Leverage is a focus that, to be honest, I have struggled with completing.

The problem I have is understanding how and/or where I can create greater output with less input. Put another way is how do I leverage the time I have in a day and week etc into doing more yet using less time. This modules focus is redefining productivity through leverage. So my goal today in writing about it is to do my best to explain it and in so doing I will come to a better understanding of this concept called leverage.

The way I have approached the past twenty five years of my second life has primarily been about putting in a lot of time and energy to create the life I now have and the success that I have achieved. What I am learning from what the course is presenting is that the model I’ve been working with has definite draw backs. From the scientific data decreasing the amount of hours work can actually increase productivity; hours worked are not necessarily a large determining factor in productivity and success. This is definitely contrary to the way I was raised and sounds counterintuitive but let’s see where this goes.

The premise here is that results from people who are successful vary wildly but the amount of time we all have doesn’t vary wildly. Every one of us only has the same twenty four hours every day to work with. Productivity it seems is not tied to the number of hours worked. The equation for this is input cost VS output value equals productivity. What output value can you get for any input cost. This equation can be applied to anything and everything but a simple example of this would be how fit can we get (output value) for a thirty minute workout (input cost) or what is the ROI (return on investment) (output value) on a specific investment (input cost).

What is being presented and what I’m working to understand is that the greater output value relative to the input cost the greater the productivity. Even though this equation can be applied to all things the ZTD course focused on time. Using data regarding hours worked shows that past a certain number of hours worked (50) productivity will decline so learning how to do the same amount of work with less time increases productivity. How much are we actually achieving relative to how many hours we are working?

Leverage then is something that can help boost productivity by increasing output value relative to input costs. Instead of working longer and harder it’s working shorter hours and smarter. Time is a fixed asset, leverage is infinite in potential. This all make sense to me yet what I struggle with is what or where do I find this leverage? I thoroughly enjoy what I do, teaching our students and now working on expanding my reach by creating a personal website on which I offer a variety of options. The only thing that I can confidently say I’ve leveraged is having a web designer to create my website and manage my social media posts.

In writing the above paragraph I see now how I’ve leveraged some time in the past three weeks when I turned off all the notifications on my phone. By doing this it gave me more time simply because 

1. I’m not being distracted every time an email or text comes through even when my phone was on vibrate which helped with 

2. Not constantly wanting to look at my phone. With that said I now need to be more discipline in checking my phone for messages and/or emails which allows me more time to concentrate on the tasks that need to be taken care of.

Writing on this week’s focus of the course I have gained an insight into how as I move forward that I can look for more ways to apply leverage. As Grand Master Emeritus stated: “there’s always more to learn” and even at seventy five I’m all over that!

You can find out more about me at 

Home – Lorne Davidson

 .

See you again soon.