I tracked every working minute over the last 8 weeks (yes, I'm psycho)

And this is what I learned.

My most toxic trait is that I think I can do it all, and my second most toxic trait is that I think I can do it all alone.

I’m a generalist (go figure) and 99.9% of the time I see this as a strength. But lately my martyr complex and the urge to smash through everything alone has put a stranglehold on my ability to grow my platform, offering and impact. One minute I’m like “I can just quickly do this” and the next minute I think “it’ll be faster if I punch this out myself”, and before I know it, my creative energy and will to live is leaking out my eyeballs.

Ah, the age old curse of the generalist rears its ugly head yet again!

8 weeks ago, in a fit of frustration at my inability to get out of my own way and let go, I embarked on a time tracking test of sorts. My goal was threefold:

1. Understand how I spend my time, and on what

2. Get a clear picture of what I could outsource, and to who

3. Run an experiment that I could share with you all

I downloaded Harvest and set up my time tracking categories across four key business areas:

• Acquisition: anything I do to acquire new customers or clients, such as sales calls, content creation, podcast interviews and marketing campaigns

• Building: anything related to creating new offers or income streams, or evolving existing assets

• Delivering: time spent on calls with mentoring clients and my group program

• Operating: the boring stuff like emails, scheduling, admin, invoicing, month end

The results

This week I entered nerd mode and, along with my trusty companion Claude, analysed 8 weeks of data. Here are the cliff notes:

• I worked 325 hours over 8 weeks. That's an average of 40.7 hours a week with a high of 50 and low of 30 hours

• I only had 3 full days off in 8 weeks which sounds insane, but I love working weekends and often do half days during the week to balance things out

• My shortest day was 26 minutes and longest was 12.5 hours, but my average was 5.9 hours (see! balance!)

The first four weeks of my time trial fell during Cohort 2 of The Portfolio Career Build Method and I deliberately scaled back all mentoring and client work during this block. Pretty much all my effort went into delivery (making the cohort the best learning experience on planet earth) and acquisition (driving new eyeballs and leads to my online universe). I also spent very little time on emails and admin because of this.

To get more granular:

• My biggest time investment was The Portfolio Career Build Method at 132 hours over 8 weeks, almost all of it in the first 5 weeks while cohort 2 was running

• I spent 6 hours on average per week writing my Substack, with a min of 4 and max of 8 hours. I wrote 27 out of 56 days

• I spent around 4 hours per week on other content. Between this and my Substack I’m spending 25% of my working time on showing up online

• Admin and emails were only 6% of my week, a lot less than I assumed before I started tracking

• I spent 1.5 hours each week on planning and reviews. I do this religiously

• I spent very little time or energy on building new stuff

Some observations:

• There’s no “normal” week or month in a portfolio career. My first four weeks were delivery heavy and my next four were acquisition heavy. This variation is pretty stock standard. Everything runs in seasons and the way you allocate and structure your time should serve the season you’re in

• I spend time acquiring customers like it’s going out of fashion; 23% of my time in the first four weeks and 58% in the second four. This is because I know first-hand that no leads is no fun, and even though it’s tempting to let networking, sales or content creation slide when delivery ratchets up, a pitiful pipeline is far more painful than doing lead gen each week

• That being said, I do very little sales or outbound anymore. I’ve been pouring my thoughts into the internet’s gaping mouth for 958 days, and I’m at a stage where pretty much every new client, customer and opportunity comes to me because of my online body of work. Compounding effort, the great eighth wonder of the world!

• Non-urgent-but-important stuff always falls to the wayside if you don’t actively protect it. I didn’t protect any time over the last 8 weeks for building anything new. Unless you’re careful, the work that's good for you but doesn't provide an immediate dopamine dose will get squeezed out by everything else

• Tracking my time changed who I’m hiring and what for. I thought I needed someone to exclusively help with operational stuff, but turns out I need support with delivery stuff too. Such is the unbridled joy of using data to help you make better decisions

Acquire, deliver, build, operate

Every portfolio career or business requires four humming functions: acquiring customers, delivering value, building new pathways and keeping the lights on.

It’s a worthwhile exercise to figure out your split across each. How much of your week goes into acquiring new work (be honest with yourself)? How much to delivering what you've already sold? How much to building the things that will compound over time? How much to making sure it doesn’t all fall apart?

It’s also a worthwhile exercise to identify where your psychotic tendencies and toxic traits lie, because truth be told, we all have them. Do you procrastinate acquisition at all costs?

Do you want to do everything yourself?

Do you refuse to let go?

Have you maniacally spent 8 weeks tracking every second of your working life?

Have you dedicated 4-8 hours this week to writing a Substack about how you spend 4-8 hours each week writing a Substack?

Oh wait!

Those toxic traits belong to me.

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Here’s a run through of how I structure my time and energy each week (apologies in advance if this is boring to you):

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🫶🏼 When you’re ready, here are two ways I can help:

• How to future-proof your career in the world of AI: a free 14 day email series teaching you how to diversify your income and risk, and build a portfolio of skills, opportunities and income streams. Sign up here.

• The Portfolio Career Build Method: a transformational 6 week program that helps high performers rethink their approach to work, and design a portfolio career of multiple interests and income streams that deeply aligns with who they are. Officially launching July 2026! Sign up to learn more.

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