Moving beyond academia, another budgeting strategy I’ve seen used with great success is the idea of deep-to-shallow work ratios, which I first proposed in my book Deep Work. The idea is to agree in advance with your supervisor how many hours each week should be spent on the core skilled activities for which you were hired, and how much on other types of shallower support or administrative work. The goal is to seek the balance that maximizes your value to your organization. You then measure and categorize your work hours and report back how close you came to achieving your optimal ratio.
