This episode documents a brutal self-assessment using minute-by-minute time tracking to measure actual productivity versus perceived productivity. The exercise revealed significant time waste during prime working hours, including 45 minutes on Monday morning spent catching up with newsletters and 21 minutes just worrying about a stalled transaction rather than taking action.
Key Takeaways:
- Measure to Manage Your Time Forcing minute-by-minute documentation revealed incorrect narratives about productivity—45 minutes of prime Monday morning hours disappeared into email newsletters that should have been shifted to evening.
- Zone of Genius Classification System Every task gets labeled as zone of genius (unique ability driving the business forward), zone of resentment (energy-draining but perceived as necessary), or neutral (capable but delegatable)—this taxonomy enables strategic delegation.
- Fires Consume Productive Capacity Noting down “9:16am to 9:37am: worrying about transaction” revealed how anxiety about pending deals blocks deep work without actually advancing resolution.
What gets measured gets managed, and this exercise exposed significantly more time waste than anticipated, proving that even experienced entrepreneurs need rigorous tracking to avoid productivity delusions.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. I wanted to check in about the ⁓ work items log. I know I had talked about this in a previous episode. Probably about a week ago. I forget the numbers, ⁓ but it was kind of related to zone of genius, zone of resentment, any neutral activities and just being ruthless about first just noting down minute by minute.
What you’re actually working on and what it would classify You know in terms of you know, how your time was spent there Yeah, so I’m genius and that’s not the thing like I think there there’s a thought. Okay, anything that’s like Easy or or kind of more fun could be zone of genius that that’s not necessarily the case like zone genius is really related Okay, what are you?
And kind of best suited for like it’s within your realm of unique ability to drive forward. And generally it’s still going to be really hard. Like running a business is hard, right? That that that’s not the, qualifier for what’s, determined there. ⁓ but you also might get more energy from it as well to like, not, always. I’m, I’m trying to come up with what.
truly is zonagenius versus not. ⁓ And having to label it is a good practice ⁓ when I’m going through this, but yeah, I’m trying to keep it towards like, okay, I felt like more in the groove here and like, is like my particular skill set. I don’t think anybody, at least currently on the team could do it. And even if I hired out, I’m not sure like…
⁓ I’d necessarily be able to do anything else in the business that is higher leverage than that particular activity. And some of that is related to content creation. Like I don’t think I could give away the podcast or something like that. That is with an ice on genius or doing it, writing the newsletter ⁓ for instance as well or working through some difficult deal.
resolutions ⁓ I Mean maybe could hand that off and at some point here, but like the creativity involved is It’s it’s kind of kind of tricky to imagine or maybe I’m not thinking thinking big enough so that that’s also another open question here ⁓ it’s like again, you only have the resources you have in any given day and you just have to pay the ignorance task and
to skill deficiencies to get to the next level. So, you know, your zone genius probably will grow over time. I’m just trying to figure out, okay, what fits within it now and where should I be heading? ⁓ I wish I had a better answer than that, but it’s a learning experience every day. And then kind of labeling, okay, what’s neutral or what’s zone of resentment. And again, that’s like not necessarily defining more of like what’s easy, hard, whatever. It’s just more, hey, okay, I can just knock out some of these tasks.
or like the really zoner resentment, know, am I getting just, it’s just a drag, it’s just less, like I know I shouldn’t be doing this ⁓ in kind of the most ideal version of the business, but like, I feel like I have to, so those type of tests. But also depending on the day how I’m feeling, like I’ve noticed, you know, some things I might label as neutral or zoner resentment. So I…
there’s probably a little bit of fluctuation between that, just based on the of difficulties of the day or how many fires are going on there. So that’s kind of unique. But I mean, I’m really glad that I took ⁓ a start at just being ruthless with noting down minute by minute. And it’s not perfect yet, but for the most part, I’m getting a lot of it done, especially the morning to late afternoon, ⁓ early evening hours. And ⁓
It really is eye opening because you know, we’re so good at creating narratives for ourselves that, you know, we can be saying, Oh yeah, I really don’t need to track. Like I know what I’m doing. have calendar, et cetera. I know what tasks I need to knock out, but until you really note down the minutes for each specific task, um, it, uh, it really forced me to be more honest with myself because I just had incorrect narratives about this. Like I always used to feel like, yeah, Monday’s just.
They tend to feel more rushed again. For a lot of people too, I think it’s like a lot of reactivity. People come back after the weekend and use check-ins, especially in the real estate business too. Okay, what closings might be happening, deals that might’ve came in and so forth. Various, like a lot of email flow. So that day tends to be more reactive and kind of like a catch up, set the tracks for the rest of the week. ⁓
But I also noticed too, like, you know, various email newsletters or something like that. And I have a high curation on, you know, what stuff I might consume, but, know, Monday tends to be heavier. And like, I had to note this Monday that I had spent, you know, 42 hours of prime, like, I hate to have to admit this, but it’s like,
I just, again, have to be honest with myself, honest with you guys on the results of my experiment. Prime working hours. mean, for most people that are waking up at a normal time, usually the early to mid morning hours tend to be the most productive, highest energy brain states. Those are your most precious times to make consistent effort. And then I’m just having a note for this Monday I had from 1047AM.
