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“It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” - William of Occam
The End of Time Management
Ferris says the key to time management is- to forget about it. We should not be concerned with doing more in each day, trying to fill every second with some type of ‘busy’ work. “Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.”
For the NR, it is not only possible to accomplish more by doing less, it is mandatory. Enter the world of elimination.
Now that you know what you would do with your free time, it is important to free that time up, while maintaining or increasing your income.
Ferris addresses how to do this, speaking to employees and to entrepreneur’s. Employee’s specifically have a difficult time, because they are required to look ‘busy’ from 9-5, regardless of how efficiently they use their time (for example, accomplishing their ‘real’ work in 1/4 of the time).
He explains in detail the difference between being effective and efficient- and that neither is important for an unimportant task- but extremely important for the tasks which bring you closer to your goals.
Ferris introduces us to the Pareto Principle, devised by Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who died in 1923. Pareto called it the 80/20 principle- 80% of the wealth is owned by 20% of the people, 80% of results in life come from 20% of the actions. For the NR this means that 20% of their ‘work’ can produce 80% of their results.
We free up more time by applying this principle to the work we are doing. What 20% of our activities are producing 80% of the results? What can we eliminate? What can we focus on to increase productivity?
Ferris delves into the 9-5 myth. Society expects corporate employees to shuffle papers from 9-5, trying to look busy. There is no incentive to use time well.
Parkinson’s Law states that a task will swell in importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. If you have 8 hours to work, you will find activities to do for those 8 hours. But if you were only given 2 hour, you would accomplish what was really necessary in the allotted time.
Here are some questions to help you eliminate the unnecessary:
1. If you had a heart attack and had to work only two hours per day, what would you do? What tasks are most important?
2. If you had a second heart attack and had to work only two hours per week, what would you do?
3. What are the top-three activities that I use to fill time to feel as though I’ve been productive?
4. Learn to ask, “If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?”
The Low-Information Diet: Cultivating Selective Ignorance
“It is important to learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most are all three.”
Creating a low-input diet helps to increase output- which is necessary to create your ideal lifestyle. Most of the information we come across is not necessary for reaching our goals.
Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence. The challenge is to look at everything you come across and see if it doesn’t fall into one of those categories.
How do you create a low-information diet?
1. Go on an immediate one-week media fast.
2. Develop the habit of asking yourself, “Will I definitely use this information for something immediate and important?”
3. Practice the art of nonfinishing that which is boring or unproductive.
Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal
“Doing the important and ignoring the trivial is hard because so much of the world seems to conspire to force crap upon you. There are a few routine changes you can make to alter this.
Eliminate:
Time wasters- things that can be ignored with little or no consequence, such as meetings, discussions, phone calls, and emails that are unimportant.
Time Consumers- repetitive tasks such as reading and responding to email, making and returning phone calls, personal errands, etc.
Empowerment failures- instances where someone needs approval to make something small happen.
Time Wasters
-turn off the audible alert for your email
-only check email twice a day, and never in the morning, always after 12:00 noon
-use two telephone numbers, one urgent, one non-urgent. Check your voicemail only twice daily.
-get to the point when people do call, “I’m sorry, I only have five minutes, what do you need?”
-avoid all meetings that do not have a clear objective.
-direct contacts to this preferred order of communication: email, phone, then in-person meetings.
-respond to voicemail via email whenever possible.
-meetings should be held to make decisions about predefined situations, not to define the problem
Time Consumers
-batch tasks together where ever possible. Read and respond to email during ‘batched’ time, check voicemails, complete errands, etc.
Empowerment Failures
“The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.” -Bill Gates
-give those you manage or who work for you more power to make decisions, thus creating fewer interruptions in your time.
-if you are an employee who is micro-managed, have a talk with your boss so that you can have more responsibility. (Ferris has good ideas of how to do this well in his book).
Summary: Learn to recognize and fight the interruption impulse.
Step III: A is for Automation
