Time and Energy Audits
Alex Hormozi, Alex Charfen, and Dan Martell all recommend time and energy audits to grow your business. Track every activity for two weeks in 15-20 minute blocks, mark tasks as energy-giving or energy-draining, assign dollar values, then cut or delegate the low-value drains. The goal isn't making more time but reallocating your 24 hours toward work that energizes and pays.
Chapters
What do Alex Hormozi, Alex Charfen, formerly the founder of Simpler Operations, and Dan Martell, who wrote the book Buy Back Your Time, and I'm sure many, many others, but what is one thing that they all recommend small business owners do? And that is a time and energy audit. If you've listened to any of Hormozi's material, seen his ads on social, at some point he will recommend doing a time study. You call it an audit, you call it a study, irrelevant. The first person I actually heard this from was a guy named Alex Charfen. He had created the EPT, Entrepreneurial Personality Type. Very mini book. I actually don't know where I first heard of Alex, but he was the first one that had convinced me about the value of doing a time and energy audit. And secondly, he also convinced me that entrepreneurs, it's way more about energy than it is about time. It's where we put the energy, the finite not infinite, the finite spot of where our energy goes is ultimately where the money really flows. And as a business owner, we're very fortunate that we get to make those choices. And when we think about Hormozy, we'll talk about this a lot, where it's limited resources against unlimited options. And the bigger you get, Sure, the more resources you have— money— but so do the options and opportunities also go up in proportion. And so therefore, the ratio between understanding that you have limited resources but all you have infinite choices remains. But I don't want to talk about money today. I want to talk about your time and your energy, because the most finite and this is very relevant for me personally right now, the most finite resources in an organization is the business owner founder's time and their energy. There's only so much to go around. And so the choice is not how do we create more time. I was actually on a call and a business owner said, I need more time. And so we've got bad news. There is no more time. For you to create. But what you have to do is almost bend the time in your favor. You have to reallocate where you're spending your time. See, his problem was not time. His problem was where he was allocating the time. At the end of the day, we all have the same amount of time. Maybe not collectively on the planet, but you know, how much time in a day? We all have 24 hours. It's where we decide to put that time and where do we decide to put that energy is what matters. And what I loved about Dan Martell is that he brought us the concept of buying back our time. He gave a math formula to it. And then the biggest thing that I felt that I picked up was not just even the math, but it was this idea of not just delegating things off of our plate. But what are you going to replace it with? And that was critical. That was such a key of, wait a minute, yeah, if I, if I offload these things, if I delegate these things, what am I going to actually put back in its place? And the one of the first places to start is doing a time and energy audit. Now I can tell you, of all the clients that we've had that have actually done this, I've told them that for 2 weeks you're going to hate me, you're not going to like it, but whenever you're done, you're going to be so grateful that you had actually done a time study. Just write down every 15 to 20 minutes, where did you spend your time? And you're going to be shocked at where you think the allocation of your time actually is and where you're— what you're what it actually is, what it is in reality. What you think it is versus reality, two totally different things. The last thing, where do you think Alex Charfen, Alex Hormozi, and Dan Martell got this idea from? Where do you think that they picked up this concept of doing a time and energy audit? Well, they got it from here. One of the goated books. If you're watching this on YouTube, behind me is one shelf with, I don't know, 15 to 20 books on that shelf. Those books represent books that I consider to be goated, and maybe I'll do an episode of that one day about what all books are on there. But this is one of them, The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, the definitive guide to getting the right things done. If you've not read this book, highly recommend it. It is in this book that he actually talks about the importance of having and doing some sort of a time study. That's where they pulled it from, and I love the fact that they repurposed it, and I'm passing it along to you. If they picked it up from Peter Drucker, and I don't know where Drucker got it, maybe he is the one that originated it, but now it's been passed on to great influencers like Hormozi, Alex, Dan Martell, and many other people. Do a time study. Do it on paper. Don't do it digitally. Do it for 2 weeks. See where your actual time goes. Did things give you energy or did they take away energy? There's no neutral. It's either green or it's red. You look at how much time you're spending, you decide whether or not it's giving you energy, and then you assign a dollar value to that. What do you think you're going to do? The things that take the most time are the least valuable and drain you of energy. Get those damn things off of you. Get them off your plate. The things that you love to do light you up, make the company money, and likely you probably don't spend enough time doing. We need to spend more time doing those things. Well, what are they? Do a time study. Do a time and energy audit about where things are today. Then we can decide of where we're going to go and allocate your time. By the way, This is part of having a personal leadership plan for yourself. You got a plan for the business. You've laid out a great plan for 2026. Do you have a personal leadership plan for yourself? If you don't, join us. Upcoming workshop, Tuesday, February the 24th. Go to blueprintos.com/assets. blueprintos.com/assets. In there, there's going to be two places. Number one is you're going to be able to see the link to register for our upcoming February workshop. It's totally free to attend. We'd love to see you there. Number two, you'll also see where you can get access to our Above the Business Toolkit. And when you get access to the Above the Business Toolkit, in there is our assets and template for you to be able to use to do your own time and energy audit. So if you don't know where to start, blueprintos.com/assets, get access to the Above the Business Toolkit, and you'll see the time and energy audit tools in there. Alright everyone, till next time, lead well and go be great.
