How to invest your time like money

How to Invest Your Time Like Money ELIZABETH GRACE SAUNDERS Harvard Business Review Press ● Boston, Massachusetts Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org Copyright 2015 Grace Communications, Inc All rights reserved Dedication Dedicated to everyone who longs to have enough time for what’s most important Contents Dedication Take Control of Your Time and Your Life Identify Your Time Debt Create a Base Schedule Set Up Automatic Time Investment Maximize Your Time ROI Epilogue: Remember What You're Working For In Gratitude About the Author Take Control of Your Time and Your Life Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed —Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive “There aren’t enough hours in the day.” You likely recognize this statement You may have muttered it yourself, frustrated by your consistently packed schedule and competing demands Day after day, both at work and in your personal life, you find yourself juggling too many projects at once and struggling to find the time to the things you deem important, leaving you stressed and agitated How can you manage your time more effectively, in ways that you’ll find both productive and gratifying? Most time management methodologies fail to give you the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction you crave because they encourage you to stuff more into an already overflowing schedule This creates the false hope that if you only worked harder, faster, longer, and smarter, you could everything you want and make everyone happy That’s more or less the equivalent of racking up credit card bills instead of learning to cut costs When you’ve tried these strategies—and failed to the impossible—you feel worse than before because you have not only not gotten everything done, but felt miserable in the process Fortunately, there’s a better way If you’re frustrated and tired of feeling as if you have no control of your time and all of your attempts to manage your time have failed, you need to learn the skills to invest your time like money When you do, you’ll finally have enough time for what’s most important When you invest your time as if it were money, you look at the reality of how much time you have available and the truth of activities’ time cost You then make decisions that allow you to get out of time debt And with this balanced budget in hand, you can then set up the structure to consistently invest your time in what’s most important This book provides a detailed look at how to learn these skills It explains exactly how to both put these concepts into action and overcome the resistance that is likely to come up in the process of change In addition, once you’ve achieved a level of mastery of the process, you’ll learn to maximize the return on investment of your time and assess your big-picture growth As an expert on effective time investment, I’ve worked with training and coaching clients on six continents, contributed to a number of publications, including Forbes, Inc., and Time, and appeared on ABC, CBS, and NBC My first book provided an overall look at how to achieve more success with less stress through effective time investment.[1] Through my work helping real people solve real problems, I’ve discovered that not having enough time for the important things is one of the biggest sources of stress That’s why I’ve provided in this book an in-depth guide for allocating your time so that what’s most vital receives the appropriate amount of attention instead of getting pushed aside for other competing priorities Time, like money, must be invested to work for you now and support your ideal future For some of you, coming to terms with your ideal time allocation and then moving from your current reality to your desired future state will require radical cuts, such as resigning from jobs, leaving graduate school programs, or ending relationships Or it may include significant additions, such as starting positions, training for new skills, and adding more people to your life But for the vast majority of you, very little will need to shift in terms of your external circumstances; instead, what will need to change is you Your mind-set, your decisions, and your routines determine whether you remain stuck or move forward and decide to intentionally live your best life At the outset, this will require some work, as you when you take a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon to set up your retirement plan so you get 10 percent returns in mutual funds instead of 0.5 percent in your savings account (or just spend all the money) But taking the time now will set you far ahead of your peers and make you far more satisfied with your life Strategically investing your time will lead you to have enough time to be your best self, your best work, and fulfill your potential In the following chapters, I’m going to reveal the time investment strategies that have transformed thousands of people’s lives But in order to see the kind of change in your life that we both want to witness, we first need to tackle three common subconscious barriers that can block your success Overcome Your Barriers to Success If you’re skeptical, fine If you’re unsure, no worries If you’re a bit apprehensive, that’s not a problem All of these emotions play a very natural role in the process of change As I work with clients, I expect many sensations and feelings to come up, and I encourage individuals to acknowledge them and accept them In time, their internal resistance subsides as they experience the transition from barely believing they can change to enthusiastically celebrating that change But to have the mental and emotional capacity to even begin changing your time investment choices, you must address and overcome these three critical barriers: Stop blaming others Disconnect success from suffering Quit defending your past Stop Blaming Others The first state of mind that I won’t let my clients—or you—stay in is one in which they blame others for their time-pressed situation When you fall into this unhealthy dynamic in your relationships, often explained by Dr Stephen B Karpman’s drama triangle, you end up taking on one of three roles: the victim, the rescuer, or the self-protector.