John Assaraf argues that “time management” is a misnomer — you can only manage what you do in time. Using an anecdote about a lawyer who tracks work in 15-minute increments, he explains the difference between high-income-producing activities and high-impact activities, recommends tracking every 15 minutes to identify wasted time (the "trivial many" vs. the "critical few"), and issues a 24–48 hour time-tracking challenge to the viewer.
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And just be aware of where you are trading your time, because time is your greatest asset. Of course, knowledge and skills are great, but time, what are you doing in time? Will determine whether you're going to move your business forward or whether you're just going to be busy. Got this bill from my lawyer and I called him up and I was about to fire him. Then what he shared with me caused me to think that he was so smart and I was stupid. Let me explain. When I was a younger entrepreneur, I didn't really know anything about time management. And I later came out to find that there is no such thing as time management. And I'll explain in just a second. I'll come back to that. So here I am looking at this bill from my lawyer. His name was Don Gardner. And I'm on the phone with him and I'm telling him, what in the world is this bill for $1,800 for? I didn't use up $1,800 of your time. He says, of course you did. He said, let me send you some evidence that you did use $1,800 of my time. So he sends me this information and I take a look at the document that he sends me and it has everything marked out in 15 minute increments. And I'm looking at this and I'm reviewing everything that's on this document. And I recall talking to him about that stuff, but I didn't know that he was charging me for every single discussion that I had with him. And so I said to him, I said, don't. What the hell is this? You know, we talked about this. I get that. But like, I didn't know that you're charging me for every 15 minutes. And here is what he said to me. He said, as a lawyer, I sell my time and my expertise and my knowledge and my contacts. And if I don't keep track of my time in 15 minute increments, he said, clients like you, meaning me, take advantage of it because they don't remember all the things that they are asking me for. Now, that's not what the lesson was. The lesson in here was this because he was keeping track of what he did every 15 minutes. He could determine who his best clients were. He could determine where to put energy, time and focus because he kept track of what he did. He also was able to keep track of when he wasn't making his highest income per hour. And so I'm going to ask you a question. Do you know what your highest income producing activity is? Do you know that there's no such thing as time management. The only thing you can manage is what you do in time. So let's say you work 10 hours a day like I do. I'm an entrepreneur. You're an entrepreneur. Do you know which activities pay you the most? So I'm fortunate. I get paid a lot of money per hour. $5,000 per hour when I'm consulting. $50,000 for a one hour keynote. That means that if I don't know what my hourly activity is, I may be missing out on opportunities. And so I divide my time into two types of blocks. One is what I call my highest income producing activities. And so I have a list when I get paid the most amount of money and how many hours a week I want to focus on my highest income producing activities. So me doing this video, for example, because I love video, I love to share, I love to give value to people. This is a high impact activity. I'm not making any money doing this video, but it's a high impact activity because I can share it with the world, which is one of my, you know, highest values of contribution. So I divide high income and high impact activities into chunks of time, whether it's 15 minute chunks or 30 minute chunks or 1 hour chunks of time. And I know that I want to Invest, let's say 10 hours a week, high impact activities, things that give me the most purpose, the most meaning, things that allow me to make high income activities possible as well. So if I'm working, for example, with my team on an idea for a product, an idea for marketing, an idea for a series we want to create, that is a high impact activity, meaning that activity is going to have a high impact somehow. And so I want you to do this little exercise. I want you to write down everything you do. Don, my lawyer had a list of everything that he did every single day. And he actually gave me this sheet that he used to track every 15 minutes. And then guess what I did? I tracked every 15 minutes to see what I was doing. And you know what I was wasting so much time on. What I call are the trivial many versus the critical few. If you want to have a little fun, take out your calendar, wherever you keep all of your appointments and look at your calendar and see how many hours were you working. High income producing activities, meaning that the activity produced income whether you were selling in front of an audience, whether you, you know, you were making a sale on the phone, that's a high impact activity, or when you were preparing to create something that you need in order to make money. That's a high impact activity. And I want you to rate them a 1 for high income or high impact, a 2 and a 3 for anything less than that. And just start to be aware of where are you investing your time, your energy and your attention. Here's what I guarantee you. You're going to notice you may be active, but you may not be productive. You may be doing a lot of stuff, but it may not be the things that are going to really move your business to where you want it to go. So are you up for a challenge? If you're up for a challenge, the next 24 hours to 48 hours, write down everything you do in 15 minute increments and just be aware of where you are trading your time because time is your greatest asset. Of course, knowledge and skills are great, but time, what are you doing in time will determine whether you're going to move your business forward or whether you're just going to be busy. Hey, this is John and if you like that video, watch the next video because it is packed with things that you can do right now to achieve success way faster than ever before.
