What is your most profitable activity?
Is it speaking? Is it writing? Is it listening?
A friend of mine asked the question – What’s the business skill that eclipses all others? – on his Facebook feed recently.
He got a lot of responses on his post. Some said the ultimate business skill is leadership. Others said it is communication skills. Still others said that it’s emotional intelligence. At last count, he had a hundred and eighteen responses.
My response was, Recognizing your most profitable activity.
From an accounting perspective, that’s a relatively easy thing to determine…. if you’re keeping good records.
To answer that question, you’d want to know which activities are generating the most benefit at the lowest amount of cost. Once you find that, you can see which activities you want to do more of. You’re likely also able to see which activities to do less of.
Measuring costs and benefits was a good strategy in accounting. It’s a good strategy in life.
Why? When we know the best use of our time and our resources, we can leverage that awareness to improve our ability to make a greater difference in the world. By knowing our most profitable activity, we can create greater good in the world, without burning ourselves out.
As you can see from the variety of responses to Mark’s question, there is a great variety of possible activities.
Mark’s response to my comment was, “This takes personal insight to know and then to act upon it.”
True!
Inscribed in stone in the Temple of Apollo in Delphi are the words, “Know Thyself.” It’s an ancient maxim that for many of us remains a puzzle.
It’s a puzzle I set out to solve for myself after burning out in corporate finance. While the puzzle is much more complete than it was then, there are still some missing pieces.
Record keeping has been one of the tools that has been most helpful in my putting the pieces together.
At this point, you may be rolling your eyes. I get it. After burning out in a career built on record keeping, it was not an activity I relished. I’d rather do something much more fun – like going for a hike in the mountains.
I avoided record keeping, especially financial record keeping. Ironically, at the same time I stopped keeping financial records, I began keeping a daily record, a journal, with greater gusto than ever.
It wasn’t until I realized what is was costing me not to pay attention to my financial records that I began to open up to that activity again. Like the unfinished puzzle I mentioned above, there are still some missig pieces, and yet the picture is getting clearer.
It’s a bit like the hike I took yesterday through the Collier Cove Nature Preserve. It’s a hike I’ve done hundreds of times in the past year. This time I took photos, a record, of the trail. As part of a upcoming family reunion, we will be doing a service project to improve the trails.
Even though I’ve been on these trails hundreds of times, I’ve never been as conscious about what needs improvement. Places where the trail is being washed away by the rain. Benches that have been covered in graffiti. Drainage pipes that are getting filled with mud.
When I’m just hiking, it’s easy to overlook all the little things that could add up to a much less enjoyable hike.
It’s not unlike going through the routines of the day.
Researchers say that 40% of our day is made up of habits – things we do without even thinking about it. That means in a typical eight-hour workday, a little over three hours is done without even thinking. In a typical work year, that adds up to eight hundred hours of work done habitually.
Going back to my response to my friend’s question, if you know what your most profitable activities are, and you’ve made those activities a habit, that is a great news!
But if you’re like most of us, then some of those things you’re doing without even thinking about them are costing you more than they’re benefitting you.
Do you know which hours are which? Or are you like I am on my walks, where your attention is focused on things besides the trail? Activities and terrain that are so familiar that we enter them unconsciously.
In business, recognizing the difference between what’s profitable and what’s not makes all the difference. It’s the difference between the good we could be doing and the good we are doing.
Golden Word: profit from the Latin proficere (accomplish, make progress; be useful, do good; have success, profit) which is composed of pro- (forward) + facere (to make, do). A profitable day is one where you end the day with more than you started.
Golden Quote: The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. – Samuel Johnson
Golden Read: The Ultimate Habit Tracker Guide: Why and How to Track Your Habits by James Clear, bestselling author of Atomic Habits
Golden Question: Which of your habits are producing the greatest profits in your life and business?
This post is from the Golden Nuggets newsletter sent out each Tuesday morning to authors and speakers who want to deliver a richer story.