The Globe and Mail Kevin Mulhern Andy/iStockPhoto / Getty Images The key to productivity “is in not spending time, but in investing it,” best-selling author Stephen R. Covey once said. So, why is it that the average financial advisor spends more than 53 hours a week working on many tasks that could easily be automated and free them up to focus on the things they would rather be doing, like building solid relationships with their clients? Specifically, the U.S. research from which that figure was obtained suggests advisors spend an average of 4.2 hours a week on administrative tasks, six hours a week on client service tasks, and nine hours a week prospecting for new clients, all of which can be cut down significantly with new and emerging automation tools.