Maximize Your Time: Principles for Greater Returns

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In this blog post you learn about Time Management Principles For Greater Productivity. These are core principles for effective planning and time management that are based on scientific insights.

Some principles and models of thought should be wired in your brain. In the end, your mindset about time will determine your actions and transform your life ultimately. Internalize them, have them in mind, repeat reading them, remember them, e.g. before your planning activity.

Let’s walk through the most important principles:

Time Investment

The first of Time Management Principles For Greater Productivity is to make sure you plan preferably activities that bring “returns”. What do I mean by that? In Finance, the difference between an expense and an investment is that an expense costs you money and you gain nothing on top of it, the money is rather gone or “consumed”.

A great investment on the other hand makes you gain more than spent originally. Time can be either invested or spent like an expense. The difference becomes clear when we get no benefit from the time invested or even find out we lose something from it. This realization becomes even more clear when you become older…

Always weigh the time something costs you and the benefit it gives you. A good friend recently asked me to start playing an old game again (Magic the Gathering) that we used to play when we were younger. I really love that game, but we both knew: it is an additional time-waster when you have a family, other commitments or you have time intensive goals.

And these have to be carefully considered. You lose a lot actually. It can only be an investment, if you play it professionally and earn money with it or you have some other sort of business model with it.

If I watch a small Netflix series or a movie, I can allow myself to do so if I’ve achieved a lot recently and need a rest now; then it’s not an expense but an investment in my relaxation!

However, if I don’t really need a rest and could use the time better and the series doesn’t provide me with additional valuable information that really helps me, it might be more of an expense. The difficulty with bad habits (which we will cover as well on gainmoretime.com) is that we are not willing to accept that usually.

But for now think of it that way: by internalizing this principle of investment you gain some feeling about expense and investment, loss and gain.

This becomes clearer when we look at the consequences: maybe other things are postponed because you watched the series, you eat potato chips or sweets, you lack movement or exercise. In fact you even lose something. If you see that, then it would be a clear sign of an expense.

I don’t get anything back; rather, I give something away, like my health, or I incur future stress. This is not what I want. Knowing that my time spent competes with other activities is also called the principle of “opportunity costs”.

And the older you are the more you think about opportunity costs… Don’t get me wrong: we need rest, we need entertainment. But be aware whether it benefits your goals in the long-term or whether it becomes a bad habit…

Balance: Never “too much” and focus your energies, but Stay Flexible

Never have “too much” at once. Yes, you gather activities, prioritize them and finish them. But if you don’t make it this week, you do it next week. This is not a call for laissez-faire, but to not freak out if plans do not work out.

If a goal didn’t disappear from your list, this is not the end of the world. Stay cool, stay flexible. But stay aware of the execution process (see later). This is the important part.

In order not to overload yourself with goals for the week or for the day J.D Meier introduced a simple, yet effective rule in his book “Getting Results the Agile Way”. It basically says you should focus only on the 3 most important tasks per day and per week (and other periods as well).

If possible, we further divide activities into slices if they are too big for a day. Feasibility is king – and necessary for us to stay motivated. This is because neuroscience tells us that small, but finished tasks help us to remain encouraged, but large and unfinished tasks discourage us and even tend to be further postponed/procrastinated in the future.

Besides, 3 is a great amount of goals to focus your energy and effort.

The Rule of Three ideally refers to “outcomes”, so one should write down the state/condition you want to achieve with your activity. However, I suggest keeping it simple.

When you put routines on a list, it’s sometimes cumbersome to worry about the outcome. For example burning x calories in a sport activity has to be measurable easily, otherwise it costs you time to try to make it somehow measurable.

I am also not too strict about the Rule of three, as sometimes, especially in the beginning, it’s not so easy to plan that way. In the next principle „Big stones first“ I‘ll explain how I handle this.

Time against money and money against time

If you want to escape the hamster wheel, the so-called “rat race”, then you want to change from “working for another one’s goals” to “working for your own goals”. This change is only successful, if your goal can cover your living expenses.

Time, in this case, is an investment in a “machine” that provides you with another cash flow stream, which is passive income only after it is finished and works.

Creating this machine is a time investment. But if the machine works and generates cash flow, you can reclaim time working for someone else to some degree.

For example, you work only part-time from that moment on. This is your largest effort and most people fail or give up here. If you created your first machine, however, then you invest even more time in either more machines or a larger machine and you can switch totally to working for your own dreams.

This process is also called “from time against money towards money against time”. From this moment on, you decide where you invest your time. And you invest it in such a way that you often define your hourly wage yourself or decide which return on your time is worth it.

Time against money is the rat race. Money against time is financial freedom. The only question is, which machine can you built?

Big Stones First

This concept says the following: “plan important things first, the small one’s can be organized more easily around them“. Imagine having a glass vessel and you want to fill it with a certain amount of sand, pebbles and some big stones, then it will be impossible to fill that glass by starting with the sand, then the pebbles and lastly the sand. 