[2] From a time investment point of view, this is what the different roles look like: The victim constantly feels helpless because he believes everyone is heaping more requests or demands on him, and there is nothing that he can about it The rescuer feels anxious about another person’s inability to handle his situation and rushes in to help She later feels resentful that she’s spent so much time helping others that she has no time for her own needs The persecutor, or self-protector, expresses anger toward requests from others, fearing he’ll become overloaded and wind up a victim Sound familiar? Each one of us can fall into these roles when the situation is right— or wrong Maybe you’re the victim at work where you take on whatever colleagues throw at you, but you’re the self-protector at home who bristles when a family member suggests you clean up the kitchen Although it’s natural to want to point to an external source as the cause of your difficulties, it’s not helpful To invest your time effectively, you must take ownership of your life and responsibility for changing yourself, regardless of whether anyone else changes Here are three practical steps to break down this barrier: Observe your reaction Become aware of how you respond when your time investment becomes misaligned with your priorities Do you become a victim and pity yourself? Everyone always piles too much work on me Do you jump to the rescuer role and take over-responsibility for others? Everyone just constantly requires my help Do you revert to the self-protector and get angry at others? How dare they ask this of me? Recognize your role When you have these responses, you’re taking the lazy way out You are claiming that you’re doomed to act out the characteristics of a certain persona in your relationships instead of choosing your own response to a situation You give away your power and feel as if you’re at the mercy of external circumstance or who you “are,” that is, “I’m just the person who always has to pick up the pieces when everyone else drops them.” It’s very similar to when people who find themselves in debt blame the credit card companies instead of accepting that they had a choice in spending more money than they had The way to break out of this cycle is to stop blaming others and passively falling into a role Instead, consciously decide to respond in a more healthy way to the people around you Commit to self-mastery Regardless of how often you’ve fallen into a role in the past in certain situations or with specific people, you have the opportunity to make the future different What that requires is choosing a healthy emotional response Instead of becoming a victim, choose to take ownership This could mean speaking up when you feel that someone makes an unreasonable request, so that you don’t end up overloaded It could also mean setting clear boundaries to prevent taking on too much from others Instead of playing the rescuer and feeling compelled to jump in when you don’t believe someone can handle a situation, show respect for your own time and the time of others Don’t volunteer to help with an extra project if it would mean that you wouldn’t have time for self-care like exercise Or help someone put together a strategy for how she can get the work done herself instead of swooping in and completing a project for her Finally, instead of defaulting to the self-protector role and getting angry at anyone who suggests you anything more, respond with empathy toward yourself and others Recognize that other people have time pressures too, and that there could be a legitimate reason why they made the request Also, show empathy toward yourself and realize that you’re afraid of being overloaded and need to set appropriate boundaries to preserve your sanity By taking responsibility for your time investment choices, you stop wasting energy on fruitless power struggles and start directing it to a productive response toward the people and situations around you With that focus, transformation can occur It will take practice to notice if you start to fall into a role and then choose another response instead But, in time, the helpful thoughts will become automatic You can replace harmful thoughts with the helpful thoughts outlined in table 1-1.[3] Disconnect Success from Suffering Once you’ve stepped out of the bonds of a role you must play, you have the ability to uncouple success from suffering For many people, the association between these two is so firmly entrenched that it hasn’t even crossed their minds that life could be different Here’s how one of my time coaching clients described her mind-set when she first began her coaching program with me: I have huge fear issues—one of which is the fear of failure and another is the fear that I will slow down or accept so little that I won’t be able to achieve great things or a good job in things—essentially this is who I am (who I have defined myself as) are my achievements To Daily planning follows a process similar to weekly planning, but spans a shorter time frame The most common times for daily planning are at the beginning of the day, before leaving work, or before going to bed During your daily planning, review the previous day’s calendar to wrap up loose ends and look at the coming day to make sure you are clear about your firm commitments Make sure that the priority projects and tasks you had decided to for the coming day still make sense, given the current reality If they don’t, adjust and adapt your plan as necessary For example, you may have initially planned to spend the afternoon brainstorming about a department retreat that will happen next month However, during a meeting yesterday, a big issue arose regarding a report due Friday Given the urgent nature of this issue, you would adjust your daily plan to spend the afternoon on the report Then you could move brainstorming for the retreat to the next open space on your schedule Improve Your Estimation of Time Costs Taking time to plan weekly and daily will dramatically increase your ability to be proactive in aligning your time investment with your most important priorities