5/6/2014 How to Allocate Your Time, and Your Effort - Elizabeth Grace Saunders - Harvard Business Review

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How to Allocate Your Time, and Your Effort - Elizabeth GraceSaunders - Harvard Business Reviewblogs.hbr.org Updated May 6th, 2014

How to Allocate Your Time, and Your Effort

by Elizabeth Grace Saunders | 8:00 AM January 7, 2013

How does he find time to meet with 10 customers a week and make his yearly quota in the first quarter?,

a salesman wonders about his top producing coworker. I can barely find time to have five appointments a

week and get all my paperwork done correctly and turned in on time.

How does she manage to champion strategic initiatives, network with executives, and only work 40 hours

a week?, a manager ponders about his colleague on the corporate fast track. After a day full of project

meetings, the best I can do is reactively respond to e-mail at night instead of proactively developing my

department.

Here’s the secret: Your colleagues that zoom ahead of you with seemingly less effort have learned to

recognize and excel in what really counts — and to aim for less than perfect in everything else.

Most likely the highest producing salesman on your team spends less than half the amount of time that

you do on filling out paperwork. Yes, it may be sloppy, but no one really cares because he’s skyrocketing

the revenue numbers. The manager who has caught the eye of upper management may send e-mails

with imperfect grammatical structure and decline invites to tactical meetings. But when a project or

meeting really matters, she outshines everyone.

If you’re shocked and feel like this seems completely unfair, I’m guessing that you probably performed

very well in school where perfectionism is encouraged.

I know. I was a straight-A student from sixth grade through college graduation who did whatever it took to

produce work at a level that would please my professors. Admittedly, this strategy paid off as a student.

My perfect GPA signified an exceptional level of achievement, and I was fortunate that in my case, it was

rewarded with scholarships and job offers.

The rules changed when I started my own business over seven years ago. I realized that doing A-work in

everything limited my success. At that point I realized that I needed to focus more on my strengths. As

Tom Rath wisely explains in his StrengthsFinder [1]books, you can achieve more success by fully

leveraging your strengths instead of constantly trying to shore up your weaknesses. Realizing the

importance of purposely deciding where I will invest more time and energy to produce stellar quality work

and where less-than-perfect execution has a bigger payoff has had a profound impact on my own

approach to success and my ability to empower clients who feel overwhelmed.

As I talk with time coaching clients struggling with overwhelm whether they be professors, executives, or

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lawyers, a common theme comes up — they can’t find time to do everything. And, they’re right: no one

has time for everything. Given the pace of work and the level of input in modern society, time

management is dead. You can no longer fit everything in — no matter how efficient you become. (This

conundrum is what inspired me to write a book on time investment[2]).

In my time investment philosophy, I encourage individuals to see time as the limited resource it is and to

allocate it in alignment with their personal definition of success. That leads to a number of practical

ramifications:

Decide where you will not spend time: Given that you have a limited time budget, you will not

have the ability to do everything you would like to do regardless of your efficiency. The moment you

embrace that truth, you instantly reduce your stress and feelings of inadequacy. For example,

professionally this could look like reducing your involvement in committees, and personally this could

look like hiring someone else to do lawn maintenance or finish up a house project.

Strategically allocate your time: Boundaries on how and when you invest time in work and in your

personal life help to ensure that you have the proper investment in each category. As a time coach, I

see one of the most compelling reasons for not working extremely long hours is that this investment

of time resources leaves you with insufficient funds for activities like exercise, sleep, and

relationships.

Set up automatic time investment: Just like you set up automatic financial investment to mutual

funds in your retirement account, your daily and weekly routines should make your time investment

close to automatic. For example, at work you could have a recurring appointment with yourself two

afternoons a week to move forward on key projects, and outside of work you could sign up for a

fitness boot camp where you would feel bad if you didn’t show up and sweat three times a week.

Aim for a consistently balanced time budget: Given the ebbs and flows of life, you can’t expect

that you will have a constantly balanced time budget but you can aim for having a consistently

balanced one. Over the course of a one- to two-week period, your time investment should reflect

your priorities.

Once you have allocated your time properly, you also need to approach the work within each category

differently. As I explained above, trying to “get As in everything” keeps you from investing the maximum

amount of time in what will bring the highest return on your investment. That’s why I developed the INO

Technique to help overcome perfectionism and misallocation of your 24/7. Here’s how it works:

When you approach a to-do item, you want to consider whether it is an investment, neutral, or

optimize activity. Investment activities are areas where an increased amount of time and a higher

quality of work can lead to an exponential payoff. For instance, strategic planning is an investment

activity; so is spending time, device-free, with the people you love. Aim for A-level work in these areas.

Neutral activities just need to get done adequately; more time doesn’t necessarily mean a significantly

larger payoff. An example might be attending project meetings or going to the gym. These things need to

get done, but you can aim for B-level work. Optimize activities are those for which additional time spent

leads to no added value and keeps you from doing other, more valuable activities. Aim for C-level work in

these — the faster you get them done, the better. Most basic administrative paperwork and errands fit

into this category.

The overall goal is to minimize the time spent on optimize activities so that you can maximize your time

spent on investment activities. I’ve found that this technique allows you to overcome perfectionist

tendencies and invest in more of what actually matters so you can increase your effectiveness personally

and professionally.

On a tactical level, here are a few tips on how you can put the INO Technique into action:

At the start of each week, clearly define the most important investment activities and block out time

on your calendar to complete them early in the week and early in your days. This will naturally force

you to do everything else in the time that remains.

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When you look over your daily to-do list, put an “I,” “N,” or “O” beside each item and then allocate

your time budget accordingly, such as four hours for the “I” activity, three hours for the “N” activities,

and one hour for the “O” activities.

If you start working on something and realize that it’s taking longer than expected, ask yourself,

“What’s the value and/or opportunity cost in spending more time on this task?” If it’s an I activity and

the value is high, keep at it and take time away from your N and O activities. If it falls into the N

category and there’s little added value or the O category and spending more time keeps you from

doing more important items, either get it done to the minimum level, delegate it, or stop and finish it

later when you have more spare time.

If you keep a time diary or mark the time you spent on your calendar, you can also look back over

each week and determine if you allocated your time correctly to maximize the payoff on your time

investment.