From the course: How to Organize Your Time and Your Life

Trim your schedule with the four Ds

From the course: How to Organize Your Time and Your Life

Trim your schedule with the four Ds

- [Instructor] Well, I would say, especially for listeners, there's really two questions if you want to start to get a grip on your time. And you just ask yourself, what am I spending too much time on? And what am I not spending enough time on? And then you go about making adjustments to get those things in the right order. So if I'm spending too much time on email, on writing, on administrivia, on what, you know, what am I spending too much time on? Then you look at that and you say, "Well, how do I eliminate that? How do I streamline that?" I have this thing called the four Ds, which is, what can I delete? You know, can I delete it? Can I just get rid of doing this thing all together? Like, it's really not enough value for the time invested. Can I delay it? Which is at this month, this quarter, this part of the year, this period of the business, I'm going to just put this off, 'cause right now we're in a, you know, I don't know, we're in end-of-year financial wrap-up, so I can't also do that strategic marketing plan, whatever, that's a delay. Can I diminish it? Which is, is there a shorter, quicker, more efficient way to do this? And there very often is, right? Like we just need to find an efficiency and operationalize a repeat task so that it takes a quarter of the time it does because it's more efficient. Or can I delegate it? Can I give this to somebody else to do? 'Cause that's no longer the highest and best use of my time but it's still really essential for the company, for the business, for living.

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