Tell me about your vision. My vision is for everyone
to be more productive, to spend their time on
what matters most. There's a lot of time management
books out there that will tell you how to do
that. My unique niche is I actually measure how
people spend their time and what successful people
do. I invented a small electronic device for
those who are watching. You can see the time
quarter device here. We program that with different
activities. lend those out to employees and entrepreneurs
who use that to track their time. It's better
than an app. And then I analyze the results and
show people how they can achieve their vision
of spending their time on what matters most.
Mark, tell me more about that. So the Time Quarter
device works like a series of stopwatches. Only
one of them can be on at a time, kind of like
a chess clock, but in reverse. just blocks the
time goes down to zero this the time keeps adding
up a series of stopwatches so every time you
begin a different activity you just press one
button and it tracks your time on that activity
gives you instant feedback better than an app
because it's tracking the things you're doing
on your smartphone or whatever it lasts longer
it's always on at least during the workday so
it's a handy device to get some really good data
about where successful people are spending their
time. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. So how
did you get started on all this? Like why this
device and what's the story behind why you do
what you do? Well, I got two stories. The first
one is being a paper boy way, way back and having
to deliver papers as fast as possible. So, for
instance, on the weekend, we had a magazine and
the newspapers, the two had to go together. I
figured out the fastest way to put them together.
invested in technology i bought a wagon to drag
the papers around i split the route up so instead
of collecting from customers every week i went
to some on weeks one and three and the others
on weeks two and four so that saved me time so
i guess as a young kid i was always thinking
about productivity years later working in the
corporate environment because i did everyone
was late for meetings And I thought, oh, man,
yeah, we're spending a lot of time waiting. You
know, if you add up your time and his and hers
and we have a little device or you can measure
different things. And so there was a kind of
an aha moment there about visualizing what a
time quarter device might be. We all have those
aha moments. The difference is I actually went
ahead and produced prototypes and then working
models and so forth of the device. Whereas a
lot of people, I thought of this idea. Got to
go ahead with that idea. i did tell me more tell
me more this is very very interesting and intriguing
well again it's that aha moment of of creating
a little device but i'm not an engineer i'm not
a programmer so i had to find people to do that
for me the first guy i didn't do too well he
got it to add up to 10 maybe and then i was talking
to a guy at a networking meeting he said oh i'm
an engineer i could do that so he produced a
couple of prototypes for me Then I tested those
with a bookkeeper. She said, Mark, this is really
great. The problem was though, the product turned
out to be the world's most popular product that
everyone thought someone else should buy. I went
to lawyers who are tracking their time and they
said, well, maybe not for us. Talk to the accountants.
And accountants, I had them on national TV. I
was on TV and they tried it. They said, ah, you
know, this is going to work really well for independent
consultants. I went to those people and they
said, have you talked to the lawyers everybody
thought someone else so i had to pivot and instead
of selling the device for a couple hundred dollars
i'd lend the devices out for about twelve hundred
dollars so i'm not using up my inventory i had
to pivot from selling to to creating a service
conducting these time studies and that turned
out to be much more profitable that makes a lot
more sense so how was that journey like pivoting
from selling a product to selling a service now
well no one knows what that service is people
don't stand around a cocktail party saying hey
do you know a guy who can do a time study so
early on it was tough i had some pr because being
an inventor i guess i'm an inventor i got some
media coverage for that and the media loves inventors
well they like serial killers too but anyway
um so so i got some press coverage and uh people
would come to me and say oh we need to do one
of those studies but there's a huge hurdle and
it still exists today is everyone thinks their
employees aren't going to like doing this and
during covid where all these employee monitoring
systems they didn't go over well so mine is fun
people like it it gives instant feedback but
i realized the thing that i had to do was reassure
all of the participants and tell my clients that
the data was always anonymous i never use individuals
names in my reports back to clients and that
made the difference because it reassured the
people okay well it's not going to use my name
i'll be really honest with how i spend my time
so we've got lots of detailed honest data and
a participation rate of 94 that's unheard of
if you give out you know, employee surveys, you're
not going to get to 94%. We do with this. And
we're asking people to track their time for a
couple of weeks. And it's fun. It's easy to use
this feedback. So that was the key is figuring
out that it had to be an honest. But I always
still get people going, are our employees going
to be honest with that? So I have to anticipate
that objection and kind of head it off at the
pass every time. Mark, so I have this stopwatch,
right? I got it on Amazon for a few bucks. How
is me tracking my time using this different than
what you do with your device? That's a useful
tool, and that's going to be very valuable to
you or to other people who want to get one of
those. The time quarter is measuring a whole
bunch of different activities. So as you switch
from one to the other, from a sales call to a
meeting to travel to paperwork, it's easier to
switch back and forth when you're looking at
multiple different activities. 25 to 50 different
activities for most people the other is i have
a methodology for setting these studies up i
have a database i can analyze the results so
i'm not just selling the device or renting it
out but there's a whole methodology and expertise
behind that that's what i own i own three things
some devices the database and the methodology
so you could use you know your device but you're
not going to have access to my methodology or
to that huge database of comparative information.
