As an entrepreneur, you might often wonder if all the hours you devote to your business are yielding any results at all. I can relate. During my freelancing days, a busy schedule often meant a full calendar, and being busy was synonymous with being productive. It became apparent to me only later that getting busy meant I was actually preoccupied with many low-value tasks. After coming across Tonia Kendrick’s work, I learned a great deal about concentrating on my most rewarding activities, which completely overhauled how I approached my workday. In this post, I will provide a friendly, practical guide from my own learnings that will help you identify and prioritize the tasks that matter most and help you scale your business.
Why Focus on Profitable Activities?
Out of all types of business activities, some tasks will generate revenue while others will only consume your time. Think about listing every single email in an inbox… At some point, some emails just need to be deleted. When my side hustle was getting off the ground, I spent more hours adjusting the design elements of my websites instead of taking care of far more important things like pitching clients. Profits can be increased easily through the optimization of time and energy expended only by prioritizing high-return activities. Balance is key, especially when profit margins are tight. Solopreneurs like us need to streamline to thrive, as Kendrick puts it. Let’s explore how to discover those game-changing activities.
Step 1: Track Your Time to See the Truth
What gets measured gets managed. With software like Controlio, I was able to measure how I spent my days. It turned out I was wasting over 10 hours each week on mindless administrative tasks! Controlio and even simple spreadsheets can track time spent on marketing, product creation, client calls, and many more tasks. After a week, you should analyze the most time-consuming activities and their relation to income. That level of clarity is the first step in prioritizing profit.
Step 2: Calculate Your Return on Investment (ROI)
Knowing where your time goes is only half of the equation. Understanding what’s paying off is the other half. For every task, ask yourself, “How much revenue does this generate for every hour spent?” During one of my analyses regarding freelance writing, I discovered that writing blog posts for clients was paying $100 per hour, while social media posts were barely hitting $20. To compute ROI, take revenue divided by time. Shift your focus to high-return tasks like sales calls instead of low-ROI busywork, like over-tweaking for perfection or non-essential meetings.
Step 3: Recognize Tasks That Generate Revenue
Usually, productive business tasks can be separated into three categories: direct revenue activities, like product sales; lead generation, like marketing; and client retention, such as follow-up emails. In my case, content creation and client pitching were the best revenue-generating activities. Make a list of all your business tasks and organize them by degree of impact. If a task does not fit into any of the categories, challenge its usefulness. As an example, I stopped spending hours formatting newsletters and shifted to automated templates, which allowed me to reclaim time to work on more critical revenue-generating activities.
Step 4: Eliminate or Delegate Everything Else
This is the most difficult part: letting go. I used to manage my own invoicing and spent countless hours on non-billable work. Hiring a virtual assistant to handle invoicing gave me back many hours. Use time-tracking data to identify low-value repetitive admin tasks with outdated systems that are best automated with tools like Zapier. Tasks that do not contribute to generating revenue must be eliminated without mercy. That transition increased my focus on writing and income.
Step 5: Maintain Your Systems to Stay Focused
Your focal point is your systems. I now practice time-blocking, which allows me to reserve the mornings for high-ROI activities like client work while saving admin tasks for the afternoons. Applications such as the Controlio app can assist in scheduling and monitoring your time blocks to ensure your focus remains on priorities. Set up periodic weekly reviews to check your progress and adjust your focus. It was Tonia Kendrick’s “Organized Business Toolbox” that inspired me to design a simple spreadsheet that helped me track my top tasks, thus aiding my motivation and providing accountability.
Final Note: Increase Profits While Working Smarter
Identifying the most profitable activities for your business is akin to finding the hidden golden tickets; these are the tasks that yield the greatest benefits for the least input. Changing your systems and utilizing time tracking, ROI calculations, focusing on revenue drivers, and the Controlio app to excel during the workday can greatly help. Personally, my income doubled without an increase in hours after I shifted my focus from mindless administrative tasks to client work. Begin with tracking your time for a week and focusing on one high-ROI task. What is your most profitable activity? Implement the methods that I’ve described and reach out to me with your results for how they propelled your business in 2025.