Are you an entrepreneur struggling to find time for what truly matters? Do you feel like your business is taking over your life?
In Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell offers a fresh perspective on work-life balance for entrepreneurs. He challenges the common belief that more time invested in your business equals more profit. Instead, Martell provides strategies to free up your schedule and focus on high-value tasks.
Read more to find practical ways to reclaim time and grow your business simultaneously.
Work-Life Balance for Entrepreneurs
Martell argues that work-life balance for entrepreneurs is hard because many of them struggle to make time for what matters because of a misconception: They believe that, the more time and effort they put into their business, the more profitable it becomes. As a result, they end up using their time and energy indiscriminately without considering whether a task is really worth doing. In the end, they find themselves overwhelmed with minor tasks and unable to fit in what truly matters to them, which takes a toll on their physical and mental well-being.
(Shortform note: In Clockwork, Mike Michalowicz argues that this misconception not only takes a toll on entrepreneurs, but also on their business. He notes that many entrepreneurs become excessively involved in their business’s daily operations because it fuels their self-esteem and makes them feel indispensable to their company’s success. However, Michalowicz cautions that this can cause them to overlook the bigger picture of their company—such as its mission, employee roles, and routine procedures. This spawns crises, which are tiring and strenuous to manage. Furthermore, many entrepreneurs wrongly attribute their fatigue to a lack of productivity and end up trying to fit even more work into their schedule.)
Martell writes that, if you manage your time this way, you’ll eventually become so overwhelmed that you can’t grow your business any more. However, your company doesn’t have to take over your life as it grows. In fact, Martell says success should bring you more freedom and time to devote to the things you care about. By effectively using your resources to free up more time and carefully choosing how you spend it, you can have a balanced life and grow your business at the same time.
(Shortform note: Better time management can help you achieve a better work-life balance, but you shouldn’t view it as a magic bullet. In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman argues that you’ll never have total control of your time, and believing that you do is a misconception spawned from the Industrial Revolution, which transformed time into a resource. He argues that this belief causes a host of negative behaviors: You feel guilty about being unproductive, isolate yourself to get more done, struggle to prioritize important tasks, and obsess about the future instead of enjoying the present. Thus, as you buy back your time, try to let go of unrealistic expectations and accept that it’s OK to never perfect time management.)
According to Martell, the first step to achieving a better work-life balance is freeing up your schedule. Let’s discuss how to do reclaim time in more detail.
Reclaim Time
According to Martell, you probably spend a lot of time doing unproductive tasks. Because of this, he first advises you to cleanse your daily schedule by removing tasks that are low-value, energy-draining, or both. You can do so in three steps: 1) Analyze how you spend your time, 2) delegate lower-value tasks, and 3) hire people to handle higher-value tasks.
| Why Are We Drawn to Unproductive Tasks? In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey explains that we spend time on unproductive tasks because our brains default to autopilot mode—we favor safe, repetitive activities, only reacting to anything new, gratifying, or potentially dangerous. This was useful for our ancestors, who needed to be alert to changes in their environment. However, in modern society, this autopilot mode makes it easy for us to get distracted and caught up in low-value tasks. In Deep Work, Cal Newport refers to these mindless tasks as shallow work, adding that we do them because they’re easy to do and they feel productive. Conversely, meaningful tasks—or deep work—are difficult to do and can feel unproductive because you’re tackling complex problems that require thinking and backtracking. Therefore, even if it might not feel like it, replacing shallow and unproductive tasks with meaningful deep work will ultimately bring you more happiness and fulfillment. |
Step 1: Analyze How You Spend Your Time
Martell writes that the first step to reclaiming your time is to understand how you currently spend it. This helps you identify which activities are draining your time and why, so you’ll know what changes you need to make. To get a clear picture of your time use, he recommends the following process:
Record everything you do over a two-week period. Every 15 minutes, stop and write down the task you’re doing to get an accurate understanding of where your time goes.
Determine how much each task is worth. Martell recommends you figure out how valuable tasks are by labeling them with one to four dollar signs. You can decide what each dollar value stands for—for example, one dollar sign might signify tasks worth $20 an hour, while four dollar signs might signify tasks worth $100+ an hour. By scoring each task based on its value, you’ll learn which ones to prioritize.
