Personal Time Investment Analysis

How to Audit Your Own Time Like a CFO You track every transaction in your business. But when was the last time you audited your own time? If you're in finance, you already know the principle: What gets measured gets managed. Here's a framework I use in my workshops how to run a Personal Time Audit and use AI to reclaim your workflow. ✲ Step 1 ➝ Record your week like a ledger Document everything you do for one full week. Every task. Every meeting. Every "quick" check-in that wasn't quick at all. By Friday, the pattern becomes obvious: You're not short on hours. You're hemorrhaging them on repetition. ✲ Step 2 ➝ Categorize your time Sort your tasks into three buckets: High Value: Strategic analysis, stakeholder collaboration, financial modeling. Medium Value: Reporting, reconciliations, documentation. Low Value: Data entry, formatting, manual updates. Most finance professionals discover that 60-70% of their time lives in the bottom two categories. ✲ Step 3 ➝ Automate your "Low Value" bucket AI tools like n8n, ChatGPT, and Make can handle: ➝ Recurring report generation ➝ Invoice tracking ➝ Expense categorization ➝ Summary commentary Describe your workflow once. Then let it run without you. ✲ Step 4 ➝ Reinvest your saved time Don't fill it with more tasks. Redirect it toward what finance was always meant for: thinking, advising, leading. That's where human judgment compounds. You audit finances to eliminate waste. Audit your time to amplify impact. When was the last time you examined where your hours are actually going?

During a recent conversation with a dear friend Vivek Agrawal, a fascinating concept emerged that truly captivated me: the ROI of time. Have you ever considered the return on investment (ROI) of the time you spend each day? We often measure ROI in terms of money, but what about our most valuable resource – time? Why should we consider the ROI of time? 1.⁠ ⁠Time is finite: Unlike money, time is a limited resource. Once spent, it can never be regained. How are you spending your limited minutes and hours? 2.⁠ ⁠Prioritization: Evaluating the ROI of our time helps us prioritize tasks that provide the most value. What activities are truly worth your time? 3.⁠ ⁠Productivity boost: Focusing on high-ROI activities can significantly enhance productivity. Are you focusing on what truly matters? 4.⁠ ⁠Balanced life: Considering the ROI of time encourages a balanced approach, ensuring we allocate time to activities that promote well-being and happiness. Are you investing your time in things that bring you joy? Tips to maximize the ROI of your time: 1.⁠ ⁠Set clear goals: Define what you want to achieve in various areas of your life. 2.⁠ ⁠Evaluate activities: Regularly assess if your activities contribute to your goals. 3.⁠ ⁠Time blocking: Allocate specific time slots for high-ROI tasks. 4.⁠ ⁠Learn to say no: Not every opportunity is worth your time. 5.⁠ ⁠Continuous improvement: Regularly review and adjust how you spend your time. Example: I realized I was spending too much time on unproductive meetings. By cutting down unnecessary meetings and focusing on key projects, I can save several hours each week, which I can now use for strategic planning and personal growth. This shift will significantly improve the ROI of my time. Applying this mindset has been truly mesmerizing. It has not only improved my productivity but also brought a sense of balance to my life. What steps are you taking to maximize the ROI of your time? #ROIofTime #TimeManagement #Productivity #LifeBalance #PersonalGrowth

