Earning $10k per hour is for most, an impossible dream, however we seldom realise that each time we undertake a task or project, we can indeed value our time.
Yesterday we spoke about how to streamline your life with the GSD system.
We left out labelling because that in itself is a whole subject in itself.
The problems you may come across when prioritising your tasks, is before long you begin to class everything as urgent.
Perhaps after a while of this you will have urgent and super urgent tasks, however this is not a good place to be in, as looking at a whole page of urgent tasks that never get any smaller, will stress you out and effect your flow.
You Pay Your Tasks In Time
Whether you are a 9-5 employee or equivalent, a freelancer or subcontractor, it is pretty easy to work out what you're getting paid for any given work task.
However even when you are carrying out non-work related chores, you are still paying with your time. Although not all the tasks you will work on are equal.
For instance buying a pint of milk from the shop, is not as important as paying your phone bill.
Conversely, paying your phone bill is not as important as meeting with a perspective client, and so it goes on.
The problem comes when we try and split these things up by grade of importance, using for instance, a 3 tier system of red, orange and green.
So you may be sitting there, and for some reason you've missed paying your bill and you're about to get cut off, so you put a reminder in Trello and you mark it as urgent.
On the same day you are having a meeting with somebody who could throw a lot of work your way, so you mark that as urgent too.
You need your coffee in the morning, so you put a 'buy milk' reminder, and that of course is urgent, because you won't have time to have your coffee before your meeting if you don't have any milk.
Uh-oh we're getting to a situation whereby everything is urgent . . .
So what's the solution?
The trick is to group your activities and then give them a dollar value, lets have a look at how to do that.
Working For $10,000 Per Hour
In Perry Marshall's excellent book, 80/20 Sales & Marketing there exists a chart to help you value your actions.
As you can see above, it is geared towards somebody with their own business. What you will notice is essential boring tasks are put in the $10 per hour column.
This is because whilst these tasks are absolutely necessary, on their own, they will not yield any fruit. As we move to the right, the tasks are more productive, therefore they are valued higher.
Crucially, we can see that tasks that will ultimately save you time; are valued higher than the original activity.
So for instance if you look at the bottom of the $100 p/h column, you see that it has outsourcing simple tasks, and of course a simple task is anything in the ten bucks an hour column, like cleaning.
Then we see that delegating complex ($100 p/h) tasks, is a $1000 an hour task.
Lastly we see that selecting team members (long term employees) is considered a $10,000 an hour task.
So how does this relate to your life; especially if you are not a business owner or self employed?
Well the trick is to think about the tasks in your life, and borrow a little bit from the chart above.
For instance, working on a bolt-from-the-blue idea is still for me a $10,000 p/h task and planning and prioritising my day`is indeed worth $1000 p/h to me.
Personal Touch
So the point of this exercise was to get you to understand that certain tasks always carry the same value.
That isn't to say that the low value tasks don't need your attention, of course they do.
However by laying out your days and weeks this way, you will be able to see at a glance if you're filling your time with too many tasks of a particular value.
You don't want to fill up your time with purely low value tasks, but at the same time if your days are just filled with high value tasks, then you won't be doing the nuts and bolts stuff, like paying bills.
Of course in an ideal world, we would all be able to afford a personal assistant to do the low value stuff for us.
Until that time, try and get a nice balance; achieve this by doing at least one $1000 task a day and attempt a minimum of one $10,000 per week.
As you flow from left to right, from inbox to archive, you will be able to see yourself progressing along whichever path you have chosen.
Most importantly of all, by organising, prioritising and delegating in this way. You free your mind while giving it a chance to get into flow.
The Incredible You! Flow State Series So Far:
Incredible You! - Organise Your Life With The Get Sh*t Done System!
Incredible You! - Flow Your Way To Success With The Power Of Single Tasking
Incredible You! Single Task Training - 3 Steps To Flow
Incredible You! Single Task Training The Final Test - Becoming A Flow JediIncredible You! - Feeling The Flow With The Power Of Touch
Incredible You! - Connect To The Moment And Enhance Your Power With Sound
Incredible You! - Move Like An Animal With Ido Portal
Incredible You! - Finding Your Flow State Superpower
SO WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK? HOW DO YOU ORGANISE YOUR EVENTS AND TASKS? WILL YOU TRY THE GET SH*T DONE SYSTEM? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
, 80/20 Sales & Marketing there exists a chart to help you value your actions. Thank for good tipp!
No problem, I hope it helps :-)
Cg
great post. everyone is talking about this
Wow really? Everyone? In the 30 seconds since I put it up, woah I must be popular . .
Cg
Trump just tweeted about it. :P
Lolz, well he is a fan :-)
Cg
LMAO
hahahahaha
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
- Albert Einstein
Woah! I've never heard that one from my hero before! Thanks :-)
Cg
for a work from home like me, i can totally relate!..ever since i started working online,i have seen first hand the satisfaction of being your own boss..i've never really been a follower and i am starting to see things from a "boss" angle so to say!
Working from home is a discipline in itself, things like GSD have really helped me, it's just about sticking to it. The main thing though is to understand the value of time, and always try and leverage time over money, rather than the other way round.
