What are your most valuable activities?

- Improving the value of your time begins with identifying your most valuable activities. To make this process easy, use the Discover Your Most Valuable Activities Worksheet in the Exercise Files. In the first column, Work Activity, list each type of work activity you perform during the day. Think big picture categories rather than individual tasks. For example, rather than listing email or attending meetings, list the categories those tasks belong in such as new product development or sales. List every category you can think of then in the Strength column, rate your strength at doing this kind of work compared to other people on a scale of zero to 10. So zero would be no talent and 10 you're among the very best in the world. Next, in the Replace column, rate how difficult it would be to replace you. How easily could you find someone else in the available job market to perform this activity well? So zero would be anyone could do it and 10 would be it's nearly impossible. Next, in the income per hour column, estimate the cost to pay someone else to do this kind of work. So for instance, if one of my work activities is graphic design, how much would I need to pay someone else per hour to replace that activity for me? If you're working for someone else, that might seem like a strange idea but just give it your best guess. If you need help with coming up with an hourly rate, guess what you think an annual salary for this position would be and then divide it by 2080 which is 52 weeks in a year and 40 hours a week then in the final column, rank all of the activities to determine the most valuable. First place, second place and so on. There's no rule to the ranking. You just look at your answers in the previous columns and then give your best judgment. So for example, imagine I listed developing new products as a work activity and let's say I'm strong at it, it's difficult to replace and it has a high cost per hour. I might rank this activity very high, first or second place. After you create the ranks, underneath the chart, list your top two most valuable activities and then estimate what percent of your work time you spend doing them using questions A, B and C in the worksheet. Whatever percent you end up with, make your goal for this course to increase it. The more time you spend in these activities, the more valuable to the marketplace you become.