Have you heard the admonishment that “Time is Money?”

It is an old saying that exhorts us to make best use of our daily actions in order to reap financial rewards. Taken to heart, it would also imply that being productive will increase the amount of money we acquire. Is there truth to this conclusion?

Tiago Forte believes that there are similarities between productivity practices and budgeting. In an article on his website, Tiago shares thirteen parallels that define successful application of both skills. The first one has to do with aligning with a deeper purpose.

“What do I want my money to do for me?” Everything else depends on the answer: if you value freedom and autonomy, your decisions will look very different from someone who values security and stability.

It’s likewise very valuable to ask yourself, “What do I want my work to do for me?” Besides the obvious answer of “provide a paycheck,” the conclusion you come to has profound implications for where, when, and how you work.

If you value creativity and self-expression, but an ever greater proportion of your to do list is filled with administrative tasks, you will eventually experience dissatisfaction and burnout, regardless of how many hours you work or how much it pays.

Another parallel he shares has to do with shifting our thinking. Tiago believes we should let go of what “should be” and honestly accept what is actually happening.

There is a deeply seated human tendency, when things aren’t going how we believe they “should go,” to simply deny reality. We can make up justifications, rationalizations, and excuses effortlessly, and maintain them even when the impact on our health, happiness, and relationships becomes unbearable.

Simply knowing what is happening is half the battle when it comes to money or productivity. Getting a hold on the “current state” requires letting go of the lenses and stories we use to buffer reality and protect our ego. This is why making a comprehensive Project List is so powerful – it lays out the current state of affairs in objective detail, allowing us to make fully informed decisions.

Learn about the other eleven parallels by reading the rest of the article.

Have you ever got advice? Of course, you have. The real question is how often has that advice been useful?

The problem with advice is that it may be good for some people, but not for all. Also, some advice is helpful at the start of an endeavor but could be restricting as experience is gained. Tiago Forte recently thought about this problem and wrote his conclusions on his blog at Forte Labs. His primary insight concerns the crucial difference between beginner and advanced advice.

In any given pursuit – tennis, chess, jiu-jitsu, painting – there is a hierarchy of skills that you have to acquire one by one to progress. More fundamental skills lie at the bottom, like the base of a pyramid, and serve as a foundation for more advanced skills to be gained later on.

I’ve noticed that people often want to skip the beginner stages and go directly to the advanced ones. That’s an understandable desire – why spend more time as a novice than you have to? But if you don’t have a strong foundation and try to build too high, your efforts will inevitably crumble.

How do we determine the difference between beginner and advanced advice? Tiago suggests the following:

Beginner advice tends to take the form of an extremely simple, impossible to misunderstand, black-and-white rule.

The more advanced you become, the more options and pathways become available to you, each one tailored to a specific scenario. In other words, you have to choose which advanced strategy is right for you.

How what does this mean for productivity skills? Read the full article on the Forte Labs blog to find out.