70/30 Principle | How To Take Control of Your Schedule
Imagine this: Your team is wrapping up a Monday morning meeting and your manager asks for a volunteer to present the team’s project at Friday’s company-wide meeting. Do you raise your hand?
Scenario 1:
You love public speaking so you immediately raise your hand.
Public speaking falls into your 70%.
Scenario 2:
You feel a knot in your stomach at just the thought of speaking in front of the entire company so you avoid eye contact with your manager.
Public speaking falls into your 30%.
Whether you want to apply GiANT’s 70/30 principle to your personal or your professional life, this tool will help you be more intentional in how you schedule your days.
Braindom is powered by GiANT, a leadership apprenticeship company that offers free leadership-related resources and tools (sign up for free, no hidden fees).
What’s the 70/30 Principle?
Deciding how to live with a healthy balance between tasks that energize (70%) and drain (30%) you is the core of GiANT’s 70/30 Principle.
You’ll know you’re acting in your area of “unconscious competence” (your 70%) when you’re in what is commonly known as the “flow state” or “being in the zone”. In this sweet spot, you feel the most confident and your actions come naturally to you.
But this doesn’t mean that tasks of “conscious competence” (your 30%) are things that you are bad at. These tasks in your 30% are learned skills that take more energy for you to complete than that of a task in your 70%. For instance, you can be great at public speaking but since it falls in your 30%, you need a few hours to decompress afterwards.
As tempting as it sounds to fill your days with tasks that come naturally to you, living a life that’s 90/10 or even 80/20 lacks the challenge you need for growth.
The ideal balance between the 2 categories are, you guessed it – 70/30!
What’s the Purpose?
If you know which tasks will take up more of your energy, you can schedule it earlier or later in your week. Being self-aware of your energy levels will change how you approach your to-do lists.
WARNING – Knowing what falls under your 30% doesn’t give you an excuse to avoid those tasks completely. Knowledge is key but how you act with that knowledge is where you make positive changes.
Have you ever had days where you were exhausted even though you didn’t have a heavy workload? It’s likely that day was filled with more tasks in your 30%.
Scenario: Public speaking is in my 30% and I’m scheduled to speak at a conference every Saturday for an entire month. It’s an unavoidable and necessary part of my career.
Solution 1:
Since I know myself, I mentally prepare for how I will feel post-conference and I let my family know that I’ll be low-energy those Saturday evenings.
Solution 2:
I know I’ll be low energy after the conference so I plan to walk around the area and practice my street photography (my 70%) before heading home.
Focus on what you can control in your schedule and don’t let your schedule control how you live your life.
Get Started Today
CHALLENGE: Grab a piece of paper or open up a digital notepad. Start reflecting on what tasks would fall under the 70% category and which would fall under the 30%. Which tasks are draining? Which tasks are energizing?
Here are some suggestions on how you can apply this to your life:
- Weekly assessments
- Monthly assessments
- Indicator of your work-life balance
- See where your passions lie
- 70/30 + Peace Index (another tool) work well together to get a good understanding of your current state of mind
- Think about trajectory of your day/week and mentally prepare if it’ll be more 30% work
There are many ways to apply the 70/30 principle, figure out which works best for you!
WATCH: 70/30 Principle – 2 minute video explanation of the tool.
