Ged: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Card, the card.
Welcome back to Card Cast, the podcast where Milan and I chat about a card that we pick at random from Milan’s Deck. I’ve got a cop, I’ve got a set of the decks here, so if you’re interested, I’m sure they will be available to buy soon. And I’m sure there’ll be a link in the in the podcast when we when we release it.
So let’s shuffle the deck. I just blanked out completely there. I’ll, I’ll Luke and stitch that together.
Milan: Yeah, exactly.
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Let’s me Ged: So let’s, mm-hmm.
Milan: Off in the side, so great. So
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: Shuffle the deck today. And here we [00:01:00] go. And we have our team audit sorry, time audit card again. Time audit. Okay. So this is one of the little more practical cards, not much philosophy today. So it’ll be, it’ll be quite interesting. So what is time audit? Jet, you mentioned that you’re doing one just as we speak, so why don’t you, us more about that?
Ged: Yeah, time Audit is from Dan Martel’s book. Buy Back Your Time if you haven’t read that book. It’s a great book and you should absolutely read it, but you shouldn’t just read it. You need to apply the lessons in the book to get the value. And yeah, I, I’m actually doing a time audit myself. I started on 1st of January, well, the 2nd of January because the 1st of January wasn’t particularly productive and I’m doing it for the whole month of January,
Milan: Good for
Ged: And I’m doing it for.
I’m doing it. Yeah. Yeah. I think four, four weeks, particularly with our pattern of work that tends to sort of now bunch up at the [00:02:00] end and beginning of quarters, I thought doing it for the full month would make more sense. And, and I’m actually doing, I’m doing a time audit for two reasons. First of all, it’s one of the books that I’m recommending that my leadership read if they haven’t read it already. And secondly, I was starting to get the feeling that, that I, I wasn’t really in control of, of how I was intentionally spending time. And the only way you can really, really understand where to direct your time best is to actually get the data behind where you spend your time. So, so two reasons. I’m doing a time audit, first of all, because I’m recommending it to my clients.
And secondly, because I wanted the data behind where I’m spending my time. So what is a time audit? So we basically break it down, break the day down into 15 second increments from whenever you start to, whenever you finish.
Milan: 15 seconds would be a little too much. [00:03:00] 15 minutes is more
Ged: 15 minutes. Absolutely. And not, not even lawyers count in 15 seconds. Yeah, it’s a 15 minute intervals. And then you record all of what you do in those 15 minute intervals from a selection of different categories that you come up with. Or you can use a standard set of time categories so that you can get an understanding of where you spend your time. Now what you do with that data, you plot that against two different dimensions for each of those categories, you’re asking a question is, does this activity light me up? And secondly. Does it generate dollars for me, as in, as in high generation of dollars to low generation of dollars? So in a, I’m a former an a architects and engineer, so I love a two by two grid.
So once you plus all of those categories into those different dimensions, you can get an understanding of top right, it lights you up and generates [00:04:00] a lot of dollars for you. Bottom right lights you up, but it doesn’t generate dollars for you. And then top left doesn’t light you up, but generates dollars and bottom left doesn’t light you up, doesn’t generate dollars.
And going through those four categories I’m, I’m gonna read this out from, from the book just so that it’s I don’t get it wrong. Top right generates dollars and lights you up is production. Bottom right is investment, top left replacement. So find another way of doing it and bottom left is.
Delegation, get someone else to do it, get someone else to take ownership of it. So those are the two dimensions in Dan Martel’s book. Now, Milan, I, I noticed that you use a slightly different category for the, the value dimension. Take me through your thinking there, because you know, it is good to see a different perspective on that.
Milan: Well, the, the principle is same and frankly, you know, and even in the car hand talking [00:05:00] about about Dan Martel’s book, because it’s exactly the source of that, you know, original thought of, of how to get there. So let’s give credit where credit is due. I noticed a lot of my clients, because I do this very, very often on different levels of leadership, and I I would coach the leaders to do it with the members of their team, that they have some concerns about the, about time and value and so on and so on. And the question of the value came up repeatedly. Right. And it’s like, what does that actually mean? Eventually, and I don’t think that these were really our words, my, my words. I think that a client mentioned it eventually that, you know, the way I understand it is that the, the enjoyment I mentioned is how do you feel during doing the job? And value is, how do you feel about getting it done? Ged: Okay. Yeah.
