how much is too much, and what to do about it

Summary

you can’t know how much is too much until you define what good looks like. that’s where building superman comes in. you sit down and write out the ideal version of you in every role. ideal dad. ideal CEO. ideal marketer. ideal operator. the standard you would hold someone else to.

now compare your week to that standard. the gaps are obvious. that’s where the next hire goes.

for what’s actually on your plate, the three six method.

1. three focus tasks for the week. the things that move the business.

2. six buffer tasks. the maintenance that has to get done but isn’t the needle mover.

if you have more than three focus tasks, you’re not focused, you’re just busy. the rest delegates, automates, or gets killed. the fear of hiring is what keeps most entrepreneurs stuck doing buffer work themselves for years longer than they need to. the opportunity cost of not hiring is almost always higher than the salary.

Transcript

introduction to identifying personal and professional overload

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey. So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. So how do you know you are taking on too much?

You’ve done too many things, you have too many activities, too many commitments. What’s the threshold? This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon, and I know that this is a problem for me. And I assume it’s a problem for some of you. We all have a lot of things that we want to do as entrepreneurs. We have a lot of ideas, whether it’s ideas for multiple different businesses or different things within our business that we want to execute.

And then we have our lives, right? We have everything that we need to do in our lives with meal prep, family stuff, kids, spouses, you know, all of these things, exercise, training, all these things, right? All these things pop in, and it can be really hard. And you know, the difference between you and I is zero when it comes to time. We both have 24 hours in a day. And so when I ever see somebody, whether it’s a high-powered entrepreneur or someone who’s trying to act like they’re super successful, I know there’s the great equalizer of time between that person and me.

the importance of setting a high standard in all aspects of life and business

And I know what it’s like to be incredibly productive. I also know what it’s like to procrastinate. But I know we all face the same issues. So how do you know you’re taking on too much? Well, the litmus test for me is I basically have my own standard of what I want to achieve, like the standard of excellence in any particular area. And I know whether or not I’m meeting that. And I’ve talked about this exercise before.

I call it the building Superman exercise where you kind of journal, you know, the best version of, you know, you being a father or you being a business owner. And then you have kind of after you journal, like what’s the perfect version or the best version, you’re kind of writing a job description of what that thing would be. So that’s how I set the standard. That’s thing one. And so when I’m wearing a lot of hats, you know, say I have to do some of the finance for the business and say I have to do some of the marketing for the business and oversee ads and then I have to be a leader and a manager.

Then I also have, you know, all of these different companies. That’s when I can stop and I can even go down to the individual level, be like, OK, if someone was in charge of finance, what’s like the what’s the perfect version of that or what’s the perfect version of someone doing all of these things with advertising and marketing? What’s the perfect version of any role within my company or companies? And then I start to look at and see what those are.

exploring the “building superman” exercise for role optimization

Now I have the standard, right? I have a standard. So if I’m wearing, let’s call it seven different hats trying to juggle all these different things and I’ve now. Realize what perfection would be in each of these areas. Now I can start to see I can truly see how far I am falling short in each of the areas for, you know, what’s really stifling my growth ultimately. And so I recommend that you do the same and then ask yourself, what is it costing you to be falling short in each of those areas?

Try and put an actual dollar amount on it. If you if you look at the marketing arm of your business and you’re like, OK, well. If I in a perfect world, I would set up new ads every single week or every single month. I would look over all of the data. I would review KPIs. I would look at ROI on my ad spend. I would set up new marketing campaigns that have new lead magnets, new marketing initiatives, all these things, right?

Brainstorm like the best version of that. And then it’s like, OK, well, what are you doing with the time that you have? And you’re like, well, all I’m actually doing is kind of, you know, setting up a campaign on Facebook when I have some time. And that’s about it. You’re not really looking into anything else. That’s a big gap. That’s a gigantic gap, OK? And that gigantic gap is costing you money. I don’t care if your business is still growing right now.

how to identify gaps in performance and their impact on business growth

It’s still costing you money by not being incredibly efficient and optimal in a particular area of your business. So if you think, hey, that’s probably costing me three grand a month, four grand a month, five grand a month, guess what? You now have your budget to hire somebody for that thing. And it takes time to realize, like, what do we think it actually costs? A lot of people early on in business are scared to hire. And then even later on in business, they’re scared to make the bigger hires, the bigger salaries.

They fear doing these things. But you’re already losing that money. And that’s what people don’t understand, like you’re there’s an opportunity cost by whatever it is not being executed, like when it’s not executed, it’s costing you money. When your marketing is not on point, it’s not as good as it should be. You’re not following up how you could be following up when you’re not doing those things. You are falling behind. You are losing money. It’s just money that you don’t see.

