One of the key aspects of being an effective technical leader is using your time wisely. As a leader, you begin to realize that time is the ultimate limited resource. Nobody has more than twenty-four hours in a day. No matter how big your responsibility, you only have twenty-four hours to spend on everything - work, home, family, self.

One trick I have used is to value my time in an explicit dollar amount, and ask myself “is it worth hiring someone else to do this?” The economics of your organization make this conversation more straightforward. Consider if you and someone else on your team can both do a task that takes two hours, and as the team leader you make more than the other person. In the best interest of the organization, the cheapest resource should do the work. The organization spends least to get the desire results. Although the logic may be straightforward, it isn’t always easy.

I have experienced leaders that believe in the philosophy “I’ll take on the worst work for my team so they can do the fun stuff” or “I can’t ask my team to do something that I won’t ask myself to do.” I understand the sentiment here and the empathy for the team. There is a fundamental problem with thinking in these terms. It implies that you and the resources on your team area all interchangeable. In fact, this is hardly ever the case.

As a technical leader, you have additional responsibilities that nobody else can take on for you. Perhaps your role is to set the technical direction for the team. Or if you are a manager, you are responsible for the people management of three or four of your team members. There is nothing wrong with establishing empathy for your team and the work they do. Never forget that you are not the same as any other member of your team. When you take on the work that anyone on your team can do, you are taking away time that you need to be spending on those responsibilities nobody else can do but you.

I have expanded the explicit “how much is my time worth” trick to extend well past any given organization. Consider not only the hours you spend at work, but also those hours you spend at home with your family. In many cases you may spend many fewer hours with your family than the nine or ten hours you spend at work every day. What price tag would you put on the hour or two you get to spend with your family today? How much would someone have to pay you not to spend an hour with your family or spouse? One hundred dollars? Two hundred dollars?

As you think about time outside of the work organization, it begins to be clear that the value of your time isn’t just in the relative cost of other people who can also do the work. The value in your time is the opportunity cost of where else you could spend your time. The opportunity cost valuation is real both at work and at home. When your day at work is packed and valuable, it is much easier to see the trade-off that taking on “the grunt work” of your team will incur.

Many of us have never challenged ourselves to truly pack our days with the most valuable work. We let our day be a mix of valuable and mundane work. We allow ourselves to go to meetings that are a waste of our time. We spend endless hours on e-mail. We drown in work that keeps us busy without realizing that the return on all that effort isn’t nearly what we’re capable of achieving. Visualize a day that is filled with results only you can accomplish. Visualize a day packed with the most valuable work you can do for your organization. Begin rejecting or reassigning any work that doesn’t meet a high standard of most valuable.

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