Milan: One way of looking at it. But I also wanted to [00:06:00] recognize that not all value is measured in dollars, even though we are still using the dollar signs. I am sorry, but you know, if you’re a CEO with the family, time with your kids is probably really high on the value. Whether you enjoy it or not, that’s a different, different piece, right? But I wanted to make sure that people recognize different levels of value because to just talk about dollars, especially in the leadership situation, it’s, it’s nearly impossible. About one-on-one with your direct report or with somebody on your team. I’m sorry, but that’s like, for a leader, that’s the highest value time, the, you know, highest value investment that you can make on a weak thing. But there is no dollar sign to it. Like, how would you quantify that? Like when you’re doing it yourself as a, you know, solopreneur, that’s a different story. And if that is then important dimension for you again go for it. But I think that in a team setting or in [00:07:00] organizational setting a, you know, leadership situation, I think that we need to open up the definition of the of the value a little bit more. Does that make
Ged: I think you’re Abso ab. Absolutely, absolutely. And I, and I think it, a lot of it depends on your, your individual context. So your situation now, so if you’re in hustle mode and every minute, and every single day counts now, then you probably are me measuring value in terms of dollars. But if you are getting to a point where, or if you’ve got to a point where it’s more about the overall value.
You are creating both in your work life and your family life and your home life then the definition is probably less around dollars and more around the value, the what it, what it means for you, your family and your company, and your, and your context, your environment. So, absolutely, I think so. It’s, it’s a good distinction to make, like,
Milan: Yeah. Look, and, and you know, like any framework, like you, you can, you cannot use a framework as a dogma, [00:08:00] right? It’s a guiding principle and, you know, tweak it, you know, you know, I’ve added a working genius dimension because it sounded useful and it has proven to be, it’s only useful for the person reading it, right?
It is like, because what is, what is time audit about? Ultimately it’s about reflection. It’s about Ged: Yeah.
Milan: Picking it up at the end, looking at a table, and, you know, okay. A secret, right? So I often give time audit as a task to leaders I work with, then they ask me, okay, and when we’ll finish what we’re gonna do. Like, you know what, what are the rules of what we do with this? Just talking about it, right? Like, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll see, we’ll see what we learn. And quite often they come up with their own findings, and I don’t have to say anything because,
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: It’s so obvious once you started looking, they said, I probably should.
I said, yeah, you probably should. Right? Like, whatever behind it should, [00:09:00] no, it’s, it’s just such a simple and such a powerful tool. Needs to be done. Right. And I want to say that, like I’ve seen couple of times when people would say, yeah, it’s fine. I’ll just, you know, I’ll go through my Outlook calendar and I’ll just fill it up accordingly.
It’s like no, that’s not how it works. Right? You literally have to be diligent. Like, kudos to you for doing it for a month, man. Because, you know, I don’t have that level of tenacity. But what I usually tell clients is to do it for two weeks. But we generally do it a couple of times a year, maybe every six months or so to also see what progress they’ve made.
Right. Where did we move? How did the correction actions that they chose or decided to do based on the time audit, how did they reflect in their life going, going you know, a few months later. So
Ged: Yeah,
Milan: To do it current and really just to say how, how am I feeling about what I’m doing right now?[00:10:00]
Ged: You, you’ve had an additional, you’ve had an additional dimension to this, so, you know, and you mentioned it just a moment ago about the working genius. Talk to me about that one. How does that fit into this model? And I know this is your, your addition.
Milan: Well. So working genius very, very briefly. Patrick Lenchi is on the table group, right? There is a book the, the Six types of Working Genius. Again, highly recommended. What are does the do unlike your typical you know, straight Fighter is the Strength Finders and Brick Myers, you know, and all of those types of assessment that are really focused really on skills and sort of a type. This is really focused on what type of work brings you joy. Once you know, we do the assessment, which is like a 12 minute questionnaire, really that sort of determines what are your areas of genius and what are your areas of [00:11:00] frustration. By me saying this, you can see how it maps, right? So it’s quite interesting. We are using it as a qualification. It’s like, yeah, I really enjoyed this. And yeah, it’s actually in a zone of my genius, or, Hey, I actually enjoyed this. It provided a large value, as far as my assessment goes, this should have been a frustration. What’s going on? Maybe I’m evolving, maybe something is changing.
