Many on the outside looking in wonder how I can manage the responsibilities of Partner at Hall CPA, one of the fastest-growing accounting firms, CEO of one of our business units, and Fund Manager with Dual City Investments while still writing these blogs?
Well, get ready because, in this blog, I share my time management secrets, which may transform how you manage time and even what you believe is possible to achieve.
Going Back To 5th Grade
My time management journey began as early as the 5th grade.
My teacher, Ms. Ross, didn’t assign homework. Instead, each day, she’d provide a variety of assignments that were due the next day. Whatever you didn’t finish became your homework.
The motivation to have my afternoons free from homework quickly transformed me into a time management expert.
Each day, while others socialized, I prioritized my work and worked diligently to complete each assignment. Also, because we could work together on some assignments, I quickly formed an alliance with a like-minded classmate to divide and conquer some assignments.
This experience laid the foundation for solid time management skills (and a bit of teamwork, too), and I’m proud to say I rarely had homework in the 5th grade.
While some questioned Ms. Ross’s approach to teaching, in hindsight, it made a ton of sense.
Fast Forward To College
Fast forward to my college years, and I am managing two part-time jobs, a full-time schedule at school (which I designed), even attending two SUNY campuses at once, being VP of the Accounting Society, a social life, and more (gotta love being 20-something).
All while managing to graduate Summa Cum Laude and land an internship with a national accounting firm that didn’t even recruit from my school (I networked my way in)!
This experience further expanded my natural abilities in time management.
Entering The Real World
Shortly after accepting a full-time role at the accounting firm, I juggled working 10-12 hour days during the busy season, attending real estate meetups, managing my gym schedule, studying for the CPA exam, and still having a social life.
At this point managing a heavy workload had become a way of life, and passing the CPA exam on my first attempt while doing this was nothing more than a routine accomplishment.
7 Keys To Effective Time Management
However, I wasn’t satisfied, so I began reading books on the topic and adopting best practices for time management. Here are some of the best practices I employ today.
Prioritization
While you can have virtually anything you want, you can’t have everything you want. – Ray Dalio, Life Principles
In a world of endless opportunity, its crucial you know exactly what you want so you can prioritize it accordingly.
If you’re not sure what your current priorities are, look at your results, and you’ll quickly find them. If your current priorities don’t align with your goals and the results you expect, it’s time to examine where your time is going and reprioritize your actions to align with your goals.
But the bottom line here is, you have to know what is important to you and know what to say yes to and no to so you are spending your most valuable and scarce resource, time, on what will drive the results you’re looking for.
Time Blocking & Batching
With your priorities in order, we must look at batching and time-blocking concepts.
Time blocking is a time management method that involves dividing your day into blocks of time, where each block is dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or group of tasks. This approach helps in focusing your energy on one activity at a time, enhancing productivity and efficiency. By allocating specific hours to given tasks or responsibilities, you not only prioritize what’s most important but also create a more structured and focused workday.
In general, you want to block out the first hours of your day to complete the highest priority and/or most challenging work. This does a few things:
- Ensures the most important/highest impact work is done and out of the way.
- For most of us, our most productive hours will be the first few hours of the day, allowing the most important work to get our best energy, leading to higher-quality results.
I tend to work in the early hours and hold meetings in the afternoons. However, recently, I’ve been working toward batching meetings into just 1-2 days, leaving the rest of the week free for deep work. Due to others’ schedules, this is easier said than done.
Next, we have batching, which involves doing similar tasks during the same time block. Despite the illusion, humans are not great at multi-tasking or switching back and forth between unrelated tasks. This is because it takes time and energy to shift our focus between different tasks. Thus, we become more effective when we batch similar tasks together in one sitting.
For example, it is typically more effective to write five social media posts or five blogs in one sitting than to write one, take a phone call, and then come back to write another.
Join The 5am Club
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. – Ben Franklin
With time being our most valuable resource, the more time we have, the better.
This is why, after reading Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning, I started waking up at 5:30am each morning. While I’m not perfect, this extra time allows me to get more done, especially the high-priority deep work, before everyone even wakes up.
The book outlines numerous case studies that demonstrate the profound impact this extra time can have on production, your career, etc., and from experience, it’s not exaggerated.
Pro Tip: Shifting from a night owl to an early riser is challenging. Outside of setting alarms and going to bed earlier, I forced myself to read The Miracle Morning repeatedly until I woke up at 5:30 am, partially because I was tired of reading the same book!