Reflect on how each task affects your energy. Identify whether a task replenishes or drains your energy by highlighting each task in a different color. For example, handling technical difficulties at your work might drain your energy, while participating in a professional seminar might replenish it.
Organize activities into one of four groups based on how valuable and energizing they are:
- Group A: Energizing tasks that have high financial value—for example, brainstorming new business ideas or meeting with potential investors or clients.
- Group B: Energizing tasks that have low financial value—for example, practicing personal hobbies or attending social events.
- Group C: Draining tasks that have low financial value—for example, running small errands or dealing with unnecessary paperwork.
- Group D: Draining tasks that have high financial value—for example, paying business taxes or handling difficult employees.
Step 2: Eliminate Low-Value and Energy-Draining (Group C) Tasks
Martell writes that, once you understand all of the tasks that occupy your time, you should start eliminating low-value and energy-draining (Group C) tasks. These are tasks you’ve assigned the fewest dollar signs and marked as energy-draining, and they’re usually the easiest to eliminate. Martell suggests four options for freeing yourself from these tasks:
Option 1: Eliminate the task. Think about whether completing the task accomplishes anything of value. If not, there’s no reason for the task to exist, and you can stop doing it.
Option 2: Delegate the task. Sometimes other people are better equipped to do a task than you are. If so, assign the task to them—they’ll enjoy it and perform it better than you can.
Option 3: Hire someone to do the task. Martell recommends you be willing to outsource any task for which you can pay one-fourth of your hourly rate to get someone else to do. For example, if you make $60 per hour, you should be willing to pay someone $15 to take over a Group C task.
Option 4: Consider creative ways to outsource the task. For example, you could hire interns, outsource globally, or offer overtime to current employees.
Hire a Personal Assistant
You can prevent energy-draining, low-value tasks from ever coming across your table by hiring a personal assistant. Martell writes that a personal assistant is a critical hire for entrepreneurs—they can handle a plethora of time-consuming tasks you would otherwise have to take time to delegate individually. More importantly, they can screen incoming requests for your time and attention, flagging anything that’s necessary for you to handle and taking care of the rest themselves.
Martell recommends you hand over control of two things to your assistant:
- Your calendar: Specify your work and home hours, when you’re available for meetings, and the time slots you dedicate to focus work.
- Your inbox: Ideally, you should only see emails that your assistant has pre-checked. Develop a system of folders and labels that filters emails according to your preferences.
Step 3: Eliminate Important But Unenjoyable (Group D) Tasks
Martell writes that, once you’ve eliminated lower-value tasks, the next step to freeing up your schedule is to transfer tasks that are high-value but drain your energy. These tasks might include marketing your product or onboarding new hires. Because these tasks are more important, you’ll need to hire someone with the right skills and qualifications to do the job effectively. Hiring the right person will free up your time and grow your business, but hiring the wrong person can be costly. So how do you ensure you find the right person for the job?
First, Martell recommends you define the specific requirements and responsibilities of the position. This way, you can hire people who excel at the core tasks of the position and avoid getting distracted and hiring someone who has other appealing but less relevant qualities.
Once you’ve filtered the field down to your top choices, assign your candidates a paid test project that reflects the real work they’d do if hired. Martell recommends you give minimal instructions: This will provide candidates with an opportunity to showcase their problem-solving skills and work style.
Finally, when you’ve found the right person, shift your effort toward convincing them to join your company. Highlight the opportunities and growth your organization offers and clearly communicate how the position aligns with their career goals.
Exercise: Take Your First Steps to Reclaim Time
Martell writes that the best way for entrepreneurs to run a successful business and lead a fulfilling life outside of work is to spend more time on tasks that energize them and less time on tasks that drain them. Reflect on how you currently use your time and plan your first steps toward freeing up your schedule.
- How does your current approach to managing your time and your business make you feel? Are you satisfied with your time use?
- Which of the time-wasting behaviors that Martell identifies (procrastination, haste, wearing all hats, saving instead of investing, and unhealthy coping mechanisms) do you struggle with the most? What’s one step you can take toward improving this behavior?
- List one to three draining, low-value tasks that currently take up your time. Considering the options Martell suggests (deleting, delegating, hiring, or creatively outsourcing), how can you eliminate one or all of these tasks?
- List one to three tasks you find to be high-value and energizing. What’s one step you can take to schedule more time for one or all of these tasks?
