Watching Your Time

I’m very time-deprived these days. Many people complain to me about this problem. That’s why I’m so delighted to have Dave Crenshaw today as my guest. He’s the foremost expert in helping you get time, and has helped students worldwide get more time for everything they love most in life.

Beware Time Liabilities
By Dave Crenshaw

Are you surrounded by Time Liabilities? I define a Time Liability as:

a) anything that consumes time unnecessarily or
b) anything that causes you to spend time in activities that are less profitable than your most profitable activity.

If your filing system causes you to spend extra time doing $9 per hour 
clerical work, trying to find that important document you misplaced,
 then you have a Time Liability. If your workspace is so uncomfortable 
that you have to spend time at a chiropractor every month to correct
 your spine alignment problems, you definitely have a Time Liability!

Over a year ago I was working with a business owner who was in severe
 time debt. He was working in the ballpark of 90 to 100 hours per week,
 and both his business and family were suffering. We started by 
calculating his per-hour worth. When doing his most profitable 
activities, he was worth $500 an hour or more. Yet we found that he was
 spending approximately half of his time, 45 hours or more per week,
 performing $25/hour, $10/hr, and even minimum wage type work! Why? A
 huge factor was that he was surrounded by Time Liabilities.

At one point during our training he needed to punch holes in some paper
 for a three ring binder. Yet when he went to punch the paper, his paper 
puncher clearly wasn’t up for the job. He had bought a cheap model that
 had was basically broken after a month of use. I watched as this
 business owner kept turning his stack of papers around twice to punch.
 Most often he kept misaligning the punch and ruining the stack.

Next, he stood up from his desk, walked out of his office, marched down 
the hall to someone else’s office, searched for their high-quality
 paper puncher, punched the holes in his stack, came back to the office
 and finally inserted them in the planner. While he went through this
 long process, I timed him without him knowing. It took about 6 minutes.

I 
asked the question, “How many times per week do you repeat that 
activity of having to use someone else’s hole puncher?” He replied, “I 
don’t know. Maybe 3 or 4.” I responded, “So, you’re losing more than 
an hour per month simply because you didn’t spend the extra $20 to get 
a quality 3 hole puncher?” His response, “I didn’t think of it like 
that at the time!” His cheap 3-hole puncher was potentially costing him 
nearly $500 per month…and that was just one Time Liability holding him
 back!

How much are your time liabilities costing you
 at work? If you know what you are worth per hour, you can quickly
 estimate the dollar-per hour impact of lost time. Any resource or
 system or behaviors at work that keeps you away from your profitable 
activities is a Time Liability. Replace Time liabilities with Time 
Assets. The sooner you replace them, the sooner your profitability will
 increase.

Are you surrounded by time liabilities? Consider the following questions:

* Are
 the tools of your trade (computer, pens, stapler, etc) all within hand’s 
reach? (If you often have to get up from you chair to pull out the 
scissors you use often, then you have a time liability.)

* Do 
you have the tools you need or is something missing? (Have you been 
putting off going to the office supply or computer store?)

* Do 
they all work properly? (If you have to squint or lean forward to view
 your computer screen, then it is likely a time liability…either that or
 your glasses!)

* Are your tools of the
 best working quality? (Remember the story of the three-hole puncher. Invest more to get better results and greater longevity from the “tools
 of your trade”.)

By trading your Time Liabilities 
for Time Assets, you will save time, be more productive, and reduce 
stress in the long run.
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Dave Crenshaw has appeared in TIME magazine, on XM and Sirius Radio, MSN Money, and been interviewed in radio and TV stations across North America. His book, The Myth of Multitasking: How ‘Doing It All’ Gets Nothing Done has been translated into six languages and is a time management best seller. He is the foremost expert in helping you get time, and has helped students worldwide get more time for everything they love most in life.

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