Are you feeling overwhelmed by your daily tasks? Do you find yourself wasting time on low-value activities?
In his book Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell offers practical strategies for eliminating low-value tasks from your schedule. He provides four options for freeing yourself from energy-draining activities and suggests hiring a personal assistant to manage your time more effectively.
Read on to discover how you can reclaim your time and focus on what truly matters in your work and life.
Offloading Low-Value Tasks
Martell recommends that you reflect on how each task on your list affects your energy. Note 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. Then, identify the low-value tasks. These are draining tasks that have low value financially—for example, running small errands or dealing with unnecessary paperwork.
Martell writes that, once you’ve identified all of the low-value tasks that occupy your time, you should start offloading them. They’re usually the easiest to offload. Martell suggests four options for freeing yourself from these tasks:
Option 1: Eliminate the task all together. 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.
(Shortform note: Eliminating a task can be hard because it requires you to say “no” to something. In Essentialism, Greg McKeown says you may struggle to say “no” for many reasons: You might be afraid to create conflict, disappoint someone, or miss out on an opportunity. However, McKeown urges you to remember that saying “no” to something means you’re saying “yes” to something more important.)
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.
(Shortform note: What’s the best way to delegate a task? In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey says that once you’ve assigned someone else a task, you shouldn’t regulate exactly how they do it. This wastes your time and makes them feel less invested in the results. Instead, delegate effectively by communicating six things: what should be accomplished, the general standard operating procedures and rules for the task, ineffective methods, available resources, how results will be evaluated, and the consequences of success and/or failure.)
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 low-value task.
Option 4: Consider creative ways to outsource the task. For example, you could hire interns, outsource globally, or offer overtime to current employees.
(Shortform note: If you don’t make an hourly wage that allows you to hire someone and you can’t find a way to creatively outsource a task, an alternative is to simply ask someone else to do it. In Girl, Stop Apologizing, Rachel Hollis says you should learn to ask for help from your friends, family members, or partner. She contends that women in particular may struggle to ask for help because they don’t want to feel incapable or to inconvenience people. However, she points out that all successful people have lots of help and that many people are happy to help you if you show your appreciation and offer support in return.)
Hiring 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.
| Consider Hiring a Virtual Assistant In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss specifically recommends you hire a virtual assistant. This gives you the flexibility to hire people from anywhere in the world, allowing you to find someone who can be just as productive as a personal assistant but for a fraction of the cost. If you do hire a virtual assistant, it’s good practice to research fair wages for international workers. While it might be cheaper to hire someone from a different country, it’s also important to be sure you’re paying a living wage. While the cost of living may be lower in VAs’ home countries, they don’t often get the benefits that local companies provide, such as health insurance, and they have other expenses to pay. Like Martell, Ferriss recommends you pass off any tasks that interrupt you (such as by asking your assistant to oversee your emails and calendar), but he also suggests you delegate: • Tasks that have been on your to-do list the longest—such as setting up a filing system for your office • Tasks that cause you emotional distress—such as making phone calls • Tasks that are fun—such as planning for a holiday party |
