Like me, you probably ask yourself this question almost every day. It means you have some control over your task list. Throughout my career, I’ve changed how I answer the question “What Should I Work on Today?” Today, I’ll share how I’m trying to solve this age-old riddle and maybe inventing a new metric along the way.
Here’s my rough history of day planning:
- Scheduling everything and printing out the day’s schedule on paper to carry around (thanks to my long-time mentor, Bart Faber, whom I copied on this).
- Moving to a less scheduled approach (to leave time for serendipitous activities) and writing down a few important tasks to think about on that same piece of paper.
- Switching to a notebook filled with daily tasks. Some days I filled it out, and some days the day owned me, making it unnecessary.
- Progressing to a notebook with tasks ranked in order of importance (no more than 7-10 total), covering up tasks 4-10 to focus on the top 3.
I have to share that I never thought I had found the perfect day planning solution or was running at an optimal level.
I shared some thoughts a few months ago in this post: “Do You Manage Your Calendar or Does Your Calendar Manage You?” But those thoughts don’t cover the entire challenge.
Today, I was thinking about a simple idea: why shouldn’t I spend most of my time on things I’m good at and, by default, spend less time on things I’m not good at? Of course, this raises the question of why I should allocate some time to learning how to be better at things I’m not good at but are deemed important. I think my brain just exploded – how about yours?
The 70/20/10 Rule. A few years ago, I came across a construct that asked me to consider allocating my time with a 70/20/10 model:
70%: Focus on core strengths—Presumably, this is where I add the most strategic value. (For me, this has always been product development, sales, and strategic/vision work.)
20%: Focus on learning new things—that expand my skill set or cover weak spots, things I must improve on but aren’t directly related to my strengths. (Some 30 years ago, I took a financial accounting class to understand P&L statements and balance sheets.)
10%: Tasks I don’t enjoy or aren’t skilled at—admin work, legal matters, etc. Over time, I should outsource or delegate this. (My partner in The Startup Factor, Dave Neal, is very skilled at legal, finances, and hiding under my desk to scare me.)
The 70/20/10 rule originally comes from leadership development and learning theory, designed as a framework for how people learn in organizations.
I’m not sure the 70/20/10 allocations are perfect, and I’m even less sure that you can apply the same allocation every day of every week. But I do think we should spend more time on the things we’re good at and find resources to help us work on the things that don’t excite us or would take us significantly more time than others. This just seems to make sense to me.
Introducing ROYT: Return On Your Time
What if we started thinking about how to evaluate how we use our time? The easy thought is your basic ROI (Return On Investment), where the “I” would be time, I guess. Let’s call this what it is: ROYT, where we remove the “I” and insert “YT,” which stands for “Your Time.”
Evaluating Your Time Allocation
To apply this concept, perform a light audit of your time across a week or maybe a month if you’re motivated. Let’s first divide our tasks into a handful of major categories (Sales, Marketing, Product Development, Legal, Finance, Strategy, Partnerships). I think this is enough for this exercise – feel free to add or subtract based on your job.
Before doing your audit, I want you to take some time and divide those categories into the 70/20/10 list. Be honest, or this doesn’t work. As a guardrail, think about a typical 50-hour week where you would spend:
- 35 hours on the “good stuff” (70%)
- 10 hours on the learning stuff (20%)
- 5 hours delegating the icky stuff (10%)
Put another way, that’s 1 hour a day delegating, 2 hours a day learning, and the rest of your day (5-7 hours) on the good stuff.
Now, conduct your audit. Compare your actual time allocation to your ideal 70/20/10 split. This exercise should give you insights into how effectively you’re using your time and where you might need to make adjustments.
Remember, the goal is to maximize your ROYT by focusing on your strengths while still dedicating time to learning and necessary tasks. Use this framework to guide your daily decisions on what to work on, always striving for that optimal balance.