The productivity system that helped us build a couple of 7-figure companies

In my experience, setting up complex time management systems can be just another means of procrastination.

To be effective, it’s got to be?simple and hold you?accountable. Any more is fluff and counterproductive.

That’s why I concentrate on?two specific things?to get the most out of my day. These helped me build the two 7-figure companies I own today and continue to work because I do them?every day.

They are:

Track Your Time?and?Review Your Day.

Remember, our aim is not to build the best theoretical time management system… We aim to use the tools available to create the most value possible ASAP.

That’s why I’m going to lead you through the exact actions I take and the tools I use, to manage my business and life.

I hope they help get you started immediately and keep you going…

1. Track Your Time

I’ve made so many errors in business, but the biggest was trading my time away for something I could have hired someone else to do.

Our goal in business is to create outcomes far greater than the time we put into them.

Some simple maths to start:

If you’re investing an hour of your time, and you deem your time is worth $100 an hour, and the outcome you’re producing is worth $110, you’re producing a return on investment of 1.10.

This isn’t a great return.

We want to produce a return of at least 10 to 20 times whatever it is we’re doing regularly.

To do this, we need to know how our time is spent.

To do this, I use a tool called?Toggl .

Here’s how:

I work across three companies, and I separate my time for each into five broad categories or projects:

? Operations

? Meetings

? Marketing

? Sales

? Accounting

Depending on the company, it might also have a couple of unique categories (like Hakune – Writing)

And I split up my personal commitments into 3 categories, as well:

? Learning

? Daily Administration

? Daily Reviews

By tracking my time, I can appreciate what tasks I’m really working on, and what this equates to on a per-hourly basis.

Toggl makes this easy and effective, providing graphic breakdowns of the time I’ve spent.?Here’s a quick Loom I made on how I use it .

Using my work a few months back as an example, I can immediately see 3 tasks that I should have given to someone else, based on my goal of working on tasks that exceed $500 per hour.

These were:

1. Interviewing Emma (I could have given this to our GM at K&J)

2. Setting up Attentive (I could have given this to our Marketing Lead at Rugby Bricks)

3. Setting up a LinkedIn automation demo (I could have given this to our ops team member at K&J)

I have the privilege of team members, sure, but even if I were a solo-prenuer I’d still try to outsource as much as possible.

To decide what meets my threshold, I use?this document ?(which shows the relative cost and value of tasks on my radar) and benchmark myself against them.

As a new business owner, you may not have the capital to outsource yet, but as you scale, you want to focus on tasks that generate $500 to $5000+ per hour or spend more time on things only you can do.

We aim to create as much value as possible for each minute we invest. To appreciate this, we need to track our time and review how we spend it.

That brings us to our second action…

2. Review Your Day

A daily review is a simple exercise to help you reflect on your day and plan for the next.

I typically spend between 15 and 30 minutes, towards the end of my day, looking at 4 broad categories:

1. What did I get out of the day… What did it achieve?

2. Was I a good human… Did my actions align with my values?

3. Where was my time spent… Could that work be automated or outsourced?

4. What do I want to do tomorrow?

I’ve made a?Daily Review Template ?that you can use, you can “make a copy” by choosing that from the menu.

I’ve also created?this Loom , to walk you through how I translate the data in toggl, to answer questions in your review.

Ultimately, it’s your Time Tracking that powers your Daily Review. You must do the first, so you can honestly and effectively address the second.

Your goal in whatever you do is to make yourself more effective, and if you want to compare anything, you need to measure it.

If this helped, I’ve written a lot more about productivity, and effective work on?hakune.co , and you can?sign up to our newsletter , where my mate Rhys Jeffery and I share our most valuable thoughts from the week.