1. Accept the Truth: Working harder on the wrong things won't increase your income 2. Audit Ruthlessly: Identify and eliminate low-value activities 3. Focus Strategically: Invest freed time in high-visibility, high-impact work 4. Document Religiously: Make your value visible to compensation decision-makers 5. Think in ROI: Every hour invested should build your market value
The $100K productivity mindset isn't about working more—it's about working on what matters. In the next chapter, you'll learn to systematically assess your work using the VALUE framework, identifying exactly which changes will yield the highest income returns.
Remember Maria from the beginning of this chapter? Six months after adopting these principles, she received a $32,000 raise and a promotion. Her weekly hours dropped from 70 to 45. The difference? She finally started working on the right things.
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# Chapter 2: The VALUE Assessment
Kevin C. was a puzzle to his coworkers. As a senior software engineer at a tech startup, he seemed to work less than everyone else. No late nights. No weekend heroics. Yet in three years, his compensation had grown from $120,000 to $235,000—nearly double his peers' increases.
When pressed for his secret, Kevin would smile and say, "I only work on things that matter." But what exactly did that mean? How did he decide what mattered?
The answer lay in a systematic approach he'd developed—what I now call the VALUE Assessment. This chapter will teach you Kevin's exact method for evaluating and optimizing your work for maximum income impact.