Enjoy this 7 part series on Advanced Time Management!

Highest Leverage Action

Finally, once you’ve got your list sorted into a hierarchy of highest to lowest rated, and you’ve made the ruthless cut of drawing a line between the top 20% and the bottom 80%, it’s time to look at taking it to the next level.

I recommend you first get used to living a leaner, more efficient, more meaningful existence by cutting the fat and doubling down on what matters most. Give yourself some time and space to be able to think.

Once you’ve gotten used to that, you should then have the headspace available to start thinking of optimizing even more. See, within that 20% range of actions are more options for cutting than you can currently see.

There’s always a better way to do something. Or, more specifically, you can always find more leverage.

Leverage is creating more output with less input. There’s always a way to improve this ratio: to achieve more with less effort. But it takes some creativity, outside support, research, and experimentation to figure this out.

Let’s say one of your top 20% activities is to play with your kid. Another one is to model integrity. And another one is to exercise frequently. Can you find a way to play that also models integrity and is physically exerting? That’s leverage.

Combining like this is one way to leverage. You can workout with your boss to get important meetings and exercise achieved at the same time. You can meet new people at your hobbies to achieve in both the social and spiritual areas of your life. You can bring your spouse in as a business partner to build both your business and your relationship.

And then there’s how a goal is achieved. Look at the numbers; how can they go up with effort going down? How can you generate more leads in half the time? How can you shop for food with the least possible effort and yet also increase the quality of what you’re buying? What’s the one thing you can do in your relationship to best build your connection?

Ask yourself: if someone put a gun to my head and demanded I achieve the same output in one/tenth of the time, how would I do it?

This is where you might want to bring in outside support through researching experts and successful people, or getting coaching, mentoring and training. Some ideas you simply won’t be able to come up with on your own, but you’d be amazed at what other people have created.

‍