Balancing PLay and wORK: 19 Ways to Leverage Your TimeBalancing PLay and wORK: 19 Ways to Leverage Your Time

One basic concept of effective time management is to
create ways to leverage your time. By leverage we
mean, for example, you put in 1 hour and gain a
return, or output, equivalent to 5, or 10, or 20 hours...

In this article we'll explore 19 ways you can gain
leverage on your time. This is actually a real-time case
study in using our time well - since this article is too
long and has too many ideas to action all at once. How
will you act to get leverage from these ideas?

Time is such a strange, strange thing. We talk about
"managing time". But we cannot manage time. It just
goes on tick-tock, tick-tock, regardless of what we do,
or say, or think.

Time's the wrong subject of the sentence. It is you, and
others, and activities and events, you and I really
manage - in relation to time. Not time itself.

And time is not something you can save or lose. It is
not a thing you have, or ever had. Time is what you live
in. And breathe in. Like the air.

So to "leverage" time we really manage yourself, and
your tasks, and your behavior, and your situations
differently - better, smarter, easier, more playfully yes
- but differently.

Here, then, are 19 Ways Your Can Leverage Your Time

1. Start at the end, not the beginning. For maximum time
leverage, set yourself big goals. Big goals commit you, and
give you clear choices. With these Big Ends in mind, you
will know what's important to you, and your job, and your
customers. And you can start to define clear decision-making
rules: "This is very important. This is less important. This
is trivial and unimportant..."

2. With your Big Goals as your base, decide what's really
important and what's trivial. And, you can start to say
"No!" whenever possible, to meaningless, trivial, mundane,
unimportant time-wasting, time-absorbing tasks, activities,
projects, jobs, careers, relationships, clients, hobbies,
e-mails, voice-mails, paper...

3. Assign the pieces of tasks you're not especially good at
to anyone you legitimately can.

4. Cut them down - in volume, in time taken, in the
"perfection" with which you do them.

5. Cut them out altogether. Yes, that's right, just stop
doing them.

6. Take time daily to decide, and re-decide as priorities
change, what truly are your big "boulders". And keep these
actively in my focus - whenever, and wherever, you can. List
them and keep them in front of you. Make a big colorful
poster of them. Draw them, so your creative, "everything is
possible", visualizing, right brain can work on them.

7. Always choose to do "boulders" [big, valuable tasks,
goals, projects] over "sand" [small, trivial, non-valuable
tasks, goals, projects].

8. Create and define important, valuable, whole, regular,
systematic jobs - with a beginning and ending. And, if
someone else can do them, and someone else is available,
delegate these jobs permanently and completely to others.

9. If you have to, employ someone new, part-time or
full-time, to do it instead of you. Delegation is best for
jobs that need to be done regularly, and done 100%
well. Almost any "complete" job can be delegated.

10. Focus on, volunteer for, emphasize, choose, what
you like, what you're good at, what you find FUN!

11. What you don't find fun, make fun. Lack of fun de-
leverages tasks, and time. Fun leverages it. So build in
fun, consciously. Create fun. BE fun.

12. Learn, and practice the skill and art of saying "No!"
(nicely) - especially to chronic time wasters.

13. Aim to do far more, far less perfectly.

14. Do no more than 7 things really well, or excellently.
"Excellence" is not "perfect", but rather "fit for its
purpose".

15. When faced with large daunting tasks or projects,
break them down into smaller tasks - and build in
rewards for achieving some of the smaller steps.

16. Be more effective: Stop doing the wrong things well.

17. And if the right things push your skill frontiers, learn
to do the right things poorly, first. Then to do them well,
over time, second.

18. Train your customers to do more. Give them the tools;
teach them how to use the tools.

19. Use technology to reduce the time you take to do tasks.