From: alexhormozi
For business owners and high-level employees, a key to financial success is to understand what “work” truly is and to eliminate activities that do not directly contribute to business growth [00:03:00]. Most people claim to work daily but cannot even define the word [00:34:00]. Instead of defining work by time spent or effort expended, a more useful definition for knowledge workers is that “work equals outputs,” where outputs equal “volume times leverage” [01:34:00]. This means the number of times you do something multiplied by how much you get out of each instance [01:42:00]. To do more work per unit of time, one must focus on “output per unit” [01:53:00].
Identifying High-Impact Activities
To define and optimize work output, businesses fundamentally grow in two ways: getting more customers or making existing customers worth more [04:05:00]. These break down into four core actions:
- Getting more customers:
- Increasing traffic (e.g., advertising more or better) [04:16:00], [04:37:00]
- Converting a higher percentage of traffic (e.g., practicing sales, improving offers) [04:17:00], [04:39:00]
- Making customers worth more:
- Raising prices [04:23:00], [04:42:00]
- Decreasing churn/getting people to buy more times (e.g., reach-outs, exit interviews, improved onboarding, faster results, client events) [04:26:00], [04:49:00]
Many business owners spend their time on activities that have the same impact as doing nothing, leading to stalled growth [05:10:00]. For most smaller businesses, effort should disproportionately focus on increasing traffic and conversion [05:52:00].
The Importance of Volume
Excellence comes from repetition [06:26:00]. To become exceptionally good at a core activity like advertising, one must dedicate significant “volume” to it [06:40:00]. This could mean:
- Spending four hours a day scripting, analyzing, writing, copying, or recording ads [06:49:00].
- Four hours a day reaching out to people across social media platforms [06:59:00].
- Making content for four hours a day on every platform [07:04:00].
- Doing outreach or creating content to support affiliates [07:11:00].
If you are thinking about how you will find the time to do this, remember that “doing everything else is doing nothing” [07:30:00]. Your time must look like a growing business, not a stalled one [07:38:00].
It’s crucial to understand that if your business isn’t growing, the tasks you are prioritizing are likely wrong [08:05:00]. This involves learning to prioritize tasks for business success and “letting some fires burn” [08:10:00]. Some problems, while real, are not “the problem of the business today” [08:14:00]. You can neglect them for a period until they become the true constraint, then focus intensely on solving them [08:28:00].
Finding Time: Maker vs. Manager Time
Every entrepreneur has two types of work:
- Maker Time: Long, uninterrupted blocks of 4-6 hours, representing high-importance, low-urgency work that moves the business forward [12:55:00]. A productive maker calendar is an empty calendar, as interruptions destroy entire blocks [13:08:00].
- Manager Time: Small blocks of 5-15 minutes, used for training teams, coordinating, communicating, and putting out fires [13:33:00]. The goal is to fill the calendar with these slots [13:37:00].
Disaster occurs when these two work styles mix; attempting to fit small management tasks into maker time kills half a day [14:03:00]. It’s essential to understand which type of work you are doing and communicate this to your team to protect crucial time periods [14:21:00]. This directly impacts time management and productivity for leaders.
Practical Habits for Maker Time
To facilitate maker time, consider these habits:
- Decide on the one most important project to work on [14:44:00].
- Dedicate 4-5 hours daily, ideally early in the morning (e.g., 4 AM to 9 AM) [14:50:00].
- Turn off all notifications [14:55:00].
- Create a distraction-free environment (dark room, no sound, earplugs) [14:57:00]. This is a core tactic to eliminate distractions and focus and also helps with eliminating distractions for self-improvement and avoiding distractions and shiny object syndrome.
- Realize there are no business “emergencies” (only 911 scenarios) [15:08:00].
- Maintain a consistent sleep schedule, including weekends [15:26:00].
- Consider working weekends, which offer 104 days of uninterrupted time annually [16:03:00].
Buying Time: Outsourcing Non-Essential Personal Tasks
As a business owner, you are the most valuable person in your business, producing the most value [16:25:00]. Just as you would maximize a star employee’s time, you must maximize your own [16:30:00].
One battery powers all aspects of your life (work, family, chores) [16:59:00]. You become more productive by understanding and eliminating business inefficiencies that drain your energy, rather than by adding optimization hacks [17:09:00].
Consider the time spent on common personal tasks and their replacement cost:
- Food: 50 hours/month (groceries, prepping, eating, cleaning) can be replaced for ~$800/month [18:40:00].
- Cleaning: 25 hours/month can be replaced for ~$500/month [18:51:00].
- Laundry: 16 hours/month (washing, drying, folding, organizing, dry cleaning, driving) can be replaced for ~$200/month [18:57:00].
For approximately 15 per hour with your time, this trade is highly beneficial [19:17:00]. This is a form of reinvesting in yourself, but the purchased time must be used for high-impact work, not leisure [19:30:00].
This is a one-time investment in increased productivity, not a recurring benefit that can be repurchased [21:19:00]. Many entrepreneurs hesitate to spend money on services they perceive as “fancy” or “frilly,” despite happily hiring employees for much higher costs [19:48:00]. If you wouldn’t hesitate to give a valuable employee 50% more productivity for $1,500/month, you should make the same investment in yourself [20:10:00].
The Power of Elimination over Optimization
True productivity gains come more from eliminating distractions for self-improvement and non-essential tasks than from optimizing existing ones [17:09:00]. Cutting things out creates permanent reductions in energy drainage, allowing you to reallocate that energy to activities that make more money [17:44:00].
Someone who dedicates 16 productive hours a day, six days a week, will move significantly faster than someone who only manages three productive hours a week [17:53:00]. This stark difference in “real work time” can explain why some businesses grow 30 times faster than others [18:13:00], [22:51:00].
Conclusion
By working on the right things—getting more customers and making them worth more—your business will grow [23:33:00]. To maximize this growth, ensure your day is filled with high-impact “maker time” activities, not unproductive “manager time” gaps [23:45:00].
Achieve this by:
- Understanding the difference between maker and manager time and communicating it to your team [23:57:00].
- Implementing daily habits to protect your maker time (deciding on a core project, waking early, turning off notifications, creating a focused environment) [24:02:00].
- Investing in yourself by buying back time from less valuable personal tasks [24:09:00].
This strategy allows you to be 30 times more effective than competitors who remain distracted and unproductive [24:25:00]. The secret is simple: eliminate as many drains on your single battery as possible that aren’t aligned with your goals, compressing multiple lifetimes of growth into one [25:16:00].