Okay neat - the idea of building a portfolio career/life really resonated with a lot of you [see previous post]. Let’s take it one step further and talk about a time investment thesis for your porfolio. ⬇️ If you talk to any (good) investor building a portfolio of investments, they’ll have what's called an investment thesis. An investment thesis is a driving belief system to guide decision making, generally based in lived experience, data, personal beliefs and best practices. Even more tactically, it's how an investor plans to use invested capital to generate returns. While you build your portfolio career, or portfolio life, you should also have an investment thesis - let's call this our time investment thesis. Having a thesis will allow you to cut the fat and focus your time and energy [your capital] on the portfolio of things that will bring you closer to a life that fulfills and excites you - something you're proud off [your returns]. Unfortunately you can't just pull a thesis out of thin air - you have to do the work to formulate it. And you don't just formulate it once. Any good investor knows that their investment thesis should shift and morph with time as they learn and respond to changing contexts and ecosystems. While I recommend crafting your thesis in a way that feels authentic to you, a template to start with is: I spend my time focusing on things that ____, because I believe _____ and I want to create ______ impact. Mine is: I spend my time focusing on things that bring innovation, mental health and equity into focus in the tech ecosystem, because I believe we are at a critical tipping point for our future and I want to help humans build a more creative, inspiring, authentic and inclusive future. Everything I do - helping more more founders be successful at Mercury, connecting women to create wealth and impact with the old girls club, thinking about the intersection of art and entrepreneurship with New Museum of Contemporary Art, and supporting founders focused on creativity, connection and social good like Matthew Schuler, Miri Buckland, Kendall Warson, and Christian Byza, rolls up into this driving thesis. What's your thesis? How are you building a time portfolio around it?

Investing by its very definition suggests that a reward will be realised after a period of time, if the investment has been made wisely. Time being the operative word in the above paragraph, for it is time that we exchange for the very things we pursue, whether it be professional success or personal ambitions. So the question is, where are you investing your time? For me, time spent in the following ways has been incredibly rewarding and profitable: - Investing in my personal health and wellness. - Investing in my mental and emotional wellness. - Investing the time with my family & friends, by being 100% present when I’m with them. - Investing in my relationships at work and in my community. - Investing in my education & spiritual practices. - Investing in downtime, unplugging and resting. Of all the things I’ve invested in, my health and wellness has yielded the greatest return across the most important aspects of my life & I have been rewarded with: - Greater energy and vitality - Greater mental clarity and emotional balance. - Deeper & more authentic connection with family and friends. - Greater career opportunity and personal growth. - Greater happiness and fulfilment. If you haven’t done it yet, I’d like to encourage you to do an audit & assess how you’re spending your time and what you’re getting for it in return? If you don’t know where you’re spending it, you’ll never know how much more time you’ll have for the important things that enables your professional success and personal ambitions. I use a .xls sheet, with two columns. One column is everything thats important to me, the other column I score out of 10. I then create a radar graph and get a graphical representation of how and where I’m spending my time. Seeing it like this highlights areas that might be getting too much time or too little. Go ahead, you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain by firstly, understanding where your precious time is going and secondly, being more intentional about where you invest it. Here’s wishing you a week of goal crushing success.

Time is a valuable asset in your organisation. Yet too often, it’s spent reactively rather than invested strategically. In fact, recent research shows that time-wasting costs companies billions of dollars per year in lost productivity. On average, there’s $25,000 wasted annually per employee, and upwards of $42,000 per year for leaders. But this isn’t just about numbers. I’ve experienced it myself, that feeling of being stuck in endless meetings, questioning whether any of it is having real impact. One of the most eye-opening moments for me recently was during a strategy session with a senior leadership team. We went through their calendars and realised 40% of their week was spent in cross-functional meetings. When I challenged them to cut that time in half, they suddenly found time for high-impact work. The results were transformative. The best leaders know that time is organisational currency. Just like financial capital, time should be invested in high-impact activities, not just managed. Here’s how to rethink your time investments: 1️⃣ Audit your time. Look at your calendar and ask: ‘How much time is spent on activities that drive real outcomes?’ Eliminate or streamline the rest. 2️⃣ Track your ROI on time. Ask yourself and your teams: ‘What is the Return on Time Investment (ROTI) of this meeting, project, or initiative?’ 3️⃣ Shift your mindset. Treat time like money. You wouldn’t spend your hard earned cash on things that don’t add value, so why spend your time that way? If you optimise your time, you will always outperform those who simply manage it. How are you ensuring you’re spending time where it matters most? #LeadershipDevelopment #ProductivityTips #TimeIsMoney