However, if you’re like many people, you will discover that you tend to underestimate how long activities take Fortunately, there are practical strategies that can help you reduce your estimation error The first is to use the review portion of your weekly and daily planning as a learning tool If you consistently find that a routine activity, such as meeting preparation, is taking longer than the fixed time expense you allocated, you can revise your estimates in future plans Second, you can keep track of the actual time you spend on projects versus what you’ve estimated through time tracking software or simply by noting in an Excel spreadsheet or time tracking tool each time you focus on a particular project and then totaling the hours at the end Once you’ve done this for a while, you should get a sense for the actual time projects take When you work on an estimate for a new project, look back at the totals for similar past projects for data on realistic estimates Reality always wins; if comparable projects took ten hours the last three times that you completed them, your new project will most likely take ten hours Finally, if you struggle with having an accurate sense of how to estimate smaller mundane activities, such as what needs to happen between getting up and leaving for the office, this insight from one of my newsletter readers could help: I have struggled—and struggle—with time management and project completion, too My biggest challenge is not realizing how long something takes, especially when factoring in silly everyday things like commuting, going to get coffee, talking to my parents, or washing the dishes, to name a few What I’ve started doing and has really helped me the past year could seem a little extreme to some people: I write down my entire day hour by hour and sometimes minute by minute! A friend of mine rightly pointed out, “Doesn’t that take up a lot of time?” It does … but it’s not as time consuming as it seems, and definitely worth it! It has really helped me realize how all the minutes add up in one day I use Evernote with each note being one day Here’s what it looks like: 6:30–7:30: Pilates 7:30–7:45: Meditation 7:45–8:30: Get ready 8:30–9:00: Get breakfast/read news And so on I include things that take as little as five minutes, like walking to work! But I bundle the small activities into longer time slots with other activities that immediately follow The thing I like about this system is that it shows me how all the little pieces of “stuff” and activities fit together How did the day fly by? Oh, let’s see … I was on the phone for half an hour and then my e-mail took 1.5 hours … And then it was dinner time As a result of the system, I have a better sense of how long things take, and an immediate sense of how much time I actually have for a given task before I have to move to the next (or otherwise I won’t get to that dinner on time!) Of course I’m constantly shifting times and activities and moving some to the next day, but overall it’s really helped By tracking and reviewing your actual time allocations, you can increase the accuracy of your estimates and therefore effectiveness of your plans If it feels intimidating to tackle planning on your own, consider finding someone to go through the process with you That could involve going through the planning process with a colleague, administrative assistant, or coach If you need accountability to make planning a priority, get it For example, you could ask your boss to hold you accountable for having your weekly planning completed prior to regular one-on-one meetings You’ll benefit immensely from the support If you can’t stand the idea of having your whole week planned out or you have a job with a very high level of variability, you can still the weekly planning and daily planning rituals I’ve suggested But consider this modification: instead of putting in the projects for specific times on your calendar during your weekly planning, make a short list of your key projects for the week Then, during your daily planning, decide which ones you will focus on that day If you don’t like the idea of planning because you think it’s a waste of time or that it will hinder your ability to be spontaneous and have fun, remember why you decided to read this book in the first place Most likely, it was because you didn’t feel satisfied with your current time allocation The only way to get out of that predicament is to put the right structure in place You will maximize your time return on investment by moving beyond always responding to your current impulse to thoughtfully considering when to what’s most important In time, your routines and daily and weekly planning will become automatic Planning Checklist Schedule recurring commitments Decide on your objective Define your parameters Think backward Anticipate issues Remember why this is a priority Review and recalibrate Weekly planning Create or add to your project and task lists Look over the previous week for items to wrap up Look over the coming week for situations to anticipate Delete completed projects and tasks from your lists Decide on the key projects for the week Block in time for projects on your schedule Decide on key tasks for the week and put task reminders in your calendar Daily planning Review the previous day to wrap up loose ends Look at today’s schedule to be clear on your firm commitments Decide if your planned projects and tasks still make sense and adjust as necessary On Amir, “Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain.” Scientific American, July 22, 2008, accessed January 3, 2015, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tough-choices-how-making/ ↵ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Epidemic,” accessed January 3, 2015, http://www.cdc.gov/features/dssleep/ ↵ Maximize Your Time ROI Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it —Irving Berlin, composer Creating routines and planning on a weekly and daily basis will set you up to understand what’s most important, while having enough time to invest in it The financial equivalent is a comfortable, debt-free lifestyle in which a person has everything he needs and much of what he wants But what