Leverage Your Laziness by Steve Bookbinder

Author:Steve Bookbinder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sound Wisdom
Published: 2012-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Leverage Your Laziness!

Principle #9: Outsource It!

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay.

The only human institution which rejects

progress is the cemetery.”

~ HAROLD WILSON

Jane was an accomplished attorney who ran her own private practice, and had reached a turning point in her career. She knew she was really good at what she did for her clients… and she also knew she had hit an income plateau. She felt she should be earning more than she was.

She went to an executive coach. “What’s wrong with me?” she asked the coach. “Why can’t I grow my business beyond this stage? Why am I having challenges hitting my financial goals?”

The coach said, “Do you really want to know the answer to those questions?”

Jane said, “Absolutely.”

“Okay,” the coach said. “Take this sheet of paper and fill it in during the day tomorrow.” He handed her a grid-like worksheet with the words TIME LOG on the top. It had a little space for every quarter-hour of the day. “Record what you do in every fifteen-minute increment for a full day,” the coach said. “Then meet me back here next week. Bring the sheet, so we can discuss it.”

Jane had a feeling she knew where this was going, but she also had a feeling she wasn’t going to make the change she needed to make in her life without completing the exercise with her coach. So she went ahead and followed his instructions. She spent a whole day filling in the blanks, tracking her behavior from seven in the morning, when she started work, to 5:30 at night, which was when she stopped. Then she brought the completed sheet to her coach for their next meeting.

“Okay, let’s take a look,” said the coach. “It says here that the first thing you did was stuff and lick envelopes and send them out.”

“Right,” said Jane. “Those were some invoices that I was about a week behind on.”

“Got it,” said the coach. “How much would you pay per hour for an assistant to run an accounting program that would do to that for you, do you think?”

There was a little pause.

“Maybe eighteen bucks an hour,” Jane said.

“Good to know,” said the coach. “Now this other line here says that you took a client call from eight to nine a.m. How much do you get paid per hour for that call?”

“About three hundred fifty dollars an hour,” said Jane.

“Which do you enjoy doing more—stuffing envelopes or talking to clients?”

“No contest,” said Jane. “I hate stuffing envelopes. I love talking to clients.”

“Hmm …” said the coach. “What about this line here that says ‘Making photocopies and collating reports.’ You did that for half an hour. How much would it cost you per hour to get an assistant who could do that for you?”

“Again, about eighteen dollars an hour,” Jane said.

“Do you particularly enjoy making photocopies and collating reports?”

“No—it’s incredibly boring.”

“Okay, so this next activity here,” the coach said, “where you spent another two hours meeting with a client in your office—how much did you earn from those two hours?”

“Seven hundred dollars,” Jane replied.

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