Unlocking time

I was today two weeks old when I realized I was too busy to focus on my prime objective - building Betsy, Inc.

From habit, my calendar is full. Up until two weeks ago, I saw the busy-ness from my old lens as a metric of worth. "They" told me to network - check. Much of my time became scheduling, meeting and greeting and then follow ups. Then more meetings to do actual work.

Then I lost traction when my demented father's girlfriend abruptly/allegedly left the country. (That is a Seinfeld episode in and of itself.) Now blocks of time are taken in making sure he has food to eat that doesn't require more than microwaving, is taking the right meds and otherwise has company.

What I crave is more void - as defined by time that can be used to create the trajectory I want for me - professionally (ex. building Betsy Inc., as an investment/holding company that increases my optionality) and personally (ex. investing time in people, and optimizing my brain and body so my last 10 years are not a disaster a la Peter Attia ). This is my new definition of productive time used.

So I created... you guessed it.... a spreadsheet to analyze my productivity. My last spreadsheet looked at my cash flow. It allowed me to get hyper focused on the minimum cash flow needs to maintain my currently pretty fabulous life. I posted about it here. (NOTE: My definition of fabulous involves people I love, cooking and doing what I want, your mileage may differ. I am not talking about bling and wild flings to far off places.) I am privileged to be in a great cash flow position. Even if I several terrible things happening, I am reasonably diversified. So I already have foundational optionality but I am greedy and want more. I will write more on this. My whole working career I worked toward #%)(JF you money, when I should have been working toward %U)#(Q% you cash flow. This is where my ambition lies now for Betsy, Inc.

The productivity spreadsheet forced me to examine things that take my time, the value and purpose to me or ability to bring me closer to people I love, and whether I could create more time/void. Creating void is like an investment vehicle. If I can be more productive - I can do things I am uniquely positioned/qualified to do AND give me best leverage for optionality. My desired outcomes are physical and mental longevity, and cash flow necessary to preserve my quality of life. The more void I bank, the more prepared I am for my version of Peter Attia centenarian decathlon.

In my initial spreadsheet analysis, I have not attempted to qualify time taken scrolling Instagram or watching procedural BBC crime dramas. My focus was on how to reduce number of things I do that aggravate me (admin work on my tax organizer) and automate things I want to do so I can do more (reach out to more people I care about more consistently.) The metric I focused on is how to unlock time. I was heavily influenced by Tim Ferriss strategy of removing myself as the bottleneck. It was amazing to me how often I am a bottleneck. Benjamin Franklin said time = money. For me time > money and reducing aggravation = greater happiness (thank you Arthur C Brooks!).

Here are things that I have or am putting in place

• Check email 2 a day for 30 minutes. Still adapting to minor anxiety of unread email volume. It is offset by the joy of batch deleting, unsubscribing and spam blocking.
• Outsource and automate letting people I like know I am thinking of them. This includes establishing my personal/professional CRM and keeping a regular schedule of hellos, check ins, and coordinating hang outs. Does this seem cold and impersonal? For me I did not want time lost from letting the people I care about know I am thinking of them. Automation and outsourcing > engagement and connection. Another example is using auto responder for my dad's texts. For anyone who has someone that gets into loops and asking same question, it is helpful to have a simple acknowledgement of the message with a let me get back to you in xxx time.
• Outsource data entry for tax file prep. Do I need to explain this one?
• Outsource grocery shopping. Once I became primary food source for my father, I realized grocery shopping was taking too much time. He is not a supply chain planner. So 8pm Sunday night he realizes he is out of his lactose free milk. Monday morning, the lactose intolerant population of Orange County has cleaned the shelves of lactose free milk... and Betsy is rolling through 3-4 supermarkets.
• Outsource food prep and make cooking more efficient. I could spend time buying, cutting and cleaning up carrots, onions and celery to have mirepoix available or I could buy it for $3.99. Time > money.
• Notably, I am not outsourcing chores like vacuuming or mopping yet. Because these are physical, they support my future functional capacity. Things I just don't like doing, like making the bed I have reduced to a once a week (after laundry) activity.

Not spending time here on work/process outsourcing/automating because I think the personal outsourcing/automation myself is more interesting.

Based on my analysis, I literally will recapture hours, weeks, years of life by some small changes.... and the surface is only being scratched. I am excited to be on a path of hyper productivity not hyper business/activity.

Let me know in comments where you have unlocked time. Love to get new ideas about where you think I can automate or outsource more of me. If you want my spreadsheet, comment below too!

#opportunitycost #timemanagement