CLIP: Time Management is DEAD

I think time management, traditional time management is dead.

What I see as the next evolution is what I call time investment.

And that is about deciding what's important and what not.

They know as much as possible.

And then really focusing in on what matters.

What are those high value activities?

So that is, first of all, just cutting out a whole bunch of things in your scene.

I'm not doing this and I'm not going to feel guilty that I'm not doing it.

Because that's the fastest way to get something done.

Then from there, I have what I call an IONO technique.

And what that stands for is investment,

neutral, and optimite.

So there are certain perks of your life or time

that I see as investment activities.

So basically, they pay returns on that time.

It's not about like ABC priority.

Like what needs to get done today versus tomorrow, that first thing.

It's about looking at what's the ROI on that time invested.

So professionally, an investment activity may be

setting up a system that will mean you never need to do something in.

Or it could be moving ahead a huge contract

that is going to help you meet this quarter's quota

or maybe half a year's quota.

Those things where if you put in a few extra hours,

or even a few extra days,

it's exponential return on that investment.

Neutral is where there's a one-to-one ratio.

So maybe this could be like having a meeting with your staff

or talking to your assistant or something like that.

You need to put time into it.

We don't want to just cut it.

But spending a lot more time in that staff meeting

is not going to probably lead to 500% return on that time.

So you want to get them done,

but you don't want to spend any more time

than it is necessary doing them.

And then optimize activities are things

that you want to accomplish as quickly as possible.

So like I was saying, with the text expanders,

answering a repetitive email is not something

where there's any value in that taking any more of my time

that it needs to take.

So if I have a little snippet of checks that pops up,

that's what I should use.

Core-deading eduling things.

That can be something that can be delegated to an assistant

or if you're doing it yourself,

you can use tools like Calendly

that make it easy for people to book a time with you or a time

trade.

It lets me tell it what is appropriate,

and then it gives people the freedom

to set up the appointments they want

within those parameters.

Before being in this full area of time management,

time investment, I was in the world of nagging journalism.

And so a lot of my work was project-based,

and I had a lot of different deadlines,

because that needed to get done.

And it was actually quite helpful to have things

like my project list and to do this and all of that.

And I still do have like to do the places

where I write down potential items.

But what I'm finding more and more

is that if something is truly important to me,

it should just go right on my calendar.

Either as an event where I'm going to get the item chat

up then, or as like a task or all events

at the top of the day when it's I'm sensitive

and you see it done.

Otherwise, it's probably not that important.

And either like shouldn't be on a two-day list at all

or should be on some sort of like someday maybe list.

So I've been evolving in that area more and more

towards it's important just to schedule it now.

And if it's not that important,

maybe shouldn't even write it down

or hold your help accountable to it.

What I sound worked best is to do something

I call priority space decision making.

And what that is, is a filter that helps you determine,

it can help you to turn from an overall life view

or from a narrow view like just within your professional life.

What needs to be attended to and what doesn't?

So as I'm making decisions about what's going to be on my schedule,

I want to make sure that I have the top thing there first.

And then from there I can decide on things

that I'm going to do for my business or leisure or that sort of thing.

And so it's about making sure that the higher level items

are attended to you first before I do the lower level items.

And so I make sure that my top order items are put in first.

And then if I don't have time for the things at the bottom, it's okay.