How to Identify High Leverage Activities & Track Impactful Tasks

As a project manager or a business owner, I bet you sometimes struggle with identifying high leverage activities.

And it’s not because you are ignorant or lack self-assessment skills.

It’s because you have so many tasks on your to-do list(s) that you don’t even have time to think about your work in terms of available hours.

Hear me out.

As a living human on planet Earth, you probably have a five-day week, which consists of 120 hours.

If sleep is one of your top priorities (as it should be if your position demands a lot of brain power!), you sleep up to 8 hours per night. This means that you’re left with 80 hours of awake time during the workdays.

If we subtract time for eating, showering, and other basic daily needs, you get a maximum of 60-70 hours per week to work with.

And 70 hours is not that much which is why you have to use this time wisely.

You need to learn to prioritize tasks and allocate time effectively.

If you choose to spend those 70 hours on activities that leave you unsatisfied and don’t contribute to your success or well-being, you can’t expect to be fulfilled or accomplished.

Not every task requires your immediate attention.
There are tasks you can delegate.
Not everything is equally important.

Focusing your time and energy on high leverage activities will increase your productivity and calm your mind. Moreover, by finding high impact activities, you will ensure maximum payoff in terms of effort and results.

To help you prioritize and be your most productive self, in this article, we share a step-by-step strategy on how to identify high leverage activities and track those impactful tasks.

Let’s dive in.

Why is it so challenging to determine high leverage activities?

Because they don’t teach us that at school. 🙂

Jokes aside, once you become a manager, a team lead, or even a business owner, no one hands you the “productivity manual” and explains to you the importance of measuring your tasks through a lens of time and effort. Moreover, there’s no proper guidance on objectively measuring the impact of the tasks or activities you complete.

And Reddit users seem to know this too well.

In the Productivity subreddit, a user asked “How to objectively measure the leverage of an activity/task?”, mentioning they would like to have some examples.

Here are some of the answers:

And the most comprehensive one that highlights the importance of task automation:

From what I can conclude from the users’ answers around the web, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to identifying high leverage activities because no one thinks of the definition of high leverage activities, to begin with.

Which leads me to my next point.

The definition of high leverage activities

In my search for a well-rounded definition of high leverage tasks, I came across the book High Output Management by Andy Grove, former Intel CEO.

One of the book's main focuses is on managing teams more efficiently and helping them dedicate their time to high leverage activities.

Grove starts by effortlessly explaining the definition of leverage: it refers to the impact you get relative to the effort or resource you invested.

Building on that, a high-leverage task is one that produces a significant positive outcome or influence with little time, effort, or resources compared to its results.

Basically, high leverage tasks have a significant impact with less effort, time, or money. Consequently, low leverage tasks require effort but result in minimal impact and can only be beneficial in the short term.

Now, in the book, Grove mentions two types of leverage: personal and organizational.

Personal leverage consists of the knowledge and tools you have that allow you to do more with less effort.

Organizational leverage refers to the teams you lead and the established business structure that allows you to do more with less time or money.

Both are equally important because they complement each other and collectively drive overall effectiveness and success. Personal leverage enhances individual effectiveness, while organizational leverage optimizes collective resources and processes. Together, they go like salt and pepper, improving the flavor profile of every company.

Examples of high leverage activities for managers

If you need examples of high leverage tasks, here are some:

Three questions to get started with high leverage tasks

Having a to-do list doesn’t necessarily help you define your high leverage activities. So, if you have an ever-expanding scroll of tasks and need to identify high leverage ones quickly, I suggest you ask yourself these three questions:

1. What if this task was simple?
2. What if this activity was huge?
3. What else could I be doing?

The first question motivates you to think about streamlining and/or automating the process. If there is a way to eliminate task complexity, you should try it. It also highlights which parts of the task contribute to your goals the most and which are less critical and repetitive.

The second one questions your efforts in activities and makes you wonder about the task’s effects. It allows you to think about the potential “scale” of the impact of an activity and how highly impactful tasks contribute to your goals.

And finally, the third one encourages you to consider alternatives and other tasks that might have more impact. By examining other possibilities, you can identify tasks that offer higher leverage or better align with your strategic goals. Don’t forget to evaluate whether you’re focusing on the most impactful activities or if other tasks could give better results.

3 steps to identify high leverage activities

Here are the foolproof steps that will reveal your high leverage tasks, no matter how long your to-do list is.

#1 List all your responsibilities and track your days

This first step can be broken down into three smaller steps.

1. Writing down all your responsibilities for the day or week will give you a sense of what you need to spend your time and energy on. That’s the first thing you need to do.

The second thing is understanding that sometimes you underestimate or overestimate the time you need to work on those activities. Sometimes, you feel more stressed or rundown, dragging on with tasks and taking longer to complete them than anticipated. And that’s totally acceptable and understandable.

And because you know your energy levels vary from day to day, you should start tracking how you spend your workdays. By doing so, you will get to know yourself better, learn about your laser focus periods, and find areas for efficiency improvement.

When it comes to tracking your days, I recommend you rely on Memtime.

Why?

Because you won’t even know it’s there. “Turning on” your Memtime tracker won’t be just another task on the list, as our app is an automatic time tracker; it starts as soon as you turn on your computer and captures your activity in programs and tabs.

You don't have to know when you started and ended working on each task. Memtime will keep track of everything, showing you exactly how long it took you to complete tasks.

Moreover, it won’t disrupt your work. We promise no alarming notifications or reminders; Memtime lets you focus.

Here are some other amazing Memtime features:

Does Memtime sound like it’s worth the shot?

If it does, you can test it out for 2 weeks without a credit card; create an account with your email, download the app, and you’re good to go.

#2 Take into account your and your team’s strengths

Here's a no-brainer: if you want to make a high impact, you need to perform tasks that align with your knowledge, skills, experience, and interests.

Additionally, when you are efficient and productive, you have enough time to identify and evaluate your team members’ strengths. Once you know their individual strengths, you’ll be able to align their likes and dislikes with their responsibilities and, as a result, increase your team’s productivity.

#3 Think of high leverage tasks in terms of ROI

If you have trouble prioritizing high leverage activities, start with the ones that generate the highest ROI.

Just be careful with the number of activities you put on your list. After all, your working hours per day are limited, so choose wisely. I’d say choosing a maximum of four high leverage activities per day and committing to them is more than enough.

To ensure you complete those activities, use the time-blocking method.

Organize your days into specific blocks of time with each block dedicated to completing a specific high leverage task. The goal is to remain focused and concentrated on one task only, leaving no room for you to jump from one high leverage activity to another.

Wrapping it up

Let’s do a quick metaphoric recap.

If your to-do list is an ocean, spotting which tasks to tackle first may feel like trying to find a tiny island in a raging storm; there are a lot of waves (tasks), and each one is pulling you in a different direction.

So, it’s essential you remember: identifying high leverage activities isn’t about reinventing the wheel; it’s about understanding that the right ones are in front of you. You just have to dig a bit deeper and view the tasks through the lens of time, money, and other resources.

Tasks are not just your responsibilities; they are resource-draining activities that require utilization and impact optimization to achieve your business goals.

Start implementing the strategies we mentioned in the article above, and watch as your overwhelming roll of tasks transforms into a single sheet of highly impactful activities.