How to Invest Your Time Like Money

1. Take control of your time by overcoming mental barriers

To invest your time effectively, you must take ownership of your life and responsibility for changing yourself, regardless of whether anyone else changes.

Stop blaming others. Recognize when you fall into victim, rescuer, or self-protector roles in relationships. Take ownership of your time investment choices instead of passively accepting a role. Commit to self-mastery by choosing healthy emotional responses to situations and people around you.

Disconnect success from suffering. Challenge the belief that success must involve stress and overwork. Observe reality by looking for examples of people achieving greatness without unhealthy extremes. Experiment with exerting influence on issues you've identified as problematic, and see what happens when you try new approaches.

Quit defending your past. Accept that your past choices may not have been optimal, but focus on what you can change now. Forgive yourself for past mistakes and shift your energy to living in the present. By letting go of defensiveness, you open yourself to new possibilities for time management.

2. Identify and eliminate time debt to balance your schedule

Effective time investment begins with accepting the reality that time is a tangible, finite resource.

Calculate your time budget. Determine your daily time budget by subtracting essential self-care activities (sleep, eating, personal grooming) from the 24 hours in a day. Then, calculate the time costs of your external and internal expectations.

Evaluate time debt. Compare your total time costs to your available time budget. If your expectations exceed your budget, you're in time debt. This insight creates awareness of the need for intentionality in scheduling.

Make strategic cuts. Use priorities-based decision making to eliminate or reduce time-consuming activities that don't align with your most important goals. Be willing to say no to lower-priority commitments to make room for what truly matters.

3. Create a base schedule to prioritize important activities

By marking off times in your weekly schedule for all these essential recurring activities, you'll have a clear idea of how much time you have left to allocate to your time expenses that don't have a set time cost.

Block fixed time costs. Start with a blank weekly calendar and block off essential recurring activities like sleep, meals, work meetings, and commute times.

Determine desired outcomes. For each priority area, define specific goals and the actions needed to achieve them. Estimate the time required for these actions.

Integrate priorities into your schedule. Block time for important activities related to your key goals. Use "layering" to combine tasks that use different mental channels, like listening to podcasts while exercising.

• Be comfortable with "satisficing" - doing some activities in a less-than-ideal manner to ensure overall time allocation aligns with priorities.
• Protect time for top priorities by fitting other activities around them, not vice versa.

4. Establish routines for recurring time investments

With the right structure, you'll get enough sleep, exercise, go to the grocery store, and call your mom without having to work so hard to remember what you need to do and when; you've already made the essentials habits.

Create routines for fixed expenses. Develop habits for recurring activities to reduce decision-making time and energy. For example, set a bedtime alarm to ensure consistent sleep, or schedule regular times for answering emails.

Define parameters and anticipate issues. When establishing a routine, clearly define your objective and the parameters needed to achieve it. Think backward from your goal to determine necessary steps, and anticipate potential obstacles.

Review and recalibrate. Implement your proposed routine and assess its effectiveness. Make adjustments as needed based on what works and what doesn't. Remember that routines are meant to serve you, not constrain you - allow for flexibility when higher priorities arise.

5. Implement weekly and daily planning rituals

Planning is not about calendars or to-do lists but an intentional, proactive approach to staying on top of your commitments, instead of letting them overwhelm you.

Weekly planning ritual. Choose a consistent time (e.g., Friday afternoon or Sunday evening) for weekly planning. Review the past week, look ahead to the coming week, and decide on key projects to focus on. Block time for these projects and important tasks in your calendar.

Daily planning ritual. At the beginning or end of each day, review your commitments and adjust your plan as needed based on current realities. This allows for adaptability while maintaining focus on priorities.

Key planning benefits:

• Clarity on priorities
• Proactive time allocation
• Increased agility in decision-making
• Reduced anxiety and increased productivity
• Realistic expectations of yourself

Remember that planning doesn't guarantee perfection but provides a framework for intentional time investment.

6. Improve time estimation skills for better planning

Reality always wins; if comparable projects took ten hours the last three times that you completed them, your new project will most likely take ten hours.

Learn from past experiences. Use the review portion of your weekly and daily planning as a learning tool. If routine activities consistently take longer than estimated, revise future estimates accordingly.

Track actual time spent. Keep records of time spent on projects using time tracking software or a simple spreadsheet. Use this data to inform estimates for similar future projects.

Break down daily activities. For a more accurate sense of how long mundane tasks take, try writing down your entire day hour by hour, including small activities like commuting or getting ready. This helps reveal how all the "little pieces" add up throughout the day.

• Consider finding an accountability partner or coach to support your planning efforts.
• If you resist rigid planning, try a modified approach: make a short list of key projects for the week, then decide daily which to focus on.

7. Maximize time ROI with the INO Technique

Increasing how long you spend on an activity doesn't always lead to an increase in value on the micro-level and can lead to a misallocation of your time on the macro-level.

INO categorization. Classify activities as Investment (I), Neutral (N), or Optimize (O):

• Investment: Activities where more time can lead to exponential payoff (e.g., strategic planning). Aim for A-level work.
• Neutral: Activities where more time doesn't significantly increase value (e.g., routine meetings). Aim for B-level work.
• Optimize: Activities where additional time adds no value (e.g., administrative tasks). Aim for C-level work or delegate.

Implement INO in planning. During weekly planning, categorize projects and tasks as I, N, or O. Reserve maximum time for I activities, fitting N and O activities around them. In daily planning, focus efforts according to each item's category.

Assess and adjust. If an activity takes longer than expected, evaluate its value and opportunity cost. For I activities, consider reallocating time from N and O tasks. For N or O activities, aim for minimum acceptable completion or postpone if possible.

8. Aim for growth and consistency, not perfection

Self-compassion, instead of self-criticism, holds the key to lasting behavior change because it helps you focus on action and build resilience after setbacks, instead of allowing negative emotions to hold you back.

Accept natural variations. Recognize that productivity fluctuates and unexpected events occur. Don't expect flawless time management every day; instead, aim for overall consistency in aligning time investment with priorities.

Focus on the big picture. Evaluate your time investment over a one-to-two-week period rather than obsessing over daily deviations. If you're generally meeting your goals (e.g., exercising regularly), you're on the right track.

Practice self-compassion. Replace harsh self-criticism with understanding and encouragement. This approach builds resilience and motivates continued effort toward your goals, even after setbacks.

• Remember: Your schedule is a tool to serve you, not a rigid taskmaster.
• Striving for perfection can lead to anxiety and inflexibility. Instead, focus on continual improvement and adaptation.

Last updated: November 21, 2024