The List on the Refrigerator

Brittany and I were sitting at the kitchen table one evening, both of us tired in the specific way that comes from working hard at things you don’t actually want to be doing. Not burned out. Just quietly resentful of our own schedules.

So we made a list.

Every household task we could think of. Then next to each one, we wrote whether we liked it, were indifferent to it, or hated it.

It took about twenty minutes. What it revealed took longer to process.

I apparently enjoy doing dishes, wiping down counters, and taking out the trash. Something about the physical completion of it. Brittany enjoys feeding the dogs, cooking, and vacuuming. Fine. Those stay where they are.

But lawn mowing? We both hate it. Deep cleaning the house? Hate it. Picking up the dog situation in the backyard? Absolutely not.

We hired people for all three. Within a week.

People ask what it costs.

There is a version of building a business where you do everything yourself. Because you can. Because it feels responsible.

That version caps out fast. At you.

Every hour you spend on a $20–$50 task is an hour you didn’t spend on the work that actually moves the number.

This is not about luxury. It is about math.

Most people don’t have a time problem. They have an allocation problem.”

The flip side of this, the part most people skip, is what you do with the hours you free up.

Hiring someone to clean your house and then spending that time scrolling is not leverage. It is just spending money.

The hours you recover have to go somewhere strategic. More lead generation. More time in the conversations that actually close. More time in the activities that refill you rather than drain you.

I call these Energy Advancers. Not tasks that drain you, but inputs that restore you. Conversations, thinking time, distance from the day-to-day. That’s where clarity comes from.

Brittany’s version looks different. A lunch with a friend she hasn’t seen in three months. A morning without a calendar. A good fiction book. These are not indulgences. They are inputs. The output is a version of both of us that functions better in every room we walk into.

We calendar these the same way we calendar client appointments. Six to twelve months out. If it is not on the calendar it does not happen, and if it does not happen the deficit shows up in the work.

The whiteboard in our kitchen tracks the big goals. The list on the refrigerator tracks who does what.

Both of them are systems. Both of them are how we protect the energy the business actually runs on.

Figure out what drains you. Hire it out or cut it entirely. Figure out what refills you. Protect it the way you protect your margin floor.

Your business doesn’t run on time. It runs on energy.

Protect it like revenue.

Here’s where you can get our 100+ touch program.

Click here to get the FREE success schedule that allowed me and my wife to become net worth millionaires by selling real estate within 3.5 years, with no money, and in a brand new market.

e: jon@movewithmomentum.com / movewithmomentum.com