if you want to take this a step further, maximizing the return on investment of your time? This will require taking a bigger-picture strategic look at how you approach completing the items on your agenda and how you interpret your results Wedding strategic level thinking with tactical action leads to the best possible time return on investment Use the INO Technique The INO Technique is a systematic way to address the fact that it’s unwise to take the same approach to completing all the items on your agenda This technique requires one more layer of planning, but it can exponentially increase how much time you have for what’s most important, putting you in the echelon of the time wealthy INO stands for “investment,” “neutral,” and “optimize,” and is a way of relating financial truths to time For example, with your finances, putting more money into investment opportunities, like stocks or real estate, can lead to an exponential return on your investment For every dollar that you put in, you could end up with two or three in return Neutral financial items are things like buying groceries; you need to spend money on them, but spending more typically doesn’t lead to a much larger payoff For every dollar you put in, you tend to get a dollar of value Finally, “optimize” costs are expenses like insurance If you can get the exact same insurance coverage for a lower premium, you should Every extra dollar you put in beyond what is necessary is a dollar lost The same principles hold true with your time investment Increasing how long you spend on an activity doesn’t always lead to an increase in value on the micro-level and can lead to a misallocation of your time on the macro-level Spending an extra ten hours on a PowerPoint after you got it to a presentable level could add no additional value to the presentation, and you could lose other clients because you never completed other requested assignments When you’re not clear on what’s “good enough,” you limit your overall success By following the INO Technique, you can categorize projects and tasks in one of the three categories and weight the time and effort you spend on them accordingly Here is how to apply the INO categories to your time investment Consider those priorities where an increased amount of time and a higher quality of work can lead to an exponential payoff as investment activities Investment activities typically require transcending to a more reflective, creative state of mind In these, you may be disengaged from external stimuli and able to fully engage in higher levels of thought Or you may be fully and totally engrossed with the people around you—without having to be overly concerned with an agenda or time limit Strategic planning is an example of an investment activity; so is spending time, device-free, with the people you love Aim for A-level work in these areas Neutral activities can get done adequately More time doesn’t necessarily mean a significantly larger payoff These activities are best when you’re present in the moment, alert, but slightly relaxed A project with an imminent deadline and high risk is likely not the best choice for a neutral activity A better example might be attending project meetings or going to the gym These things need to get done, but you can aim for B-level work Optimize activities are those for which additional time spent leads to no added value and keeps you from doing other, more important activities They often require a rapidfire, task-oriented, externally focused mental state Aim for C-level work in these areas, or delegate them to get them done as quickly as possible The faster they get done, the better Noncritical administrative paperwork and errands fit into this category As you progress in your life and career and have more responsibilities added, you will likely need to put more and more activities into the optimize category This will not always make others happy because they may have to wait longer than they prefer to get answers to their questions or more of the work to take a project to completion However, it’s essential that you make these choices so that you complete the activities that have the highest return on investment Remember, when you minimize the time spent on optimize activities, you can maximize your time spent on neutral and investment activities Here’s how to implement the INO Technique during your weekly and daily planning: Categorize your activities during weekly planning Look over your list of projects and tasks during your weekly planning As you choose your key projects and tasks to complete for the week, think about whether they are I, N, or O activities Reserve time on your calendar Put the projects and tasks on your calendar, starting with your I activities, and maximize the time you block out for these projects This means a significant portion of your work will consist of I activities Then N activities, such as meetings, and O activities, like e-mail, need to fit within the space that is left You still need room for these N and O activities, but by guarding the time for I activities, you help N and O activities to stay within the appropriate boundaries Plan for INO activities during daily planning When you plan for the day, put an I, N, or O beside each calendar item and focus your efforts accordingly Ask yourself how you can get the O activities done as quickly as possible, not overinvest in N activities, and then preserve as much time as possible for your daily investment items Assess and adjust Finally, if you start working on something and realize that it’s taking longer than expected, ask yourself, “What’s the value and/or opportunity cost in spending more time on this task or project?” If it’s an I activity and the value is high, keep at it and take time away from your N and O activities If it falls into the N category and there’s little added value or the O category and spending more time keeps you from doing more important items, either get it done to the minimum level, delegate it, or stop and finish it later when you have more spare time Making decisions based on what’s most important instead of simply blindly following the calendar will allow you to adapt and adjust and devote