In designing a life there are two types of activities that you need to take into account; core activities and other activities.
Core activities are those activities that you enjoy and allow you to live your purpose.
Other activities are all the other activities in your life.
One of the principles of life design is maximizing the amount of time you spend on core activities and minimizing the amount of time you spend on other activities.
The amount of time you have is finite. Every time you minimize the time you spend on other activities you increase the time you can spend on core activities.
Creating processes and workflows for handling your other activities allows you to complete those activities in less time. The saved time you can then use in your core activities.
Core activities where you are living your purpose creates value. The more time you spend on your core activities the more value you create. The more value you create and put into the world, the more you are rewarded.
Even in simple examples, this works. Let’s say you are a consultant making $100 per hour. You work 8 hours a day, sleep 8 hours, 2 hours preparing and eating, 1 hour maintain your home, 2 hours getting to work and getting home, 2 hours doing enjoyable activities, and 1-hour exercising. That leaves 1 hour that is just getting lost. If you have a well-defined workflow so this hour doesn’t get lost, that is 1 hour a day you have for core activities. There are 249 working days a year so that extra hour a day becomes 249 hours a year. If that hour was spent consulting that would be an extra $24,900 a year.
If you spend the hour focusing on becoming better, the return is higher
If you spend the hour creating something of value that can be sold, the return becomes exponentially higher.