You've got to figure out what you own, and that's
what I own. Thank you for sharing that. What
would you say that is your goal for being on
the show today, Mark? Just to spread the word,
I'm not selling a course or anything like that.
One of the things I did was some research on...
how men versus women spend their time differently
at work. And I concluded that women are actually
better at managing their time than men. So one
of my goals is to spread the word about that,
that women spend fewer hours at work, that they
spend a greater percentage of time on their top
priority activities, they get things done faster,
and they're closer to their ideals. On those
four different measures, which I've looked at
in great detail, women are better and so at managing
their time so that's my goal is to spread the
word about that and if somebody hires me to do
a time study that's all nice as well awesome
thank you for sharing that um what would you
say that um going through all this process and
help employees go through all these processes
helped you help them So ask that again. What
would you say that you're going through this
process and the employees that go through this
process, right? What has some of the results
has come out of this, these studies and these
methods? Well, the results, sure. The biggest
finding is that people are spending. Few hours
than they would like on their top priority activities
and more on their lower priority administrative
activities. Look, I started way, way back before
some people had voicemail, certainly before the
Internet and laptops and smartphones and so on.
And what we've seen with each new technology,
I joke that we keep inventing more and more ways
to be out of touch with each other. But with
each technology, it brings all kinds of great
benefits. but unanticipated side effects and
spinoffs. So when people say, oh, AI is going
to be great. Well, yeah, but there's some problems
with it as well in terms of people not using
it well. And here's one example, email. Email
didn't exist when I was an employee. It has had
some terrific benefits for keeping us in touch.
However, there's a lot of misuse of email. I've
measured that. So for people who measured an
activity called, unnecessary email it's a huge
3 .4 hours per week so sure email has benefits
but if we're spending 3 .4 hours per week on
unnecessary email that's a big drag and those
kinds of non -value addict added activities will
always be there smart people smart entrepreneurs
and managers and owners find ways to minimize
that administrative time and spend it on what
matters most that that's uh that's definitely
a good insight i would say um because if you
look at our emails right now like 90 of them
already is actually spam right in not even the
work humans talking about the private emails
but if you go on the work i i would say quite
a bit of also comes someone trying to sell you
something or someone's trying to uh just give
you some information that's not needed or necessary
at that time and yes a lot of time does go in
into reading through this going through this
and replying to it maybe replying to your attention
your time so that's a very good discovery mark
there's misuse amongst legitimate use as well
people going on for too long copying too many
people you know if you send one email But you've
copied 15 people. You've sent 15 emails. There's
no evil troll down in the basement who's sending
all these emails all over the place. It's us.
We all need to take responsibility. Sometimes
in my workshops, time management or productivity
workshops, I do a quick survey. I say, how many
bad drivers are out there? And you have hands
go up. And if you ask any. typical crowd you'll
find that the number of bad drivers however they
define it is about 33 about a third then you
say would all the bad drivers please stand up
and like one out of a hundred people do people
attribute bad behavior to others but not to themselves
same with email oh it's everyone sending out
all this junk email or this badly written stuff
it's us so we all need to take responsibility
that's the first step and then in emails for
instance to be very clear to be very precise
and use the right medium don't use an email when
picking up the phone or having a meeting might
be a better way to resolve a problem Thank you
for being here today. I'm really happy that you
tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward
to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue
to move forward. This is going to get more and
more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in
the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.