Increase Your Personal Gross Margin
In a culture obsessed with technology, information and productivity we rarely find anyone who is not looking for more time in their day. NEWS FLASH – there is no “more time”. You only get the same 24 hours as everyone else. It’s a zero sum game. The key is how we allocate or invest the time we have.
Benjamin Franklin said — “Time lost is never found again”.
The familiar metaphor of money offers several powerful lessons for how we manage our time. As a commodity, our time is of ultimate value because we have only a limited supply. Once today is spent we will never have it again. Also like revenue, there just never seems to be quite enough. We can budget our time and we can squander it. We can invest it with modest or great returns. And if we spend or commit more than we have there will be problems.
Taking this metaphor a step further, let’s look at margin. Margin enables a business to move forward. Without margin a business will fail. Maybe not right away, but after it has robbed all the resources of the owners, friends, family and creditors it will cease to exist.
We also know that when a factory operates above 85% capacity forgoing maintenance, repairs or improvements, things will start to break down or worse. If we over schedule ourselves or take on too many obligations there will be consequences. When we are too busy:
- The quality of our work drops
- We miss commitments – creating collateral damage to relationships, and our reputation
- We miss opportunities because we have nothing left to apply to them
- We get frustrated and burnout.
Definition: Burnout is not working too hard, but working hard without the results to show for your efforts. Futility.
We cannot get more time, but if we create or expand our personal margin, not only will we be more effective with our current activities, but we can then selectively focus on new opportunities. So how do we create more margin in our lives?
Here are four practical steps; two that will create personal margin and two that will enable you to maintain it.
- Eliminate - Peter Drucker stated that we can eliminate or delegate 25% of what we do and it will not be missed. Planning, goal setting and prioritization, with regular reviews will identify those activities that can be eliminated or delegated to others.
- Efficiency – Take advantage of tools, technology and best practices to be more efficient. Calendars, written agendas for meetings, and metrics to evaluate progress against specific goals. Block time for meetings with yourself to accomplish your highest priority tasks.
Once you’ve created some margin in your life you want to make sure it’s not eroded by things that will encroach back into your schedule.
- Learn to say No – Set boundaries for what you will invest yourself in and what you will respectfully decline. Having a personal mission statement will facilitate this. Manage interruptions. For example turn off your auto-receive email for a couple of hours so you can complete a task. If it’s an emergency, they will call your cell phone.
- Get Help – This can take several forms depending on who is available and their level of involvement. Several options include developing accountability partners; an inner circle of friends or colleagues; or a personal board of directors. These are people who are mutually committed to each other, will ask hard questions and watch your back. To get the maximum benefit you must:
- Listen to what they say
- Understand it, ask questions if you don’t
- Apply what you’ve heard – take action
I hope this has given you a new perspective on working smarter, and the confidence to make the tough decisions so that you can focus your most valuable resource – your time – on what will give you the greatest return. But here is where the money metaphor breaks down. Not every return on investment is measured in dollars. In fact the greatest rewards and the most lasting impact we can make are in the people who are part of our lives. I encourage you to make sure you have enough margin left for them.
