Applying lessons from the Four Hour Work Week

I’ve been a huge fan of the Four Hour Work Week written by Timothy Ferris. It is one of only a few books that I can say has really changed the way that I view the world. You can read my review but I would urge you to actually take the time and read the book.

Most people that have read the book simply don’t understand how it can be applied to a business (especially their own). With that in mind I have found the following articles about how businesses has applied the principles from the book and the benefits it has provided.

Local business owners swear by time-saving efficiency methods outlined in best-selling book.

Sandia – Being more productive

I’m sure there’s at least one thing in there that you’ll get benefit from. Remember to save time in the future you need to invest some time now, however any thing you invest now will reap much greater rewards in the future than simply letting things continue the way they are now. Work smarter, not harder.

Always being ‘so busy with work’ isn’t a badge of honour, it’s simply being stupid!

Do lots of emails make you feel important?

I’ve been doing some research and contemplation about emails of late. Interestingly, I came across the following article from Slate called – The E-Mail Addict. The article raises a number of issues with email that I think most people, including myself fall, into.

To start with, ever do this?

“people have a tendency to simply open their inboxes and scroll up and down for several minutes, knocking off two or three messages so they feel better”

It is all too easy isn’t it? Not feeling like doing anything, drifting along, what can I do you, you think? Rather than face an unpleasant or difficult task that NEEDS doing it is so much easier simply to scroll through your inbox and delete or reply to one or two emails. You now feel that you’ve done something so you drift off onto something else. Sound familiar?

Secondly, what about this?

“Lots of e-mail makes you feel important”

So, not only is email a good time waster for most workers but the more they get interrupted by email and the more they store in their inboxes the more “important” they feel. Silly isn’t it?

There was a time when emails were are real productivity improvement but sadly they have plainly become an excuse to waste time. Why? Simply, people have allowed the technology to control them. They have lost the discipline of saying enough is enough. They have become so insecure that they need emails to confirm their self worth. Ad infinitum.

Finally, consider:

Today, scholars talk of the “communication enslavement” that occurs when someone sends e-mail to someone else.

I had never really thought of it that way but in many cases this is right on the money. You send some an email and EXPECT a reply and EXPECT the reply instantaneously.

It is interesting if you take a step back and really have a look at the VALUE of Internet communications (in all their forms). Consider whether they are really improving your productivity or are they simply giving you something to do and something to feel good about. It is a brave person that can walk away from emails in today’s overloaded environment but the studies seem to indicate that unless you do you are doomed to life tethered to a machine. That certainly isn’t suppose to be the way it should be, in my my opinion.

I will happily admit that I fall into the same traps as well but I am trying to do something about it. My starting point? The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris (see my review, in my opinion a must read), and yes I am reading it AGAIN!

Proof that emails make you stupid

I came across the following article about the Myth of Multi-tasking in which it says:

“Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”

So there you have it. Actually, I commend that you take the time (don’t multi-task) and read the complete article, which simply shows how humans can’t improve their productivity by multi-tasking. In fact they make it infinitely worse.

To me the rest of the world seems to be chanting “multi-task, multi-task” but the real heroes are those that step back and say “No, I need to concentrate on one thing at a time”. They may suffer ridicule but I bet they get more done than most people.

Most emails are a waste of time

Here’s an interesting article from the NYTimes about information overload. As you can see from the above graphic most information workers waste the greatest percentage of their day on interruptions from things that aren’t urgent. Don’t forget that it isn’t just the time to look at the irrelevant material, it is also the time taken to get back to what you are doing. (Also, interestingly they spend 15% of their day looking for stuff – I’ll talk about that in the future.)

Have you ever stopped to evaluate your own productivity in relation to things like emails and mobile phones? Are you actually “using” the technology or is “using” you?

Technology should be making your life EASIER not HARDER. If it isn’t then perhaps it’s time to take control back or perhaps just ignore it for a while?

Turning the frown upside down

I’m a ‘glass half empty’ kinda guy. Well really I’m a ‘who the hell made this glass twice as big as it needed to be‘ type of guy but for the purposes of this let’s just stick to the half empty metaphor.

Now the other day I was really pissed orf about something (if you will excuse my French, but I was). Now the rational part of my brain was saying – ‘Look this is a total waste of time, there ain’t anything you can do about the situation so just forget it!‘. However the emotional part of my brain was saying ‘Yes I know this is a waste of time but I am still pissed orf and need to vent this‘. A classic power struggle, which in most cases results in my rational mind simply stepping aside until the emotional part cries itself out feeling pissed orf.

For some reason my rational mind just could put up with the wasted energy on this occasion and decided to find a solution. What it came up with was pretty clever. Now we all know we have negative feelings that do no good but we are human beings and that is just the facts but imagine if you could redirect that negative energy into something positive? Let’s say that the next time you get pissed orf instead of dwelling on the fact you redirect that energy into accomplishing or thinking something positive.

I agree that it isn’t going to work every time but I have been giving it a try of late and am impressed with the results. Firstly, redirection gets my mind away from the thing that is pissing me orf and secondly I feel much better actually accomplishing or thinking about something positive. Every time I feel my emotions about a situation rising up again I redirect that energy to something far more rewarding.

Don’t get me wrong, you just can’t flick a switch and redirect the emotion it takes a bit of practice and patience but I can see the benefits even after a short period of time. I know that I am not always going to succeed in my aim but I think it is good a solution to at least try. Firstly, my rational mind can take the negative energy and put it towards something more useful and my emotion mind can vent all that it wants since it is being used for good and not bad.

That’s the theory anyway.

