Divide your income by your hours worked, then delegate or template anything below that rate so your time goes to people.
The idea
Your Effective Hourly Rate shows how much of your week goes to work worth less than your time. Take your average yearly income over the past two years and divide by 2,000 (roughly a year of work hours). Keep the number to yourself, but ask: am I doing things below this rate? In my coaching our rule of thumb was that once your EHR passes $25-50 an hour, you should be hiring a real or virtual assistant at $15-30 an hour.
How to do it
Calculate your EHR.
For each recurring task, ask four questions (best done afterward): Is this above or below my EHR? Do I enjoy it? Do I do it repeatedly? Is there someone who could do it better?
Apply DRY work, don't repeat yourself. Sending the same email twice? It's a template. Same steps with every client? It's a checklist. Same gift more than once? Buy in bulk. Could it be a written playbook someone else runs?
Use IKIGAI as a tiebreaker: what you're good at, what you enjoy, what you can be paid for, what the world needs. Tasks outside that are candidates to hand off.
Then ask the flip side: what are the things above your EHR, and how do you do more of them?
Example
When members hired help, we suggested three starter projects: managing and organizing email, buying gifts for their A-list, and following up with old leads.
Watch out for
Delegating feels risky, so ask what's worse: a typo in a note to an old client, or that client not hearing from you in two years? Aim for progress.
Sources
From Zvi's coaching program
Related frameworks
The Engagement Manager: Dictate a 30-second outline after each meeting, have an assistant draft the follow-up, and spend a few minutes at day's end reviewing and sending.
Templatize Your Actions: Template the repetitive parts of your outreach and personalize at send time, so "what do I say?" becomes "which one do I send?"
The Activity Inventory: List everything you do, then mark what to keep, delegate or drop. The agents we coached cut 30-40% of their list on average.
Who, Not How: Solve consistency by finding a person (an assistant, an accountability partner, a cohort) instead of another method.