Five Ways to Increase Your Productivity by Working Less
Tip 1: Farm out boring work to others.
October 24, 2011 - 12:00 am
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I own or co-own five websites: Right Wing News, Linkiest, Viral Footage, Trending Right, and The Looking Spoon. I write weekly columns for Townhall and PJ Media along with a weekly post for the Huffington Post. I’m also on Twitter here and here, G+, and Facebook. I do 1-3 hours of radio appearances and get 1000 emails in an average week and I also have a hand in a GOP fundraising project that I co-founded called Raising Red. That’s in addition to socializing, dating, working out, consulting, reading, watching TV, writing a book, eating, sleeping, relaxing, and everything else I do in a week.
How do I do all of that? It’s not easy. But here are a few hints that you can hopefully adapt and apply in your own life.
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It’s 4:20 AM and I just spent two minutes reading this article instead of studying for my multidimensional calculus exam next Wednesday.
…and I feel guilty about it.
Damn. Now I spent another 30 seconds writing that post too!
another 10 seconds writing that one.
you are aproaching the first differntial. I say you need some time off from calculus.
I was going to make that joke, but I thought it might be partially derivative.
I do think it’s approaching a limit.
Asymptotically speaking, that is.
Please Larson, let’s not go off on a tangent.
John,
It’s not always easy to say “No” to your boss. I’m one of his two best performers among the 10 people that report to him, and he makes no secret of the fact that he relies heavily on the two of us. But try saying “no” in the corporate world these days when everyone is worried about a layoff. The top brass get more pissed off at the top person who says “no” than the mediocre performer who never challenges them.
I just got to the point that when I was given too much, I simply decided, without saying anything, that I just wasn’t going to get to it. I was already doing 30% more than everybody else, so when I got a task that I felt was too much, I kept quiet initially. I simply said, when it got close to the deadline, “I’m sorry, but I am just so overhelmed with things, I’m not going to be able to get to it.” Only then did it get re-assigned.
The fact is that good performers will continue to get burdened until they FAIL to do something.
Well, that makes you part of the important 20%.
You say the 80-20 rule does not always work out, but try applying the rule to the 20% you have identified as good. There is very little in the top 4% that doesn’t work out to be the best. I always used this method with 2 inboxes and a trash can. Junk went in the trash, stuff that had to be done (4%) went in box 1, stuff that could wait went in box 2 for the future. I found that 80% of box 2 resolved itself and require no effort from me. This article was in the top 1%.
I’ve often wondered why I’m such a “terrible” procrastinator- now I know why. It’s not terrible, it’s adaptive.
I’ve also heard procrastination described as a behavioral adaptation to account for the rapid change and uncertainties of modern life. A few thousand years ago, procrastinators would die. Now, we’re just saving our energy for the really important things.
I agree with everything you said, except maybe #5 in my personal case since I want my job to resemble a hobby as much as possible and my most profitable work isn’t the one I most enjoy.
I didn’t get yet to the point of hiring, but I thought about it. If you hire people to do the routine you free time to grow your business since you’re the one who has the ideas how to do it, but if you’re tied up with the routine you don’t have the time to implement them. Even if you have a very small business (like me) you might get to a level of growth where it takes more than a full time job. At this point the only way to grow it is to hire people to do the routine work and free time for yourself to invest your efforts in growth. It’ll be better for your business, better for you, and you’ll also give employment to other people who need it. If you don’t, you won’t be able to grow your business, you’ll just get stuck where you are.
I came to the conclusion some people have the mentality of entrepreneurs and others of employees. The first type has lots of ideas, even if it’s small ones (like in my case), is thinking out of the box, believes he/she knows how to make things works, likes tarting things, but takes much less pleasure in maintaining them, is easily bored with routine, wants a free hand to do things his/her way, and is more willing to take risks. The other type likes security and a more structured schedule. To feel secure they need a regular paycheck with a fixed sum to arrive on the same date each month, so they can rely on it (though they wouldn’t mind a change if it’s a raise, heh), they’re nervous about taking risks. They have a more compartmentalized life – they want to go to work at X AM and leave work at Y PM and forget all about it until X AM tomorrow (the entrepreneurs take work with them wherever they go, their workplace is inside their minds). Routine makes them feel stable and grounded, and they like to know what kind of work they’ll be doing tomorrow and not leave their comfort zone too often – it gives them a sense of adequacy in their work and of control on their lives and reality. They can be very good and efficient in maintaining things, but quite nervous about starting things out with all the uncertainties involved. These two types have different talents that complement each other, they have complemeting roles, and it’s really a waste of talent to have either of them doing the other type’s role.
