How Thinking Like a Billionaire Doubled My Productivity: The Inversion Principle Explained

Time is money. As a matter of fact, it is more important than money.

We all agree on that.

So why is it so hard to manage time if it’s something we would drain our bank accounts to get back?

Charlie Munger used the inversion principle to avoid a lot of pitfalls in life, and when a client of mine asked the other day how to better manage his time, I broke it down for him like this.

Here are 7 inversion principles of time management (followed by 7 simple steps at the end to get your greatest asset under control):

1. If someone wasn’t good with money, why is that? They never audit their spending.

Someone that is not good at managing time, doesn’t audit their time.

2. Something that saves time is having a general routine you follow, not only in the morning, but the evening.

Someone that is not good at managing time, does not have a routine in the morning or evening and just goes about their day like a flower in the wind.

3. Something that saves time is planning the day, week, and month.

Someone that isn’t good at managing time never plans or thinks ahead to the next day or next week. They live in the moment — why? Because they are distracting themselves from reality with something.

4. Something that saves time is meal prepping so for one, you don’t have to take time to make the food later and for two, you don’t have to take the time to think.

Someone that isn’t good at managing time doesn’t meal prep. They decide what they’ll eat for lunch when lunch gets here. They’ll decide about dinner once the family gets home for the night.

5. Something that saves time simplicity and using a very simple system to organize the day, reminders, and schedules.

Someone that isn’t good at managing time is always looking for the fanciest app and signing up for free trials.

6. Something that saves time is not consuming mindless content.

Someone that isn’t good at managing time reaches for their phone when they first wake up, reaches for their phone when they park their car, reaches for their phone when there’s any down time.

7. Something that makes you feel like you’re saving time is meditation and grounding.

Someone that isn’t good with managing time doesn’t take the time, or feel like the have the time, to be still for 10 minutes. We’d know if we have time if we audited our time but since we never did step 1, we’re not able to optimize.

Now that we have a few things to look at, there’s a few things that really jump out to me.

Time management has nothing to do with managing time. Time management has everything to do with small habits. Micro shifts.

The only thing that is closing to “managing time” is auditing your time (super important and why it was listed first).

To sum it up, this is how you can make small habit shifts to get better at managing time:

1. Audit your time, ruthlessly and fearlessly (I say fearless because you might not like what you find).
2. Create a routine — doesn’t matter what it is. Create it and stick to it. Audit this routine weekly to make sure it serves you.
3. Part A — Plan your week and month ahead. Projects for the week. A power list of must get done things. Goals to accomplish. Part B — Become aggressively aware when you are escaping reality with distractions. Get curious.
4. Plan your meals. Breakfast and lunch should generally be the same every day. Dinner can be a meat, something starchy and half a plate of green veggies. Templatize it.
5. Google Calendar has everything you need and on the desktop, it has places to create tasks and Google Keep — random notes. IF YOU MUST, Fantasical (it’s what I use).
6. No phone for the first 30 minutes of waking up. Turn your phone to grayscale throughout the day. You’re less likely to doom scroll with everything gray.
7. Meditate 10 mintues everyday and if you’re really busy, make it 20. Breath work at very mininum. I use an app called iBreath.

It’s not one thing, it’s microshifts over time that compound and create the biggest changes.