What you can’t afford to waste

Can you tell me something that you never get back? Something that is gone whether you use it effectively or not? If you said time then you’re right. It amazes me these days that people constantly claim they don’t have enough time yet they fill their existence with useless and wasteful activities. In a era when technology is supposed to set us free what people don’t seem to realise is that they are becoming more and more a slave to it.

Most modern technology is designed to be interrupt driven. It is designed to make you stop whatever you are doing and pay attention to it. Don’t believe me? What do you do when your mobile phone rings? Answer it. What do you do when an email comes into your inbox? You stop what you are doing to read it. You allow yourself to be on instant messenger not to keep in touch but to allow other people with nothing better to do to interrupt you. Look at things like Facebook and Twitter (which I have been evaluating recently). Are these productivity tools? In some cases maybe but I can tell you I’m sick of getting poked, asked to play Texas Hold’em poker and fight it out in Dope Wars. Don’t you people have anything better to do?

See what I mean? We are allowing technology to dominate our lives. We are allowing it to dictate what we are doing. How the hell can you hope to produce anything of quality when you are constantly being interrupted? Don’t forget it is not just the interruption that you have to deal with it is the requirement to get back to what you are doing that also takes time. The crazy thing is that technology actually allows us to be in control but we don’t seem to use it. Mobile phones have voice mail, emails get saved until we need them and so does stuff on Facebook and Twitter. We however seem in such an almighty rush to respond to thing immediately.

One of the best books I have read recently is The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. He argues we should be working less and enjoying life more. He argues that most people are simply seeking to interrupt your day because they are bored and need something to do and worst of all they expect an instantaneous response. If you read the book and then step back and think about what he is saying you’ll find it makes a lot of sense. We all have a ‘dance card’ (hours in the day) that only is so big and we can only fit so much on it. You need to decide the highest value items that are going on the card and accordingly the lowest value items that don’t belong on the list. The only way you are going to fit more onto your ‘dance card’ is to be more efficient with your time and guess what? Some stuff just ain’t going to fit on!

My advice is to start valuing your time more, because if it has no value then you’ll give it away for free and people will just keep coming back for your handouts. Focus on what you want to achieve and plan to achieve it. Ask yourself if you are making the best use of your time because, guess what? Even if you aren’t you are never going to get it back again!

Without this you’re screwed

I think that I have mentioned this topic here before but some recent personal experience has brought the issue to the forefront of my thinking again. All the management, how-to and motivation books that you read these days seem to over look on very important aspect – your health.

If you aren’t healthy then you can’t function, you can’t earn a living and you are generally a burden to someone else. Most people skate happily through life not really taking care of themselves until it is too late. Consider if you bought a car ran into the ground. It isn’t going to last nearly as long as one that gets serviced regularly. I doubt there are many people out there who would do that to a car they own these days but many let their health slide in a similar fashion. Sure, regular service costs time and money but over the long run the productivity benefits are HUGE. I think that the same applies to your health.

If you are an integral part of a small business then imagine how that business would operate if you weren’t there? Maybe it wouldn’t be able to generate income, then what would happen? This is not to mention any personal costs that may also arise. The older you get the more chances there are of things going wrong, especially if you don’t take the time to maintain your health. Ever noticed the difference between when you feel run down and when you feel rested? The better your health the more able you are to cope with life’s stresses and strains. Put simply, your constitution is far more resilient with a little care.

Problem is I think that nobody is really responsible for your own health expect you. It is something that is all too easy to neglect. The longer you let your health fall away the harder it is to get it back. It is not impossible mind you but it becomes harder with each day that you choose to neglect it.

My question to you is, have a regular personal health plan in place? Sure, you may have a business plan but do you have a health plan, because in many cases without your health you have no business. You don’t have to train like an Olympian to win a gold medal but you do need to do something on a regular basis to maintain the best health you can. The easiest way is simply to incorporate as a regular part of a day. Sure, doing research on the net for a solution to problem is great but if you are laid up in and can’t do that how does that help you. It is important to see you health as a business asset and continue to work to improve it. If you don’t then probably nothing else is really going to matter is it?

A better place than my inbox

Having recently been working on a section for my Windows Sharepoint Services Operations Guide (sorry, but the more plugs the higher the rating in Google) about Windows Sharepoint Services accepting inbound emails from outside the organization, I was wondering what would be a good application of this feature. BING. I know, how about all those SBS monitoring reports we get sent from customer servers? Not only will they be stored in one location but with Sharepoint they also get index so we can search them.

The more I started to think about this idea the better it became. Normally with SBS server reports (and other monitoring reports we receive) they merely end up in our inbox for review. However, if they appeared in a Sharepoint document library then we could add additional metadata. What do I mean by this? Well, I could add a field that allows me to select whether the report has been reviewed or whether it has errors that require further investigation. It also means that we can sort and categorize the information much quicker. Not only that, thinking about this a little more, it would also be possible to kick off a Sharepoint workflow as each item arrived. This maybe sending an alert to somebody to review the reports, then moving them to an archive location elsewhere in Sharepoint and so on. With Sharepoint the possibilities are really endless.

I think that this is a really good example of how an IT business like ours can use Sharepoint to improve productivity and efficiency. All you need is a little imagination and Sharepoint of course.

The only thing that you need to keep in mind is that if you have installed Windows Sharepoint Services v3 on your SBS server then you WILL NOT have the facility to receive inbound emails to Sharepoint. It is another great reason why a standalone Sharepoint server in a SBS network is a much better idea that one on the SBS server (not always possible I admit but don’t forget Virtual PC as an option). But then if you had my Windows Sharepoint Services Operations Guide you’d know that wouldn’t you?