Growth Factorials

I read an article in HBR that talks about how to improve our productivity and happiness by doing less. It’s tough because we’re juggling work, parenting, friendships, and more. However, when we stop doing things that keep us busy but aren’t getting results, we end up with more time for what matters.

I have added a few elements of my own over what the article prescribes to make it more practical. But here is the process you can use.

Step 1: Identify Goals

• List down your main goals – for example, growing your business, getting fit, spending quality time with family, and having fun.

Step 2: Assess Current Time Allocation

• Break down how you currently spend your time each week for each of these goals.

Step 3: Evaluate Effectiveness

• Determine the effectiveness of each activity in helping you achieve your goals effectively. Is it helping you progress, or is it just keeping you busy?

Step 4: Make Adjustments

• Based on your assessment, make adjustments to your time allocation. Cut out activities that aren’t effective and reallocate that time to more productive pursuits. If appropriate, change the structure of the activities to make them more effective.

Step 5: Implement Changes

• Put your new plan into action. Be intentional about how you spend your time and prioritize activities that align with your goals.

Let’s take a simple example and see how we can make ourselves more productive by following the above process. We will apply it to only one of the goals of growing your business to make the explanation efficient.

Now, let’s see how we’re spending our time. Here’s the break up:

1. Meetings with the team: 30 hours per week (mostly ineffective)- A lot of blame game and data accuracy-related discussion with a focus on things not in control.
2. Talking to customers: 30 minutes per week (highly effective)- good input over what customers like or dislike about the product and services.
3. Planning meetings: 10 hours per week (somewhat effective)- the team comes to the meetings and brainstorms ideas. Multiple back-and-forth discussions.
4. Random office meetings: 15 hours per week (ineffective)- people just ask you to join a meeting when they see you free.
5. Solo thinking & planning about work: 2.5 hours per week (highly effective)- allows you to solve problems and improve output
6. Weekend work calls: 4 hours over the weekend (ineffective)- You feel compelled to work over the weekend otherwise you feel guilty.

Overall, you find that your effectiveness of activities is low in achieving your goal.

After reviewing how we’re spending our time and how effective it is in achieving our goals, let’s make some adjustments by allocating more time for highly effective activities, reducing or eliminating time for ineffective activities and adding a few new highly effective activities.

This is what your revised schedule looks like:

1. Meetings with the team: 15 hours per week (highly effective)- added a new structure where all data is automated and discussion is centred around solutions and things under control.
2. Talking to customers: 2.5 hours per week (highly effective)- spend more time in understanding what’s working and what needs change.
3. Planning meetings: 5 hours per week (highly effective)- prepared format with proposed ideas. prereads are sent. Discussion happens over the merit of ideas and deciding a plan of action.
4. Random office meetings: 5 hours per week (low effectiveness but helps with team communication & build personal connections)- you have defined a time window when you are available for such meetings.
5. Thinking & planning about work: 10 hours per week (highly effective)- Now you are spending more time on this highly effective activity.
6. Communicating your vision with the team in different meetings: 2.5 hours per week (highly effective)- This new activity allows you to align your larger team towards your vision.

Now you are spending your time in highly effective activities that will help you achieve your goal.

As you can see, we have reduced the number of hours required to achieve our goal by making adjustments and still made changes that will improve our ability to achieve our goals.

By following this framework for reviewing and adjusting our time allocation, we can ensure that we’re making the most of our time and focusing on what truly matters to us.