To be a truly productive person and to experience growth professionally and personally, one must get control over the 3Cs in their day. The 3Cs include:
- Create
- Consume
- Chores
Let us delve into each of these areas to understand what they entail:
Consume:
In this time and age, we seem to be consuming more and more! Both materialistically and knowledge-wise! Materialistically, we want more of everything! There is a small subset of folks that are moving towards essentialistic and minimalistic living (inspired by Greg McKeown’s book, Essentialism)
Knowledge-wise, we are inundated with information coming at us from all directions, especially different forms of media – books, podcasts, audiobooks, digital courses, radio, social media channels, the list is endless!!
In this constant state of consumption, it is very to become complacent just taking in all the information. I personally have noticed that I am always mentally shelving information. I listen or read about something and I file it away mentally telling myself that I will do it/implement it shortly. Do you find yourselves reading books and feeling inspired for a day or two and then settling back into your comfort zone?
Create:
This is the state that we seem to be getting less of. The state where we should be utilizing the knowledge we consumed to do something, take action, grow our career, our business, implementing strategies to better our relationships and the like. An example from my personal life relates to my 11 year old son. He loves to read. He just can’t get enough of reading fantasy and fiction books. His teachers tell me he is reading at a high schooler level. Which is all great! But then his writing is just not on par. He is probably at an average 11 year old’s writing level. What is the problem you ask? His teachers tell me that for the kind of reading he is involved in, his writing abilities and skills must be 10X higher! The disconnect as I have discovered is happening because he doesn’t really write as much. If he spends 10 hours a week reading, he spends less than an hour a week writing aka creating!
Its quite analogous to my situation as well – I spend a significant amount of time consuming information (listening to audio books or podcasts and reading on the internet) but almost 1/10th of the time creating. Creating for me could like – writing blog posts, speeches, creating webinars, audio programs, online courses and many more!
Chores:
These are the set of activities that I categorize to be the ones that we gotta do – responsibilities such as dropping/picking kids, getting/ordering groceries, cooking, cleaning etc..we spend time on chores on a daily basis.
Use the 3Cs framework to identify how much time you are spending at work in these 3 buckets.
- How much time are you actually creating something at work? Create could mean putting together the strategic plan, marketing document, writing the sql queries, the test scripts, creating a report etc.
- How much time are you spending on chores? Chores could mean answering emails, attending meetings that you really don’t need to be in, conference calls etc
- How much time are you consuming at work? Consuming could mean attending meetings/calls to be aware of all that is going on, reading and learning new things etc
In order for us to truly grow both professionally and personally, we need to be creating as much as we consume. In speaking to professionals, I hear that they spend the bulk of the day in meetings and calls and have very little time to do their actual work.
ACTION EXERCISES:
- TRACK: In order to change this dynamics, the first step is to become more aware of where our time is going. Track your daily activities in these 3 buckets for atleast 2 weeks. Attached is a downloadable PDF to help track your activities.
- CONSOLIDATE: In a 2 week timeframe, how much time do you spend on each of these buckets?
- COURSE CORRECT: What one bucket can you reduce time in and how? Identify action steps to move time from one bucket to another that deserves more of your time.
There is no ideal ratio to aspire to. The one challenge I do pose to you is: Can you increase your Create amount by 10-20% and maintain it for a month?
What does your 3C ratio look like? Share and let me know.
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