Double Your Efficiency Today with One Easy Technique

Before anything else, check out these stats for some perspective. The average person:

-- Sleeps 220,000 hours or 9,166 days or 25.14 years

-- Eats 32,000 hours or 1,333 days or 3.65 years

-- Drives 37,000 hours or 1,541 days or 4.22 years

-- Watches TV 80,000 hours or 3,333 days or 9.13 years

-- Works 90,000 hours or 3,750 days or 10.27 years

Total from the above: 52.41 years. Current life expectancy in the United States: 76.9. Balance remaining: 24.49 years (before factoring in cleaning, going to the bathroom, etc).

Now dig deeper: how do you spend those 10.27 years at work? Is 1.2 years spent talking to Rick from accounting? Is 0.6 years spent staring at your calendar? Is 0.3 years spent walking the hallway?

Here's the simple technique that will immediately improve your efficiency: Divide every task you have into three buckets: product, distribution, and sales. If your activity doesn't go into one of these three buckets, put it in the fourth bucket - inefficiency. For the purposes of this mindset, "inefficiency" is defined as anything that isn't developing your product, working on product distribution, or selling your product.

Product - the time you spent working on what you sell. If you're a salesmen then I would consider listening to audiobooks on how to talk to people product time. If you're in manufacturing then this is the time you spend physically making the product. If you own a restaurant then this is the time you spend curating the menu. The goal here is to design your idea so you have to spend as little time here as possible. Grandma might have the world's best biscuits, but if she just opens the doors and hopes someone comes in, she will fail.

Distribution - the time you spend getting your product in front as many people as possible. I put marketing/branding in this bucket, especially from a social media perspective. For example, if you own a restaurant, the time you spend talking to your regulars is time well spent in the distribution bucket - there is nothing better you can do than developing relationships with people who believe in what you do. I suggest focusing on filling this bucket as much as possible - if you have a second of downtime, fire off a tweet just saying, "Hope everyone is having a great day." Leverage both personal brand accounts as well as business accounts to maximize distribution.

Sales - the time you spend selling your product. The goal here is to spend as little time asking for the sale as possible. If the product is good and the distribution/marketing/branding is strong then the sales won't take much effort. However, that's not to say you should never put any time in the sales bucket. The product and distribution time will lead people to you but you eventually have to invest some time in sales. The main takeaway should be that you can't leapfrog product and distribution straight to LinkedIn direct messages, for example, and say "buy my thing."

If you're truly focused on distribution then people will eventually find themselves to you where you can confidently and ethically say, "The product I have solves a problem you have."

The amount of time you drop into each bucket will change daily and greatly vary based on your career, but the overall goal is to look at the 10.27 years you spent at work and end with 9+ years of product, distribution, and sales and less then 2 years in the inefficiency bucket.

Don't get this confused - sometimes talking to Rick about the big game last night can be productive time in the distribution bucket. Having a great work culture is important to productivity. However, the key is to know when you're developing work culture and when you're just wasting time. There is a fine line here but if you're honest with yourself you know where it is.

The next step is to examine your other time - it's not about eliminating the other parts of your life, but can you make the 3.65 years eating, the 9.13 years spent watching TV, or 4.22 years driving more productive?

Can you exercise while watching TV? I would count that as distribution time as you're increasing your physical ability to distribute your product. If the TV you're watching is inspirational, it's possible it's filling the product bucket - giving you the next big idea.

Are there phone calls you've been neglecting that you can squeeze in your morning commute? Are there e-mails you have to send when you get to work? Maybe you can knock a couple of those out with a phone call on your drive into work vs. spending the first 30 minutes of your day sending e-mails. Add more to distribution and to sales.

Is that e-mail you're sending really need to take 30 minutes? Can you accomplish the same amount of product, distribution, or sales in less than two sentences? Can you test the waters to see if it's a good fit before wasting anyone's time with a phone call or longer e-mail? Can you use it to set up a phone call instead of an email?

Can you get 2 years of business meetings into the 3.65 years you spend eating? Can you ask your boss, employees, or co-workers to eat with you every day? Add more to distribution - the more people know about you and the deeper your personal relationships, the more you increase the chance to get your products seen in this job or the next.

The final takeaway is to be conscious and audit yourself on the fly every day. If you can look at what you're doing right this second and be honest on what bucket your time is going into, you'll walk away from each day, week, and month with a much clearer picture of how productive you are with your time.

Comment or e-mail me at [email protected] to continue the conversation. Cheers!