time to what has the highest value If other items don’t get completed, but the important item is accomplished, you’ll end up better off in the long run Investing more time where it counts will exponentially increase your satisfaction with and payoff from your time investment Will you get every e-mail answered? Probably not But you’ll end up investing in your health, completing key projects, and cultivating relationships with the people who matter most to you Aim for Growth, Not Perfection You’re a person, not a machine You live in a dynamic world, not a controlled laboratory experiment You will have days when you have lesser or greater productivity You will arrive late every once in a while You will get sick and have unexpected emergencies Life happens Given these ebbs and flows, you can’t expect that you will always get the maximum return on your time investment—or even have a balanced time budget—every day Having the perspective that your time allocation and planning needs to be flawless can turn you into a neurotic time miser, enslaved to feelings of fear and scarcity surrounding time As in your commitments themselves, you can’t—and shouldn’t—always reach for perfection Instead, aim for having a balanced time budget in the long run This time investment concept is extremely important for those who tend to fall into all-or-nothing thinking When you accept that the goal is general consistency, your new level of strategic thinking won’t result in unnecessary angst over natural deviations If you end up being ten or fifteen minutes off your preferred time schedule and there are no significant consequences (that is, you aren’t losing business or missing flights), no worries Your schedule is your servant, not your master It’s OK to have some variance Over the course of a one-to-two-week period, your time investment should reflect your priorities That means if you can’t exercise one day but get in some good workouts overall, great! You are on the right track in terms of health goals Self-compassion, instead of self-criticism, holds the key to lasting behavior change because it helps you focus on action and build resilience after setbacks, instead of allowing negative emotions to hold you back.[1] If the idea of giving yourself any leeway frightens you because you feel you must either endure the constant tirade of your inner drill sergeant or you will give up and not care, thinking about self-compassion in this way may help It is a concept based on Ramit Sethi’s advice on how to overcome guilt.[2] Self-compassion is not apathy, denial, or rebellion Self-compassion is about total self-acceptance—no matter what—so that you can have a radical focus on action Selfcriticism is a nonproductive emotion that leads to self-attribution (I’m just a screw-up, etc.) and then fear (I did this last time I’ll it again) This is actually the lazy way out because it keeps you from productive self-analysis and action Instead, you want to approach issues as a scientist does Find the root of the problem, so you can fix it in the future For example, if you’re late, ask yourself, what happened? What could I differently next time? Or simply ask the five why’s: Why was I late? I woke up late Why did I wake up late? I was up late Why was I up late? I procrastinated on an assignment Why did I procrastinate? I wasn’t clear on what to Why wasn’t I clear? Because I hadn’t written down the steps Asking yourself these questions helps you realize what actions caused you to be late in the first place and how to correct them in the future It shows you that writing down the steps for assignments is the key to being on time the next morning Being self-compassionate isn’t about letting yourself off the hook or saying that things don’t matter It’s about saying, I’m not going to waste time beating myself up because I need to get busy taking action on what I can Small or irregular deviations in your time allocation are a natural, normal part of life You’ll live your best life if you allow yourself to be human and don’t become overly anxious about them In the end, getting the best return on your investment is not about whether you got the most tasks done but about whether you put time and effort into what’s most important to you And it’s also about having a radical focus on the present instead of allowing the past to devalue your future Finish each day and be done with it You have done what you could Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can Tomorrow is a new day You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense —Ralph Waldo Emerson Maximize Your Time ROI Checklist Use the INO Technique Categorize key projects and tasks as investment, neutral, or optimize activities during weekly planning Add investment activities into your calendar Allocate time for neutral and optimize projects and tasks During daily planning, put an I, N, or O beside each calendar item Approach your tasks with their INO categorization in mind Assess and reallocate your time, if needed, to prioritize investment activities Aim for growth Assess your overall time investment approach Identify potential issues Seek out the root cause by asking questions Make corrections Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct (New York: Avery, 2012), 143–150 ↵ Ramit Sethi, “How to Stop Feeling Guilty and Start Taking Action,” webcast, February 25, 2014, http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com ↵ Epilogue: Remember What You're Working For The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you —Anonymous During high school and college, I fell on the extreme end of the Type A scale I rarely had downtime; I remember crying when we arrived home after a family vacation because I felt so overwhelmed at the thought of reentering the relentless pace of my daily life I also didn’t have nearly as many wonderful relationships as I have now But my drive to excel led to the results I was aiming for at the time: I got straight A’s, received a fulltuition scholarship to a private college, had four internships, and landed my dream job in February of my senior year I felt in control and rather proud that my years of strategizing and relentless effort had paid