How Much Is Your Time Worth?

Today I'd like to give you a little food for thought. Way back in the dim and distant past I wrote about time management, and whether you're spending your time on the most valuable things.

For this article I want to approach this from a slightly different direction. With my (not-in-the-slightest-bit) trademarked approach of asking a bunch of questions for you to think about:

When you plan an activity, a meeting, or even a task, have you considered how much your time is worth?

Is what you're doing worth it?

Is it the highest impact activity?

What could you be doing instead that might be more valuable?

If it's a group thing, what would be the cost of time of all the people involved?

Should you be doing the thing, or should you be paying someone else to do the thing?

I'm not only talking about your time spent in the activity itself, but also the time lost context switching to this topic, and back away again. Humans are actually really bad at this. We lose a ton of time and mental energy every time we switch topic or context.

What's the opportunity cost of you spending your time and energy on something?

This is one reason I'm a big advocate for things like focus blocks, reducing interruptions and turning off notifications, etc.. No matter whether you're an individual contributor or the CEO you need time and space to think and focus.

I know some people advocate for a sort of 'outsource your life' approach - I think that might be going a little bit too far. What I'm suggesting is this, for a very commonly occurring example: Does it make sense for you to attend that meeting that is just an information-sharing session, or would it be more effective for you to spend that hour doing something more valuable and spend 10 minutes reading a recap later?

(We can debate the value of that meeting existing at all separately.)

This brings me onto my second thought for today.

Asynchronous Communication

Some companies have taken the shift to a more remote or hybrid working model as an opportunity to move towards a more asynchronous communication style.

For example, rather than meetings, people might produce a document or even a video presentation of some information rather than tying people up in a meeting.

This is all the more valuable when considering a globally distributed workforce, where a meeting either excludes people because of their time zone or massively inconveniences them with frequent late night or early morning commitments.

Now there is still a ton of value in getting people together to discuss things, of course. However maybe that can be focused on actual discussion rather than information transmission. And even that could be asynchronous, at least some of the time, with tools like Teams, Slack, or similar.

By pushing a lot of communication to written or other asynchronous forms, you can have the actual in-person discussions be a lot more meaningful and impactful, while being more considerate towards your global distributed workforce.

Time is all we have

Offices and Presenteeism

Continuing on from this idea, I believe this would be the best use of office space going forward. Offices often aren't an optimal place to sit and do focus work, unless that specifically works for you or your circumstances aren't conducive to a good home office setup. Instead we can make them a place to build community and relationships, and have meaningful meetings, collaboration sessions, workshops, and discussions.

I'd encourage people to be *present* when at the office. This isn't the same as the scourge of presenteeism - that just implies a lack of trust from management. If work is managed properly, via good clear objectives, you shouldn't need to *watch* your staff. So when people are in the office it'd be far better for them to be present, building community with their colleagues and collaborating in a more effective way.

One additional thought here - for less experienced staff, time spent in the company of more senior team members can be immensely valuable. The benefits of over-the-shoulder learning and 'quick questions' can be huge. Having co-working time in that context should be a big win.

Create genuine opportunities for collaboration and you'll end up with a more engaged team.

Final Thoughts

So I'd encourage you to think about the value of your time, who you're spending it with, and what you're spending it doing.

Time is all we have. Shouldn't we use it on the right things?

When you're ready, I offer 1:1 coaching for leaders who are looking to take their life and career to the next level. Send me an email and we'll set up a time to have a chat.

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