Are you wasting time and reducing the value of your business?

I’m going to share with you what I call “switch busters,” which are ways to reduce the number of times you switch activities in your day. If you can do that, you can radically decrease the amount of time it takes to complete pretty much everything.

Most- and least-valuable activities

The one thing that really hits the heart is all the hats you wear, and they create a lot of switches. Not only that, but they’re also reducing the value of your business. Why? Because you want to focus your time only on your most-valuable activities (MVAs). They are the one, maybe two things you do that are worth the most per hour.

What are your top two MVAs? For most people in your business, it’s the direction to take the business and clients. It can also be in developing support staff. Consider how much time you spend on your top MVAs. For most, it’s usually around 22% or less of your total time. What are you doing with the other 78%? Well, you are spending it on your less-valuable activities (LVAs). And when you do that, you’re reducing the value of your business. Ask yourself what your most common LVAs are, and then delegate those.

Time debt

Many of the principles that apply in finance to money also apply to time. For example, when people go into debt, they repay it with interest. When you borrow time, you don’t borrow it from someone else; you borrow from yourself and the quality of your life. So, the switch buster we want to put into place is to underspend our time.

Every person’s workday has a different number of interruptions and switches that take place. You want to build a budget for attention switches, such as having 50-minute meetings instead of one-hour meetings. Furthermore, the more likely you are to be interrupted in your day, the more unscheduled time you want.

Dave Crenshaw is an author and instructor who also develops productive leaders in Fortune 500 companies, universities and organizations of every size. His book “The Myth of Multitasking” is a time management bestseller.

This was excerpted from his 2020 Top of the Table Annual Meeting Virtual Event presentation “The myth of multitasking.” (MDRT member exclusive content)

For more time management ideas, read:

• “Make every minute count” (Available in nine languages)
• “Work smarter, not harder” (Available in six languages, MDRT member exclusive)