You have to begin with the big stones and turn the order around. Then it works out as the smaller parts make their way around the bigger ones. The same is true with organizing our life: the big stones are planned first. They are the really important goals for you. 

Do not have too many big stones in your weekly achievement plan – your duration for a weekly big stone can differ from time to time of course, depending on your capacities. Then have a few “pebble”-goals in it. In my case a pebbly might be something that can take me 15-30 minutes. It’s a bit effort to do them, but it’s manageable.

The rest are “sand”-goals and can be really many. In fact, they even arise daily and are put on a digital, spontaneous „To-do list“ for really small activities (shoppings, calls, messages to someone, requests, etc). I‘ll explain this more in detail later.

Strictly speaking, big stones refer to activities from your defined important life areas from the pre-planning. For me, they are often the ones with the highest duration.

Pareto

Always ask for the main levers of a task. This requires real practice, I can tell you… So, at first just take this as food for thought over and over again.

The Pareto rule asks for the 20% of activities that solve 80% of the problem/topic and that you should focus on them first. Further prioritized, 4% of your effort can already solve 64% of the problem/topic, and 0.8% solve 51% of the problem/topic.

Ideally, we would determine goals in our achievement list that make the most impact.

To be able to do that, we need practice. Bottomline: when we regularly prioritize, we learn, over time, to tackle most of the issues occupying us (80%) with only a few activities. For perfection (100% solving) you can still negotiate on scope, time and budget with yourself or at work with customers, colleagues, supervisors.. 😉

Achievement plans: Use all types of goals and include routines

Would you call the items on a list “topics”, “tasks”, “activities”, “actions” or “goals”? Well, don’t overcomplicate, it can even mean all the same.

For me and in the following planning process I’d like to call them “goals”, because as soon as I write them on my list, it is a goal I want to achieve, e.g. the goal to complete the task or activity of ironing, find out a contact person, prepare an Excel-model, etc.. I speak of an “activity” when I want to plan it, but it‘s not yet on my list.

The activities I want to plan come either from my pre-planning, spontaneously out of my head or they are remaining from previous achievement plans.

Even if you did not do the pre-planning, bear in mind that regular activities like sports, playing the piano, reading, or any mindfulness activity, etc. can become goals on your achievement plan. I do this in order to build continuous habits to learn, have the physical and mental energy, etc..  

If you want to live the life you want, then at some point in time it will be important to also plan routines. In his book “The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8am)” the Author Hal Elrod describes a method to establish a habit of morning routines that help you start and spend the day with more calmness, more energy and of course more control over your day.

It’s fantastic and I recommend it: Hal Elrod – The Miracle Morning. Besides, building effective habits is something to be covered in future articles in more depth. ( → newsletter)

PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act)

For the execution of this achievement plan system a general principle is important, which originally stems from the Lean Management Philosophy. It’s called “PDCA-Cycle”, standing for: Plan-Do-Check-Act.

The “P” reflects the planning process as described above, “Do” are your daily actions trying to achieve (cross) these goals from your list. “Check” is a review or reflection on what you have achieved compared to what you wanted to achieve. Lastly, “Act” refers to the act upon the review, i.e. adapting activities and goals.

If necessary, the original plan is adapted based on what you achieved and what’s still to do.

Time Value of compounding Efforts

Just as money can earn interest over time, so can your efforts. Engage in activities that compound over time – like skill development or building relationships – they can yield greater returns in the long run, similar to investing in stocks.

Deep Work vs. Shallow Work

In his book “Deep work“ the author Cal Newport emphasizes the difference between deep work (focused, cognitively demanding tasks) and shallow work (logistical tasks that can be performed with minimal focus).

Prioritizing deep work can lead to higher quality outcomes and more significant long-term returns. Deep Work from Cal Newport is also highly recommended for you if you feel that constant connectivity and distractions hold you back from producing high-quality, innovative, and efficient work.

Time Affluence vs. Time Poverty

Research shows that individuals who perceive themselves as time affluent – those who feel they have enough time to pursue activities they enjoy – report higher well-being. Cultivating a mindset of time abundance can lead to better life satisfaction and productivity. Instead, people who always feel they don’t have enough time, will not have enough time…

Energy Management Over Time Management

Focusing on when you are most productive (your energy cycles) can yield better returns than strictly managing time. Aligning tasks with your natural energy levels enhances efficiency and effectiveness. Also focus your energies (see “rule-of-three”) on fewer goals at once only. Never have too many goals similarly that you have to care about.

Rest and Downtime enhance Productivity and Effectivity

It sounds counter-intuitive, but intentionally scheduling downtime and rest can significantly enhance overall productivity. Studies suggest that breaks can improve focus and creativity, leading to more substantial returns on your work.

Plus, taking your time to meditate or reflect will provide a better overview about our whole situation and life and leads to more effective results and therefore supports the Pareto Principle massively!

The Future Self Concept

Thinking about how current time investments affect your future self can help prioritize tasks. Visualizing the long-term impact of decisions can lead to more strategic time allocation, ensuring that present actions align with future goals.