to 11 32 a.m. Okay, so maybe that’s a second. 13. No, so that’s that’s 45 minutes. I thought it was 42. That’s even a little bit worse. So 45 minutes was just catching up with various news or email newsletters. And when I had to note that down, I’m like,
I thought, okay, maybe I’m keeping this under like 15 minutes, whatever, I’m just checking in and just having to come to that realization, boom, 45 minutes of just prime day ⁓ was just used up. Like it’s not productive. I mean, they’re not just like random kind of like the, it’s like business oriented and ⁓ helping, you know, kind of grow my knowledge base, some level of wisdom, but it’s really not what I should be doing.
in the mid morning and it’s like, I already started working and I take a break to do that and then have to go back. And it’s like, okay, no wonder my Mondays were just always feeling so rushed because I wasn’t, you know, again, what gets measured gets managed here. ⁓ Because for some reason I was just vastly underestimating how much time was being spent with frankly non-productive activities, things that.
I would get to, but I could just shift it. Okay. Maybe I can check in on some of this at lunch or shift it to evening hours. You know, and my brain is just, you know, more beat down anyway. And I can check in with this and like, I’m not going to be able to knock out more, you know, larger product, ⁓ projects or anything. ⁓ and so that, that was just really, again, kind of eyeopening experience of figuring out, right. Yeah. How much time was I really wasting there? Or there was, you know,
Another point later in the day. There’s just like 15 minutes. I don’t know like from 251 To 306 p.m. And I just had to note it and I’m using like color coding in here. It’s just time wasted It’s okay. You know bullshit around on various emails Checking out like new sites, whatever and again, it’s something that we can just easily kind of rationalize our way through or oh Yeah, I’m just gonna check in here and get back to this. But when you really
force yourself to do this minute by minute breakdown. I don’t think I’m going to do this for the rest of my career because again, the goal, the end goal for doing this is both to align my focus and then also figure out, what is, am I nailing out more, you know, zone of genius type activities versus zone of resentment and neutral and trying to figure out, okay, how can I orient delegation to my team or hire another team member to handle more of those tasks that aren’t within my current zone of genius?
So I can grow my zone of genius for a, they’re like, that’s the whole intention of doing this. But again, as a side effect of figuring out, Whoa, you are not as productive as, ⁓ your, your subconscious thought, thought I was, or the story that I was telling myself when I’m actually having to be, you know, harshly noted, like looking at the clock and saying, okay, how much time am I using on this task? Or, you know, we’ve had like a bigger fire this week, just this transactional deal that it’s just.
Gone sideways. Um, it should still resolve in our, in our favor here, but the amount of brain damage having to deal with this and title companies, just a nightmare to work with and, uh, back and forth phone calls waiting for communication. And it’s like 200 K that’s just like sitting in limbo. Like it’s, it’s hard to just ignore. And then I have to, um, you know, note like, okay. Yeah. Tuesday of this week where I just have to note down.
Okay, I’m supposed to be starting this, but like 9 16 a.m. to 9 37 a.m. I’m just, you know, I had a note down worrying about this transaction. Like I wasn’t doing anything else. Couldn’t really get into any other, you know, tasks related to the business. I was just sitting in my chair, just catastrophizing and worrying. I like it, forces myself to note this. Uh, and I thought that’s like a zone of resentment, right? Like that is, that is not productive at all. Um,
You’re not even taking steps to try to dissolve the deal. It’s just like literally sit sitting in anxiety. And then also realizing, okay, like even if we, you know, get our money out and get some decent profit from the sizeable transaction fee that we’re getting, like, was it worth all of this brain damage right now? I would say no. Like if I knew the deal was going to go this way, like I would have never agreed to it. It’s just not worth it to have that.
In the background like it’s really hard to do deep work and so forth when you have just like this this fire that ⁓ You’re just trying to wait for a resolution on ⁓ So, know again noting down minute by minute What I’m actually spending time on has helped like again measure the the true impact Versus just like a nebulous. ⁓ yeah, was thinking about this deal, but then I had to get this other work done So yeah, it’s kind of a pain in the butt to do to do this
work log and forces you to really be even more diligent about what you’re doing. ⁓ But I think it, again, it forced me to like, been an entrepreneur for a minute now. And like this is just showing me how much more room I have to grow because it’s just wasting more time than I realized ⁓ because I was just never measuring it properly. And that’s the thing, you know, when you’re working
home office and so forth don’t necessarily have other people staring at what you’re doing or checking in and that that’s you know something that you really have to be careful of as well too so you got to keep yourself accountable on ⁓ what is actually getting done so hopefully this one is helpful for you guys I would suggest giving it a shot even even for a day I bet you’re get some pretty interesting insights on how you’re spending your time ⁓
But yeah, this is something I’m gonna continue to do for a while here. So I think there’s significant benefits. So with that in mind, SeriousLand.Capital for any of your funding needs. Again, 50K minimum, purchase price 150K plus preferred. I had a really interesting one in New Hampshire that came our way. I’m waiting for some more info on it. We’ll see. Land Daily Diligence Facebook Group, zero cost review of your land deals and landpricer.ai for the most reliable land pricing tool on the market.
⁓ Already been starting to test the product again a bit more internally ⁓ Things are moving a lot faster on the back end now Like I’m really impressed with my engineers have put together here. So subscribe and share more To come with that. Take care everybody. Bye
