappen and can’t wait to start trimming your expectations If this describes you,

congrats! You can move on to chapter 3

However, you may still feel incredulous And, despite the logical formula that we’vegone through, you refuse to believe that you can or should make cuts You think,

Elizabeth, maybe other people can cut things out of their schedule, but I can’t.

If you find yourself in that situation, you need to uncover what’s at the bottom ofyour emotional resistance so that you can let go of it and make time investment decisionsthat serve your greatest and highest good Having a crammed schedule is a socially

acceptable way to avoid the world, but it could keep you from dealing with real issues.Workaholism can have a huge cost on your health, happiness, and success, and you canonly overcome it once you choose to step out of denial into reality.[2] What part of yourreality do you feel you need to escape?

To help identify your deeper concerns, go through these three steps:

1 State the resistance or challenge

2 Ask yourself, “Why is this a problem?”

3 See what thoughts, feelings, or images arise

You can go through these steps during a personal meditation time, by writing in a

journal or going on a walk, or while you’re driving (as long as it’s safe) Most likely you’lldiscover that your disbelief that you can trim activities comes from one of three fears: thefear of missing out, the fear of failure, or the fear of judgment These fears are commonand understandable But if you choose to hold onto nonpriority activities based on thesefears, you’re giving away your power to have enough time for what’s most important toyou.

All of these fears have to do with external variable circumstances, which fall outsideyour control However, if you invest your time in a manner consistent with your internalprinciples, you can live authentically and freely The mind-set shifts that can empoweryou to live above these fears are shown in table 2-1 Repeat the “helpful” ones to yourselfwhen you are struggling to make choices aligned with your values

Once you’ve let go of fear, you can release the unreasonable expectations on yourlife From that balanced time budget, you then have the capacity to invest your timeeffectively In the next chapter, we’ll cover how to develop a base schedule that provides

a practical framework for making time for what’s most important

Balance Your Time Budget Checklist Determine your time budget

Quantify self-care (sleep, eating, personal grooming, etc.)

Quantify self-care (sleep, eating, personal grooming, etc.).

Subtract total from twenty-four hours to get your daily time budget

Multiply by seven to get your weekly time budget

Calculate expectations’ time cost

Tally external expectations costs (work, relationships, school, etc.)

Tally internal expectations (exercise, relaxation, side projects, etc.)

Add together to get your expectations total

Identify your time debt and make cuts

Assess whether expectations are greater than, less than, or equal to your timebudget

Identify your priorities

Make macro- and micro-level cuts to balance your budget

1 Claire Sibonney, “Arianna Huffington on the Third Metric: You Can Complete a Project by Dropping It.” Huffington Post Canada, September 11, 2013, accessed January 1, 2015,

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/09/11/arianna-huffington-third-metric_n_3901302.html?

just_reloaded=1 ↵

2 Kristin Wong, “The Cost of Workaholism,” Fox Business, April 16, 2013, accessed January 2, 2015,

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/04/03/cost-workaholism/ ↵

3 Create a Base Schedule

Time is an equal opportunity employer Each human being has exactly the same number of

hours and minutes every day.

—Denis Waitley, writer

Just because you operate within your time budget doesn’t mean you’re making the most

of it As a financial analogy, you may earn enough income to easily cover your living

expenses and even have some additional resources for saving and investment But if youspend your money on whatever pops up in front of you—a new tech tool, an expensivebottle of wine, or a spontaneous trip—without considering how much you need to

reserve for your essential expenses, like your mortgage or car payments, you can end upenormously stressed about living within your means Even worse, if any unexpected

expenses come up, you’re at risk because you live so close to the financial edge that youhave no margin for error

The same principle holds true for your time For example, you could spend just asmuch time working as a colleague does But if you always respond to other people’s

priorities—such as meeting requests and answering e-mails—and he proactively focuses

on what really needs to get done, he’ll get more important activities done on time whileremaining calm and in control, and you’ll either miss deadlines or end up pulling all-nighters scrambling to complete key projects McKinsey & Company has reported,

“Diary analyses of how different people spend their time in the same role … often

provoke astonishment at the sharply contrasting ways different individuals perform thesame job The not-so-good performers are often highly fragmented, spending time on thewrong things in the wrong places while ignoring tasks core to their strategic

objectives.”[1]

Strategic time allocation takes intention, practice, and discipline, but the results canfeel like a dream come true In this chapter, we’ll go step-by-step through the process ofcreating an ideal “base schedule.” A base schedule includes all the essential elements inyour typical week, such as sleep, recurring tasks, and exercise, and its purpose is

threefold: First, it helps you see how what’s most important to you fits into your weekly

schedule Second, it allows you to clarify how much discretionary time you have to

allocate to nonrecurring meetings, activities, or projects Third, it makes planning mucheasier because most of your schedule is set and you only need to do additional planningfor day-to-day or weekly variations (both of which we’ll cover in the next chapter)

How to Create a Base Schedule

Step 1: Put Your Fixed Time Costs into Your Calendar

To begin this process, start with a blank weekly calendar either in paper form or on yourcomputer (see figure 3-1) Then block in any of your “fixed” time costs These include theself-care items that you defined in the last chapter, such as sleeping, eating, and personalgrooming These also include your essential internal and external expectations The itemsthat tend to happen at a certain time of day such as commuting time and recurring

required meetings should go on your calendar at their designated hours For activitiesthat can happen at varying times but need a set amount of minutes or hours each day orweek, such as answering e-mail and project planning, block in time for them at the hoursyou believe you’ll be most likely to complete them For example, you may set aside onehour, three times a day, for e-mail It’s OK if in actuality the times when you do theseactivities end up deviating from what you put in your base schedule, but this initial stepgives you an honest assessment of your overall time budget By marking off times in yourweekly schedule for all these essential recurring activities, you’ll have a clear idea of howmuch time you have left to allocate to your time expenses that don’t have a set time cost