Time is the Asset You May Not Be Investing In

A man is walking through the woods and sees a lumberjack working hard to cut a tree. The lumberjack is exhausted, sweating, and has been sawing for hours with little progress.

The man asks, “How long have you been cutting that tree?”

Lumberjack replies, “Five hours – and I’m exhausted!”

The man looks at the saw and says, “Why don’t you take a break and sharpen your saw?”

The Lumberjack responds, “I can’t, I’m too busy cutting!”
 
There are different versions of the parable; you may have heard it before. Yet today, more than ever, our work lives are too busy to spend time helping ourselves out.

OUR CRITICAL ASSET
Our most critical asset is time. It’s a massive limitation, and yet we are all given the same amount each week.

What I’d like to beg you to consider is investing your time in your future. Not in a “work hard today so you don’t have to tomorrow,” or even “go make as much money as you possibly can,” that seemed to be an undertone in our parents’ and their parents’ generations.

I’m talking about investing time in order to get more time back.
 
THINKING LINEARLY
Our brains evolved to survive in environments where change was mostly linear and local. Survival was based on gradual change, local change, and physical outcomes. We’re wired to be extremely good at pattern recognition, cause-and-effect thinking, and short-term projections.

Not long-term exponential returns or compounding benefits.

To be fully candid, it’s a topic I can’t wrap my head around. Not in a self-deprecating way, but in a "I see it but struggle to accept it" kind of way. I can see it on paper. I can map it out. I can see investment in concept, but every projection I write or spreadsheet I drag out, my inner gut simply cannot accept that future path to be true. It’s as if once the trajectory starts to curve, I reject it as being far too sunny and optimistic.

So if you look at compounding returns as a magical theory of futurists – I can appreciate that because my inner gut agrees with you.

That said, it’s time to think of your most precious resource as a very important investment.

If you’re busy – overloaded – more stressed than you want to be – or working with smaller margins than you want to be – then you need to invest in getting back your own time.

Metaphorically, it’s time to stop sawing the tree and time to spend even just a fraction of your time sharpening your own blade.

The funny thing is that I actually just came from the future with the future you, and the one thing you kept saying was “PLEASE TELL ME TO FREE UP MY TIME! IT’S CRAZYLAND OUT HERE.”

So I’m doing the only responsible thing I can think to do and tell you now – it’s time to sharpen your blade.

How can we invest time in our own methods when we don’t have any time? How can we invest time when we don’t have any of it? I’m already working 50 hours a week!

A few tips that have worked for me.

TIP #1: JUST START
First, start. Start with just 15 minutes a week. You have to start a snowball by rolling just a little bit of snow. You can’t eat an elephant without taking the first bite. Any progress is better than no progress.

TIP #2: START SMALL
Second, start small. Don’t shoot for that report template that will take a week and has been on your to-do list for three years. Don’t. Start small, exceptionally small. That one detail that you have to change, and it irks you on every project. That one paragraph you have to hunt down and paste into emails every few weeks. That one prompt you can’t easily find and have to go look up. Start small with easy wins.

TIP #3: DO IT FIRST
Third, do it first. Your week will have fires you’ll have to put out. You’ll have meetings. You’ll have your workload. If you save this “sharpen the tool” effort until Friday afternoon, it will never happen. You know that to be true. If you want it done, do it first. Before anything else. Remember, we’re only starting with 15 minutes a week. Do it before you even open up your email in the morning.

TIP #4: GRAB THE LOW-HANGING FRUIT
Attack the lowest-hanging fruit. The analogy is obvious – the lowest-hanging fruit is the easiest fruit to grab. Start there. Start with small, quick and easy wins to regain even small chunks of time.

TIP #5: REINVEST YOUR TIME SAVINGS
Then finally, reinvest your time. At first, your time savings are extremely small. That’s how compounding works. Your 15-minute time investment that first week should only save you a minute of work in your next. Maybe, maybe you earn a minute back… fine. Add that minute to your 15 from week 1, and now you’ve got 16 minutes to reinvest into sharpening your saw. Update your templates. Update your library. Save down your process. Make a checklist. Save down a good prompt. Organize.

I’ll talk more about methods next week, but these investments are all about you building your own tools that help you work more smoothly and smartly going forward.

Investing to earn back small amounts of time at the start rarely shows up in breakthrough wins, and that's OK.

After Week 2?

Same thing, maybe you earn a minute more of your time back. In fact, weeks into recharging your life, we’re still talking about very, very small time returns.

​If you gain back just 10% of your invested time as future time savings… it actually accrues exceptionally slowly. Here’s what investing 15 minutes at the start of your week looks like, represented at scale:​Nothing amazing happens, even weeks in. That’s very commonly the frustration I think we’ve all experienced at one time or another. What little time we spend improving our own workflows, we get so little time back, and then we get busy and give up.

If we’re going to break through to what the other side can look like, it’s a longer-play. Prioritize earning your time back first, work with small wins, and roll that time savings forward.
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Even after some period of continued effort, early returns on time are small.

It’s easy to project – run the numbers and make the assumptions you’d find realistic. My feedback here is that early on, we’ll hardly see the results. It’s only down the road, as each of these little changes compounds, that we’ll start to see the results.
 
When I first went into business for myself, I found that working hard on improving any one thing never showed up with quick results. It was always about six months later when I’d think, “Oh, that’s a lot easier now,” or “That’s not a problem anymore.” The returns were never immediate.
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And I think that’s generally a healthier mindset looking forward. If we want to change any one thing six months from now, we have to push hard at that thing now.

In the later stages, the compounding effect is real. Lots of small improvements start returning outsized return on time. Our individual workloads begin to look a lot different when we have high-quality, streamlined processes and improved workflow. It's necessary for high-impact teams and team leaders, but it's also what we need more of in our industry.

We work our way into getting 1-hour a week back. Then, it’s 2. Then it’s more, and more, and more. All the while having just as good (if not better) output than we’d had before, yet having more time. Better, more consistent processes. Better quality work. Less stress.

I’m talking in concept. It very well sounds more philosophical and theoretical than real-world boots on the ground realism. But anyone who knows me well or has worked with me in the past ten years knows this is very much a real thing – a real way to operate. Have a worklife and workflow that’s more predictable, lower stress, with more consistent and higher quality work than before.

I’m not asking for your time for something I need. I’m asking for your time for something you need, and we all need. Get your time back, where you’re more in control, doing the best work you’ve ever done, and living a healthier, less-stressful life through that process.

Next we’ll talk on the objections that we get when trying to live in fantasy-land, but more realistically address how we can best invest our time to earn more of it and our sanity back. Check it out here.
 
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- Joe