I agree completely with the code tip. I’m also web-based and I do my own coding. I can spend long precious months on automating processes, but it’s worth it since it’ll save me time in the years to come.
My problem with time-off and vacations (though I don’t actually have vacations…) is that even if I’m physically away from work it’s still on my mind. I’d like to take a day off and spend it in the sun, but I continue thinking about work even if I try focusing my attention on other things. How do you take it off your mind?
You talk as if Long Tail and Pareto are incompatible – they aren’t, but rather are inverse rules applying in different situations. I use Long Tail with anything that can be automated. Pareto applies if it’s something that sucks time out of my life because time is the one thing I can’t find efficiencies in.
The tech age would now allow for working smarter, not harder. Companies should work out the viability of every position being shared by two working a three day work week with some overlap if necessary.
The wage scales could be reworked where a viable wage rate, inflation adjusted, could be offered.
Family life, stresses would plummet with four days available for home, leisure, travel. Commuter congestions in urban centres would be halved.
Double oversight of the product, service and Japanese like team management principles where emphasis is placed on innovation, team brainstoring toward higher standards of qualitative/quantitative assessment is the result.
The benefits are innumerable.
But it does mean companies and businesses would have to refigure SALARIES into their bottom lines again as hasn’t happened for at least three decades.
There’s no such thing as a ‘jobless recovery’ and the job sharing initiative would halve unemployment figures and reverse the Great Second Dip already in progress.
Real investment is required by the heavyweights, lightweights, et al.
The political rhetoric could move now to an actual plan.
Throwing out a second recommendation: Since American soldiers will be arriving back from Iraq Dec. 31, Christmas should be postponed til that date. All over N. America, perhaps Britain as well.
Ahhhh the old ‘I work(ed)80 to 90 hours’ bullshiate.
Please.
You sound like that idiot Jeff Gitmor at ‘Sales Caffeine’ who claimed he answered 250 emails per day. Well, at a minimum of 1 minute per email to read and reply he was spending 4+ hours a day doing it and that’s just nonsense.
As for 80-90 hour work weeks?
Well, at 80 you’re claiming to work 11+ hours PER DAY, day-in and day-out and at 90 you claiming to work 12+ hours per day, every day and that’s just a lie.
No doubt you put in plenty of hours and have the success to prove it; why do you feel the need to lie about it?
Why is that necessarily a lie? I watched my parents put in 13 hours a day, six days a week (Sunday was only nine hours a day) at the height of a retail store they opened in the late 1970s. I put in plenty of 12 hour days at the financial planning firm I worked for. Lots of entrepreneurs and professionals live and breathe their businesses.
One of the many wise sayings my late father passed on to me was this:
In other words, Mr. Harris, just because YOU have never worked that kind of schedule does not mean that nobody else has.
I have often worked that kind of schedule for many months at at time. It’s grueling, it’s exhausting, it ages one, but it is done by many people. Sometimes because they are true workaholics, sometimes because they have no choice.
In fact, such schedules used to be the NORM for most of humanity.
Your accusation demonstrates two things about you, sir.
1. Arrogance, in that you think YOUR experience is the standard by which all is judged.
2. Ignorance, in that you are unaware that the 40 hour workweek is a very new phenomenon in human history.
@Dave Harris,
I’ve spend more days in the past few years working from 8am in the morning ’til 11pm and sometimes beyond. I take the occasional break to go down the long driveway to get the mail. Sit on the steps outside for 5 minutes with a cup of coffee… stretch… But overall, sitting in front of my computer and doing work easily 12-13 hours a day.
