I was shopping for some lollies (candy) to make up some party bags for some friends of ours who were visiting from the US.

As a Last Minute Lucy, you can imagine I didn’t have a lot of time to get the goods.

Standing at the register to pay, the lollies were advertised as 3 for $5 but the cash register showed $6.

The cashier called for help.

“It’s okay. It’s only $1”, I said. “I’ll just pay the $6.”

“No. No. If you’re entitled, I want you to have the $1”, he replied.

Inwardly, I groaned.

“Do you know what a dollar is worth to me in terms of time?” I thought to myself.

And there I stood for a full 10 minutes while he checked the price and fiddled around with the codes to save me a dollar.

Now I am not saying that money isn’t important and not to be conscious of what you spend and getting the best deal when you can, my point is that sometimes the Opportunity Cost is way more than the actual dollar cost.

In fact, in my recent roadshow of presentations with the Association of Consulting Surveyors, I include a session on “The 4 critical words to keep you focused and on target”.

The 4 words are “High Revenue, High Impact”.

Take a look at your work and all the tasks you do and ask yourself, for each task, whether what you are doing is “High Revenue or High Impact”.

High Revenue means the task is going to result in you earning high revenue, whether that be marketing activities such as speaking or actually doing the work or creating the strategies.

High Impact means the task is going to result in a big Return on Investment (ROI) for you or the business, such as training your team so you can delegate or creating policies and procedures that people can follow. 

This week I encourage you to ask yourself, “What is a dollar worth?” 

Take a look at your tasks and find a way to delegate or dump the ones that are not High Revenue or High Impact.