off Then, I got laid off Six weeks after having started a job part-time, which was designed to transition into a full-time position after I graduated, I found myself unemployed, and all the other roles I had been interviewing for had been filled Welcome to the real world I now joke that I was on the career fast track, given that I received a severance package before a college diploma But at the time, I was devastated My final semester of school ended a few months later, and I didn’t have a position in hand This meant I no longer had any consistent source of external validation for my achievement During that time, I learned a great deal about the importance of valuing myself for who I was, not just what I did I also became much more humble about the fact that we can invest in activities that can make success more likely, but ultimately we can’t make anything happen Time and chance happen to us all, and my response to any achievement should always be gratitude But the inflection point that redirected me to today, where I am living a life focused not only on professional achievement but also on quality personal relationships, happened a few months later As part of my severance package, I had the opportunity to go to outplacement classes that help people who have been laid off discover what they want to do, improve their résumés, and brush up on their interviewing skills As I sat in the first session, I listened to individuals who had worked at their organizations for ten-, twenty-, or even thirty-plus years, explain their situation I will never forget the dejected looks on their faces and the enormous, heavy sense of betrayal and regret These individuals had sacrificed their health, their friendships, and their families for the sake of their work Then, when they no longer had a place on the organizational chart, they were dropped What I took away from my experience and theirs was the importance of remembering who really loves you Unless you work in a family business, the people you work with don’t love you Yes, they may care about you But in the end, their primary interest is in getting a certain job done They’ll be sad to see you go if you move on, but soon another person will take your place The people who really love you—your family and your friends—can provide an enormous amount of enduring joy and support, if you invest in those relationships as part of what’s most important Here’s how Clayton M Christensen explained this tension in his Harvard Business Review article, “How Will You Measure Your Life?”: People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.[1] Practicing the time-allocation principles I advocate in this book will allow you to have more quality, undistracted time with the important people in your life, if you decide to make them a priority After going through each of these steps, my clients find that they can get more done at work so that they can enjoy guilt-free time investing in the other parts of their lives That allows your professional success to have a positive impact on the people around you instead of causing a constant strain on your relationships With the right perspective, the tools in this book can transform you into a timewealthy person: someone who operates from a place of peace, calm, and intentional generosity because you have enough time for what’s most important Your time is your life Invest it wisely Clayton M Christensen, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” Harvard Business Review, July 2010, accessed January 3, 2015, http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1 ↵ In Gratitude It’s a joy and privilege to see transformation in individuals’ lives on a daily basis as they learn to invest their time in what’s most important Thank you to all my time coaching clients, training participants, newsletter subscribers, and book readers for opening up your lives and hearts to me Your earnest pursuit of authentic, joyful, and successful lives inspires me I’m also extremely grateful to my fantastic book agent, Giles Anderson, as well as the Harvard Business Review Press staff, in particular, my amazing editors, Sarah Green and Courtney Cashman Thank you for believing in my message and helping me to communicate it as effectively as possible Thank you to all of those who I consider most important: my wonderful parents and siblings, amazing circle of friends, and, of course, God I could never what I without your consistent love, support, and encouragement About the Author Elizabeth Grace Saunders is an internationally recognized expert on effective time investment She is the founder and CEO of Real Life E, a time coaching and training company that has helped clients on six continents to accomplish more with peace and confidence Her methodologies empower individuals to move forward on their goals and companies to maximize the effectiveness of their workforce, including knowledge workers, sales staff, remote employees, and project managers Elizabeth has spoken to thousands of individuals, including speaking after Steve Forbes at a business retreat She is the author of The Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress Numerous offline and online media outlets have featured her expertise, including Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Time, Mashable, London Evening Standard, Inc., Lifehacker, Huffington Post, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC For exclusive time investment material, go to www.ScheduleMakeover.com You can also find more articles, resources, and information on coaching and training at www.RealLifeE.com ... control of your time and all of your attempts to manage your time have failed, you need to learn the skills to invest your time like money When you do, you’ll finally have enough time for what’s... you’re in time debt and, if so, how to match your expectations to a realistic and balanced time budget The Time Investment Formula The single most important factor in feeling like a time investment... ahead of your peers and make you far more satisfied with your life Strategically investing your time will lead you to have enough time to be your best self, your best work, and fulfill your potential