So you don’t actually see it as lost money. You just see it as like, I’ll get around to that task. I’ll get around to this thing. But if you sat down and actually thought about it in every single area of your business, not only do you have the job description, if you could put a monetary value on it, some tasks that you’re not doing, like, let’s say it’s bookkeeping, say you’re trying to keep your own books.

the rationale behind using hiring as a strategic investment to fill performance gaps

And you’re like, oh, yeah, that would cost me, you know, 500 bucks a month or whatever. Then you have it. Some tasks are smaller, a couple hundred bucks a month. Some are bigger, 2000, 1500 bucks a month. Some are 5000, 7000, $10,000 a month. But ultimately, you’re going to have now a budget to hire that person. And that’s kind of what they’re on the hook for to generate in revenue by either saving your time or for actually generating revenue for the company.

You know, you see how setting the standard is the first big step. Now, the second step that I do in my schedule to further triage, because sometimes I just want to do a lot of the things. It’s not that I can’t hire or won’t hire. It’s just like I enjoy this thing. I don’t necessarily want to give it up. And I don’t think that we should give up all the things that we love unless it’s going to stifle the business.

So the second method I use after kind of realizing what the standard is and see if I’m falling short and seeing how much it’s costing me is I implement the three six method to my overall productivity schedule. So the three six method is where every single week I commit to three focus tasks and six buffer tasks. So I’ve talked about these on the podcast before, but you might be new or you might need a refresher. So real quick, a focus task is typically long duration focused work on a project or task that’s actually going to move the business forward.

explanation of the “3-6 method” for task management

So let’s say developing that new marketing campaign, I’m just going to work four straight hours on developing that new marketing campaign that needs to get launched this week. That’s a focus task. Buffer task is I need to answer email, I need to pay a bill, I need to delegate something, I need to have a meeting. Okay, those are the buffer tasks. So each week I commit to only three buffer tasks because they are long duration and I commit to six buffer tasks.

Typically I’ll do a couple more buffer tasks if I have the time, but I want to commit to at least getting six done. So the administrative side of my life doesn’t eat me alive. But then committing to those three big buffer tasks, you know, that can take three full days. That could be a task per day. And so that’s what I’m doing. But here’s the deal. When you triage your schedule like that, down to three big focus tasks and six buffer tasks, it makes you put some critical thinking into whether or not you should be doing a task.

Because if I have like seven ideas for focus tasks, I’m like, you can only do three this week and hell, you might only get two done. It makes me really triage and prioritize what I think that I should be doing. And then they go on the calendar. And then again, the dock of my head, I’m like, okay, I know what the standard is for these things. Could we be moving faster if someone else could be knocking these out instead of me waiting because now if I have a list of 15 things that are focused, I’m only doing three this week.

I already know the next couple months are taken up. The next couple months. And so if I’m like, hey, could anybody else do these focus tasks if I hired them? Because these focus tasks in my best guess, they’re going to move the business forward. So could I hire? That’s how you start moving faster. That’s where your mindset needs to be. But it’s not until you actually categorize your tasks into focus and buffer. And then you realize, oh, crap, with all the things I want to get done, I can’t realistically do like everything I need to get done is going to take six months.

summarizing the benefits of managing workload to accelerate business success

And that’s where, okay, well, if I hired somebody, can we get it all done in two months? Yeah, probably. Can. But you can’t be scared to hire. You can’t be scared to pull that trigger. So it really helps you triage and prioritize what you should be doing each and every single week. So if you can do those two things. You won’t be taking on too much. You’ll realize that you’re taking on too much. So if you can just do those two things, you set the standard for what excellence is in any given specific job, a skill set, a task, a company, a position, whatever it is.

You know what excellence is. You know where you’re falling short. You know what it costs you. That’s the first thing. The second thing. Prioritize and realize how far you can be falling behind if you don’t hire that person. And if these two things are massive, OK, if it’s like, wow, with all the things I want to do that are kind of focused tasks. Yeah, this is realistically with the time I have, it’s going to take me eight months to do it all.

OK, you’re probably doing too much. And then at the same time, if you have the perfect version of all these different things that are in your company and you realize you’re not meeting the standard on any one of them. Yeah, you’re probably doing too much. And here’s the deal. I know there’s some people listening to this podcast who are like, maybe you’re like right at the beginning stages of entrepreneurship. Your goal is just to market and sell your products till you can hire these people that are going to make you move faster.

So the beginning is slow, but you can’t be scared to start pulling the trigger on the hires. That’s what’s going to slow you down even more. That’s when you’ll be in the same position in 6, 12, 18 months as you are right now because of fear. Fear is stopping you. So you need to make that leap and you need to make that change. But I get it. It’s difficult. But you need to try harder.