Liz's Blog

For many years, I tried to personally answer as many reader emails as possible. I couldn’t offer personalized advice – I’m a journalist, not a practicing financial planner – but I wanted to at least point people to helpful articles, agencies or sites.

As my readership grew, this task became Sisyphean. I’d spend hours at it and barely make a dent. One morning, I was plugging away while listening to a babysitter play with our young daughter. I had an epiphany: I was giving away hours of my time. MSN, the site I wrote for at the time, certainly wasn’t paying me to answer emails. And those were hours I could spend with my kid.

There was no contest. I created an automated email message and put a note on my site, alerting people that I could not respond personally to messages.

I’ve tried to do regular audits of my time since that day. The goal is to figure out what I can quit so there’s more time for the stuff that offers the best payoff, personally or professionally. At work, my mantra became “If anyone else can do it, someone else probably should.” That allowed me to focus on the things I do best and that brought the most value to my employers or clients. At home, I looked for ways to automate, outsource or just stop doing time-sucking tasks without a lot of payoff.

What tasks could you quit today?