Hello, leaders.

Seems like the world is about to switch into holiday mode. And we hope you have the opportunity to enjoy it in the coming weeks.

Peter Drucker said,

We don't take this to mean efficiency has no value. It does. However, if you're not working the “right things”, does it matter how efficient you are? And how do you know you’re doing the “right things”?

A few years ago, Jim Collins was a guest on Tim Ferriss’ podcast. While the conversation was wide ranging, the part that stayed with us was Jim sharing how he invests his time to ensure he is being effective.

He emphasizes and holds himself accountable to using 50% of his time on the deep creative work for his business. He keeps a running log with a trailing 12-month look-back to make sure he’s averaging at least 1k hours on his priority work.

We really like this idea to view your time in the aggregate. Some weeks are heavier on admin work or other important but non-priority activities. However, in any year, achieving 50%+ allocation towards “the right things” is a good goal.

In addition, Collins looks at his emotional state in parallel to the quantitative data using a scale from +2 to -2 accompanied by a description. The pluses are good days (doesn’t mean easy) and the negatives are bad days.

The clip below is around 7 minutes in length. We think it’s worth your time listen and think about between now and the end of the year.

As leaders, one of your main jobs is capital allocation. This includes time (arguable the most important allocation to get right). Let’s make sure we’re being effective.

As always, we appreciate your leadership and are thankful to work with each of you.

​

Ever,
David & Marty