And I’ll agree with Ed that this is the WORST way to be working. Doing this makes me so busy with the next task and the one after that and after that and so on, that creativity and thinking strategically goes completely out the window. You start to react to the fires that are breaking out and become stressed and frustrated very quickly.
I don’t say that I work 12-13 hours a day as any kind of badge to impress you. I’m saying that I’ve done this because I’ve fallen into a trap, and it’s a stupid trap to fall into… and it takes some effort to get back out of it and get yourself back to a normal schedule, organize yourself to be doing the right tasks, and taking time off to recharge.
Do you really need to mow your own lawn? I do (I enjoy the exercise), but if you don’t — hire someone to do it for you. I certainly don’t want to waste half a Saturday every year raking my own yard; so I pay someone to do it. What other household tasks can you do that for?
The problem is, as taxes rise, following this strategy becomes less and less feasible. Western Europeans farm out much less personal work than Americans do, simply because high marginal tax rates make the cost prohibitive. It may make sense now for me to work in an office, and hire someone to mow my lawn; but as the marginal tax on each dollar of income increases, eventually it makes sense to work less, earn less income, and use the extra time to mow my own lawn. High taxes are the death of labor specialization in personal services.
Excellent point. And here, I think, is the path to going “Partial Galt” – work less, do your own lawn mowing, your own cooking, your own car washing, etc. and still have the same amount of money left over at the end while starving the beast.
“Ironically, it always seems to be the person who’s already doing the work of three people who can somehow find a way to get something new done while the folks who are doing about half as much work as they should can never quite get around to it.”
One of the basic principles of life – work flows towards competency.
I really enjoyed this, thank you for the tips!
I find it very disconcerting that you would recommend outsourcing work to India. In fact, I would even go as far as to say it is hypocritical considering conservative platform includes the idea to bring jobs BACK to America. While American workers may cost more, at least their money cycles back into our own society through taxes, spending, etc…Is the wage difference really going to break you? In many ways I don’t see the difference between this and hiring illegals. Which is something else I personally would not do.
Regarding this:
“I find it very disconcerting that you would recommend outsourcing work to India. In fact, I would even go as far as to say it is hypocritical considering conservative platform includes the idea to bring jobs BACK to America. While American workers may cost more, at least their money cycles back into our own society through taxes, spending, etc…Is the wage difference really going to break you? In many ways I don’t see the difference between this and hiring illegals. Which is something else I personally would not do.”
Conservative and Libertarians typically agree on the “Free Market”, if somebody can do it cheaper and more efficiently it benefits you and society as whole better. The reason jobs go oversees is excessive regulations, taxes, and the national minimum wage law. Min. Wage should be done locally or by State. For example, the cost of living in Rural Georgia is different than NYC.
Also, I like the article John. Do you ever hirer writers? The book “4 Hour Work Week” goes over a lot of this. Automation is key!
Need to correct my last statement on minimum wage. I do not believe there should be one. However, if you were going to do one then it should be down locally or by the states.
This was a great list. I think this 2009 FORBES article is also particularly relevant here:
“Recession Smarts Call for Taking It Easy”:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/06/croson-watts-personal-finance-work-paradox.html
My husband works as a financial advisor. He leaves the house at seven in the morning, and returns past seven at night, five days a week. On saturday, he only works 8 hours. When he had a forty hour a week job, he had a second job. when he got home, I went to work. There were exactly two hours in our house- 4am to 6 am when nobody was working at an income- producing job. We also had two infants, close in age, on a two to four hour sleep schedule. I literally cannot remember entire years of my life, from exhaustion. I’m pleased that we have a video-game system with Hexic on it. My husband can play, and get as close to sleep as his body will allow, alert as he is from his quite demanding days’ work.
So, yes, people can indeed work 11 hour days.
I am waiting for the picture of an umemployed Obama eating cheetos and watching network tv re-runs in his underwear. I was going to say cable, but they tend to have shows about guys actually working and making stuff. He just wouldn’t understand.