So yet again, it just provides another dimension and another way of of thinking about it. And it’s at that moment is essentially free because we’ve done the assessment, right? And then it, it just helps train that language. And again, it’s the reflection. It’s the looking internally and see, oh, I see that’s actually true.
I don’t like doing this. Now I have that check-in. I have the two weeks of data to prove that
Ged: Yeah, so, so this is a way of categorizing the level of enjoyment or whether this lights you up or not, you know, does it, is it something that you love doing or is it something [00:12:00] you hate doing? Yeah.
Milan: It’s a
Ged: Is different for everyone. Hmm.
Milan: Yeah. And again, and maybe a laugh might not be the right term. It’s really you know, what gives you energy versus what takes it away from you. Because the principle here is that the things that you enjoy doing, using that using that language are the ones that you would be preferring if you have a choice. The things that you don’t, that are in the frustration category are the ones that you are likely to skip, procrastinate on. You know, do all of those things. And again, and the more you know about your own behavior, the more you can work on it and the more you can change those problematic habits because it’s really, really hard improve something you don’t measure.
And this is a tool to give you the baseline.
Ged: And everyone’s different. You know what lights someone up is a drain for someone else. And you know, so you know, this, this is about allocating the right tasks to the right people. I mean, I, I hate doing [00:13:00] expenses. I have an assistant that finds it really cathartic sitting down there with a pile of receipts working through them one by one. So we are at different ends of the scale there. It just drives me insane. I get so frustrated having to do it. So I don’t, I have delegated that to someone else who actually gets enjoyment from it. So, you know, everyone’s happy.
Milan: Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Then you
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Ai which will enjoy anything you’re gonna ask you to do, right?
Ged: Indeed. Indeed. Well, that’s maybe there, maybe there’s a card there or maybe there is a card. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Will be. There will
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: And we’ll have a guest for that one. So I’m really excited about that.
Ged: Yep. Mm-hmm. So this is a really useful tool. And, and Milan, I think there’s a template on the, on the website, on the card, isn’t there? There’s a template people can download.
Milan: Yeah, it, you know, several cards have that, it’s like if there is a tool or something like that, there is usually a link. So again, if you go through this podcast to the card that’s related to that, you will [00:14:00] see just a little, it is just a spreadsheet template. Again, nothing, nothing too complicated, but you know, the way we are talking about it here, I, I’m thinking that maybe know, turning that into an app that would be the time tracker and might actually be quite interesting.
So I will, I will think about that and maybe we’ll we’ll add it to the tool set,
Ged: Well, there’s a coding project for you.
Milan: Precisely. Yeah, that’s.
Ged: Just before we wrap up this e episode, and you may, you may have an anecdote yourself on, on time audit, but I, I was. I was with a, a client quite recently. They’ve got a leadership team about eight people. And this was a book that I had that had been set for them to read last quarter. So they finished it by the end of the quarter. And at our, and our quarterly meeting, I said, okay, so who’s read Buy Baine by Dan Martel? Every single person put their hands up. Yep. [00:15:00] And the next question was, who has actually done a time audit, which is right at the beginning of the book, by the way, it’s not buried right at the end. It’s right at the beginning who has actually done a time audit on themselves and not one person put their hand up.
So it’s not just about reading the book. You’ve actually gotta go through and extract the value from having read the book. And if you’re not prepared to put the time in to do a time audit and the other things in the book, it’s probably not even worth reading a book, to be honest. ’cause you’re not really gonna get the value from it.
Milan: Look you know what? I’m not entirely sure about it. You’ll get some, but the time, the time audit, it has a huge return on investment. But
Ged: Yeah,
Milan: Team did better than one of my recent themes where I pass exactly the same question. Who read buy back your time, or I didn’t, I didn’t have time to Do, know that point?
You are like,
Ged: Well there’s the irony. Yeah, there’s the irony.
Milan: Don’t think I can help you.
Ged: Mm-hmm.[00:16:00]
Time audit. It’s a really useful tool. It will probably surprise you in what insights it gives you. The, the outcomes of the time audit exercise are often very, very insightful and very surprising. So if you haven’t done a time audit yet, it’s worthwhile spending just a few minutes every day for two weeks.
At least two weeks. You’ll be surprised at what it delivers.
Milan: It was
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Energy was all right. Yeah, I
Ged: Yep. Mm-hmm. I think so. Yep.