Cg
wow thats a great article. thanks for sharing with us. I really want to learn more about it! Great work!
I like the thought of a system. It's much better to have a system than only a goal.
Why?
Because when having only a goal in your mind you're instantly perceiving the job you're doing as something you must do in order to achieve the goal.
While if you have a system, rewarding feeling is instant. Everything you do will lead you to more satisfaction and success.
Yes you've hit the nail on the head, systems are much more rewarding. Plus with this one, you can see whether you're working towards your goal at a glance.
Sometimes when we goal set, we end up fooling ourselves about how much work we're really doing.
Cg
Exactly! With the system you get daily rewards. Placing those rewards together like bricks, you're able to build anything you can think of.
I'm digging this series, @cryptogee! I'm very get-shit-done oriented, but as a natural procrastinator I have to have systems to keep me on track. So these are very helpful!
Awesome, I'm glad to be of help! I discovered this system last year and it just put a rocket up the arse of my productivity! :-)
Cg
Now to look at my schedule and figure out what else to delegate. Sure I am doing to many $10 an hour activities and putting off $100 or even $1000 an hour activities. Still can't wrap my head around $10k, so will stick with $1000 as my near term target.
Followed and Upvoted
That's fine to stick to $1000, however the way you want to look at it is this; anything that saves you 100s of hours in one fell swoop, is a $10k task, like hiring a team of people to do something.
Or working on anything that could yield you a decent passive income. So let's say you have an idea for a book, or programming a computer game. Both those things might yield you tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe more.
Obviously I'm being a bit creative when I say $10k, however valuing your time like this is a good mindset to get into.
When you do, you make sure that you will never be one of those people who queue round the block for 3 hours just to get $10 off an item.
People do this sort of thing all the time, because they don't properly assess how much that 3 hours is worth to them. Just on a base level, there are examples of people who earn $20 per hour, who are prepared to do that 3 hour wait for a ten bucks saving.
Instead they should spend the tenner, and then go and do something more productive with that few hours.
Cg
I've been in the resale game for a long time and just recently...and I mean in the last few days started a new venture that is residual based and using the power of Amazon for my sales. Getting my feet wet now, but for sure will hire out the design side and other tasks that can be done by VA's once I figure out the systems that need to be in place. Hard to hire someone until you understand what you are doing first.
The people that drive all around town to save a few bucks vs buying everything at one store don't value their time or factor is the cost of maintaining a car or the gas spent. They think they saved money when in reality they probably lost money and worse they lost valuable time. Anyone can apply their spare time to tasks that will generate income.
These days even going to one store many times is counter productive vs just ordering online. While I hate to see the local store close their doors, it's hard economically to justify driving to a store hoping they will have what I want vs just ordering online and getting free shipping.
I was hoping to see more posts on the Hof trainings. You still doing that?
Oh yeah, there a-comin :-)
Cg
Oh great!
=)>
Spelling everything perfectly is only worth $10 an hour? I'm in the wrong business. 😞
I know right!? I kind of get it though, I think he's talking about spellchecking emails and such.
Obviously there will be times it's really important, however what he is saying is it will always be a $10 per hour task, because it is potentially very time consuming, but will never be worth that much to you.
Cg
I have found this series to be timely and full of great reminders of how important clear, organized, intentional focus can be! I have put many of your suggestions into practice each day and feel a whole new motivation and energy.Kind of perfect for the coming autumn energy, many thanks!
Thank you and I'm glad it has been timely for you! :-)
It's funny because as I've been writing it, I've been reminded of the areas where I have been slacking off in, so has helped refocus me.
It so true as well needed more energy in the autumn, going into winter. Most of all, it makes me happy that I can spread a bit of inspiration and motivation :-)
Cg
One more thought I've had about this valuing system that is probably quite obvious but worth noting, is that I've found some "$10" tasks invaluable as times for reflection or transition from one thing to the next, to let my mind rest when needed or even to take a needed break. They become $10,000 tasks in those moments.
Having said that, the principles within this system are excellent exercises in valuing our time and delegating or spending less important time on less important things, so I don't mean to detract from that. Once the principles are understood, we can of course adapt to our own sensibilities as needed.
Thanks, I don't think this does detract from the point, in fact it highlights a good point, well two actually.
The first is you need balance, $10 tasks are important as well, like cleaning your house or workspace. It's just that when we fill our day with just $10 tasks, we end up missing the important stuff.
In the same way if we just try and concentrate on $1000 and $10,000 tasks, we miss the little things that keep us ticking on.
Also as you point out, the $1000 and $10,000 take much more mental energy to carry out (hence their greater value), so yes $10 tasks are great transitions, and I find myself often saying; "I need a nice $10 task now to chill".
My favourite space-out $10 task is the hoovering, I can just click onto autopilot and let my mind wander :-)
Cg
Well said! "hoovering" makes me chuckle...my favs are running errands or going to the grocery store.
As a self employed individual since 1982, I appreciate this chart. It is far too easy to get caught up in the trivial as opposed to the lucrative.