Short story from the Big Moo compiled by Seth Godin

On our way to a brainstorming meeting, a colleague turned to me and said “I wish I had more time to prepare for this – I’ve been so busy I didn’t do a thing for the meeting.”

Busy? Doing what?

Just for fun, we made a diary of her workweek. She spends about forty-four hours a week at work, with four hours spent at lunch and stuff. So figure 2,400 minutes a week.

In a typical week, she spends 2,000 minutes playing defense – filling out forms, answering urgent requests, returning calls, and putting out fires. This is what most office workers refer to when they talk about “work.”

She spends about 300 minutes in meetings, listening to other people talk about what they’re going to do or have recently done.

She spends about 45 minutes actually doing creative work on the projects she’s  currently involved in.

And she spends exactly 15 minutes a week on inventing the next breakthrough.

This is scary stuff. Scary because if you do the math of what her organization actually gets paid for, it’s precisely the opposite of the way my colleague spends her time. When she goes on vacation, those 2,000 minutes of urgent emergencies just sit there, and nothing particularly horrible happens. And in a rare week when she doubles her big-thinking time from 15 minutes to 30, she’s likely to come up with the big moo – an insight that will pay the company’s bills for the next six months or a year.

So, do you really think you’re too busy to work on something remarkable? In fact, you’re actually too busy to do all that (non-urgent) emergency stuff.

Where are your hours going? Wheather you work in an office for someone else or at home in your own business, this is vitally important. Are you doing the things that directly create the goal of your business… which for me is to make sales. Am I coming up with new ways to market, sell, get leads, create products… or am I answering the phone, responding to emails and doing the busy work that will get me no where closer to where I need to be.