Milan: Yeah. So outro, right? We need to do our, we’ll be talking about time audit. Yeah. The one one thing Jet, sorry, I noticed I don’t see your microphone bar jumping up and down.
Ged: I don’t see yours either, but mine I, can you see yours? I can see mine going up and down.
Milan: See mine as well. Yeah. Okay.
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: That’s [00:17:00] that’s, that should be okay. Alright, so
Ged: Okay. Milan: This one for change.
Ged: Okay. Mm-hmm.
Milan: So for next week episode, we’ve talked about time audit. So the time audit card is taking inspiration from Dun Martel’s Buyback Your Time. We also touched on the working genius from Patrick Conci and how those go together, where you should do it, how you should do it, why you should do it, and the fact that you should definitely do it. Jet, anything to add?
Ged: I think that about wraps it up. It’s well worth going through that exercise and mapping out your day in 15 minute increments over the day for at least two weeks. You’d be surprised at the insight it delivers.
Milan: Fabulous. See you there.
Ged: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Okay.[00:18:00]
Ged: So we’ve probably got about a good 14 minutes out of that 18 minutes we’ve recorded so far for that episode. So that’s a, that’s a good one.
Milan: That’s a good link. Yeah,
Ged: Now I was getting a bit of echo at the beginning of that. You are, you haven’t, you’ve definitely got your, your speakers are not on at the moment, are they?
Milan: Correct. Let me double check, but I think, oh, that’s interesting. My mic, microphone. Switch to the AirPods from the, from this one. Any change to sound as I switched?
Ged: It’s actually better. It was better before,
Milan: Yeah, well that’s the distance probably, right?
Ged: Yeah. Yeah. I’m not a fan of those blue Yetis. They’re, they, they. They were brilliant marketers over COVID, but the [00:19:00] marketing is, does not correspond to the quality.
Milan: Okay, so let me see. I will, I will try to get it a little bit closer. Well, that’s Luke’s fault because he told me to buy this one, so he,
Ged: Oh. And a lot of people went out and bought them. Yeah. A lot of people went out and bought them.
Milan: Okay.
Ged: It, it is certainly better than using a laptop microphone. No question about that.
Milan: Okay. Alright, so let’s not publish this part of the conversation then. Is it any better?
Ged: Yeah. Mm-hmm. That’s good.
Milan: Alright.
Ged: And just your level, I mean, I can’t see your level. What’s your level looking like?
Milan: It’s all, it’s all white unless I speak a little louder and then it goes yellow.
Ged: Okay, perfect. Mm-hmm. Okay. Setting expectations. How do you wanna run this one?
Because [00:20:00] I’m, I’m trying to think about, we, the card is called Setting Expectations, but we jump straight into scorecards effectively.
Milan: Well, and we, we have a separate and scorecards, right?
Ged: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Think that we don’t want to go there too deep. What we do want to do is to do the basic principles. So do like, oh, is that what you wanted? Type of thing. I didn’t know, right? So to basically have that have that. Setting somebody for success by being very clear about the expectations. And then, you know, and then we have two tools to do that. Like, so some stories when that was wrong, right? We can, we can do that. Then we have two tools, right? One is for a job, it’s a is a scorecard. And if it’s for a project is the impact filter from Ben Hardy. And, and sorry, from it’s from then s [00:21:00] really it’s his right. It’s in who, not how and we can actually, we can actually slide a little bit into the AI and it’s, and basically talk about, you know, you get what you prompt, right? Right. You get what you trained. It’s the same thing is to be very, very clear about your expectation. So I think there is a material there.. So I, I would start with what happens when you don’t have the expectation set up or when you know, people are bringing somebody without really, you know, enabling them. And then we’ll take it from there.
Ged: It’s interesting. I’m not sure if you’ve got this this in front of you. You probably don’t, but chapter two is called, most people in business don’t know what is expected of them.
Milan: Exactly.
Ged: And it, and it is all about that. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Pl
Ged: So Milan: Yeah,
Ged: So this is, this will be that we’ll have some strong parallels [00:22:00] between chapter two and your card here.
Milan: That’s perfect. Then we should talk about it afterwards, because maybe I should add your book onto the bookshelf and make a link to it from the cart.
Ged: Yeah, sure. You can absolutely do that.