Delegation
I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts. – John D. Rockefeller
No matter how talented or skilled we are, we will always be limited in what we can achieve by ourselves.
Delegation is necessary to achieve big things, whether in the corporate or entrepreneurial world. Delegation is assigning tasks or projects to others, who are often better skilled than you in that area, so you can cover more ground than you could alone.
There are several ways to delegate. You can delegate by hiring part-time or full-time employees or to independent contractors directly or through platforms like Fivver or Upwork, or to firms specializing in certain areas, like accounting.
There are also several frameworks for effective delegation, a notable one being the Eisenhower Matrix.
While I have read several books covering delegation since entering management in 2019, no book has had a greater impact than “Who, Not How” by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Paradigm Shift: Changing The Way We View Time
Yet another book by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, “10x is Easier Than 2x,” introduces a new way of viewing time that I’m still working on implementing.
Their concept revolves around three types of days to structure your week for optimal performance and balance: Free Days, Focus Days, and Buffer Days.
- Free Days are meant for complete relaxation and disengagement from work-related activities, allowing for mental and physical rejuvenation. These are the days when you do nothing related to work, akin to Bill Gates’ Thinking Days, where he would read, take notes, and brainstorm transformational ideas in a different setting.
- Focus Days are your high-performance days dedicated to core activities and tasks where you deliver the most value, similar to an actor’s performance days. These days are about executing at your highest level, leveraging the qualitative aspect of time (Kairos) to achieve peak results.
- Buffer Days are used for preparation, organization, and planning, ensuring you’re ready and well-prepared for your Focus Days. These days involve tasks that support your ability to perform effectively, like setting up meetings, planning projects, or doing preparatory work.
The strategy encourages clustering similar activities together to create larger blocks of uninterrupted time for deep work, following the principle that structured and distinct days can lead to higher overall performance and well-being.
Taking Free Days is crucial not only for personal well-being but also for providing space to gauge the efficiency and independence of your team. It’s about striking a balance between rest (Free Days), peak performance (Focus Days), and preparation (Buffer Days), with adequate sleep and engagement in non-work activities like sports to maintain this balance.
This approach aims for a transformative impact on productivity and creativity by doing less but achieving more.
Always Be Learning
Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others. ― Otto von Bismarck
This is a short one but an important one. With my commitment to continuous growth through books, audiobooks, courses, podcasts, etc., I often find myself able to recognize and navigate situations where I have no first-hand experience because I’ve “experienced” them through a book.
When I haven’t, I find resources or coaches to help shortcut the learning curve.
The AI Revolution
My last secret is artificial intelligence (AI).
For the last 4+ years, as part of my morning routine, I spend the first 30 minutes journaling after getting ready for the day. This allows me to declutter, prepare to focus on the day’s work, and develop and hone ideas, frameworks, and experiences.
With all this content in the tank, I strategically use AI to organize it into blogs. In fact, because of this backlog, it can take me as little as 15 minutes to create and stage a blog that would have taken over an hour without AI.
To be clear, all these ideas, concepts, and frameworks are authentic to me. AI is not creating them but shortcutting the organization and writing process and filling in the gaps. I still review, edit, add, and remove parts of each blog to ensure they align with my original message. It’s akin to collaborating with a ghostwriter, except this ghostwriter is AI.
Conclusion: The Time Management Challenge
Reflecting on my journey from a diligent 5th grader mastering the art of time management to navigating the complexities of adult life and professional challenges, it’s evident that mastering our schedules is less about filling every minute with productivity and more about meaningful engagement in activities that align with our goals and aspirations.
Effective time management is foundational to achieving success, in whatever form we define it.
As you reflect on this journey and the strategies shared, I challenge you to consider your own relationship with time. Are you merely filling hours, or are you intentionally crafting days that reflect your priorities, values, and goals? Can you, like Bill Gates, afford to take Thinking Days to rejuvenate and come up with transformational ideas? Do you prioritize deep work and allow yourself the rest and preparation needed to perform at your best?
With this in mind, I invite you to take up the challenge: experiment with these time management strategies and tailor them to fit your lifestyle and aspirations. Whether it’s waking up early to seize the day, delegating tasks to focus on what you do best, or dedicating days to focus, preparation, or rest, discover what combination propels you toward your definition of success. After all, managing our time wisely isn’t just about achieving more; it’s about living better.
