by jayhathaway on March 20, 2010
One of the most eye-opening articles on productivity I’ve ever read is Scott Young’s piece about four-hour workdays. I knew I was spending way more time “working” than actually doing work, but it didn’t occur to me exactly how much time I’d been wasting — an entire half-day, it turns out!
Scott does a great job of outlining what it takes to finish work by noon and knock off for the rest of the day, and I think his ideas are well worth discussing here on TaskBlog.
So, how is this magical half-day achieved?
Change Your Perspective
When you have a 9-to-5 mentality, you’ll spread your work out until 5pm, every time. Work expands to fit the time you have to do it. If you tell yourself you only have until noon to do the few hours of real work in your day, you’ll probably be able to make it happen. As a corollary to this, don’t think of your pay in terms of hours. Instead, think in terms of days. If you do a day’s work before noon, pay yourself for a day’s work. It’s only fair!
Don’t Add More Work
This is my favorite of Scott’s points: it’s tempting to feel like you need to find more work to do, just because you have time. Don’t go down that road. You’ll eventually get better at figuring out how much you can do in 4 hours. Scott likens it to a 400m sprint. You run as hard as you can for that 400 meters, but when it’s over, it’s over. If you don’t get everything done, roll it over to the next day.
Figure Out How Much You’re Doing Now
To know how much you can do in 4 hours, figure out how much actual work you’re doing in a day. As a writer, I’ve got it easy here: I can just keep track of my daily word count. If you measure what you’re doing, you’ll have some evidence that working fewer hours doesn’t mean you’re being lazy.
The real reason I love Scott’s idea so much is that it kills procrastination. Working for 8 hours without falling prey to distractions is practically impossible for me, but working really hard until noon doesn’t sound intimidating at all. I’m glad someone came along to tell me that 4 good hours are better than 8 lazy ones.
Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to The Morning News, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.
Photo credit – thirstian
by jayhathaway on March 13, 2010
When you’ve got a stressful week ahead, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by everything that has to go right. For everything you have to do, there’s probably some other task that depends on someone else. It’s frustrating when outcomes are totally out of your hands, but there are ways to deal with it.
The most important thing you can do is shift your time and attention to the things you can control. Sure, that includes the things on your to-do-list, but it also includes your attitude and your communication with the other people you’re counting on to make sure things get done.
If you make a list of the things that are stressing you out, and cross off the ones over which you have no control, I bet you’ll end up with a much less fearsome list.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know whether you actually have the ability to influence a situation. That means you have to pay attention to the way your bosses, employees, teammates or clients work. Be aware of whether sending an email is going to be enough to get the results you want, or whether you’re dealing with someone who needs a bit more hand-holding.
More importantly, make sure you’re on the same page about the division of responsibility. What’s actually your job, and what has everyone else agreed to do? If the answers are ambiguous, talk it out until you’re sure everyone is on board. Communication saves a lot more time than it takes, and that’s time you can spend on your own work.
Also, even when you can’t control something (like funding, deadlines, or someone else’s part of a project), you can still control your attitude toward the situation. Remember that it takes more time to freak out about things you can’t control than to finish the tasks you can.
The upshot of all of this is that sometimes we have a false sense that we’ve taken on too much responsibility, when we’re actually just worrying about things we can’t (or shouldn’t) control.
Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to The Morning News, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.
Photo credit – secretlondon
by jayhathaway on March 10, 2010
There’s a famous quotation, attributed to Voltaire, that goes “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” I couldn’t agree more. One of the biggest obstacles to getting something done well, or done at all, is trying to get it done perfectly.
If you’re struggling to overcome your own perfectionist impulses, you might be interested in The Cult of Done Manifesto. Don’t worry, it’s not some 700-page manuscript. It’s a list of simple principles put together by noted gadget-maker and electronics hacker Bre Pettis (along with Kio Stark).
The coolest part? They wrote it in just 20 minutes.
Here’s what’s in the Cult of Done Manifesto:
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
- Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Once you’re done you can throw it away.
- Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
- People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
- Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
- Destruction is a variant of done.
- If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
- Done is the engine of more.
For my money, the crucial part of the Manifesto is “Laugh at perfection.” Getting through something and making mistakes is often the best, and most interesting, way to get something done. The result might not be perfect, but at least you have something you can start editing, instead of a blank page. Just don’t start editing it until a version of it is … well, done.
“Okay, but this won’t work for me,” you say, “Because my job demands perfection. I’m not allowed to make mistakes.” That’s a fair point, but I’d bet that turning things in on time is also expected at your job. If all perfection gets you is a blank page and a headache about deadlines, it might be time to try a different approach.
What are your thoughts on the Cult of Done Manifesto?
Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to The Morning News, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.
by jayhathaway on March 6, 2010
Even when you’re totally satisfied with your job, you’ll occasionally run into a task that you just. don’t. want. to. do. For lack of a better word, this task sucks.
You can get through it and make it less painful, though. And once you do, you’ll be able to move on to the stuff you enjoy doing, and ultimately be more productive.
Here are a few ways to attack tasks you hate:
Get Rid of It
The first, fastest, and most direct way to deal with an unpleasant task is to drop it entirely. Ask yourself whether you can delegate it to someone who would find it easier or less painful. Ask whether there’s a way to get the result you want without doing the task at all. If the answer to either of these is “yes,” you win before you even start!
Make It More Fun
Set a timer and try to finish in a quick burst. Relocate to a coffee shop, a restaurant with wifi, or even a pub (I won’t say I haven’t had a beer or two during a work crisis). Try putting on some great music that’ll get you pumped up to work. Basically, distract yourself from how much you hate the work at hand. Remember that you’ll get to move on to something better once you’re finished.
Just Do It
Sometimes, there’s no way to sugarcoat a bitter pill of a work assignment. When you can’t get out of doing it or make it easier in some way, you’re only left with one option: do the best you can on this lame task. It’ll probably take you more time to grouse and complain about the task than it will to do a great job and knock it out of the park. You may as well go for the option you can be proud of.
Notice I didn’t say anywhere in this post that you should put up with unacceptable or inappropriate work assignments. There’s a difference between a legitimate task that you happen not to like and a task that asks unreasonable things of you. Know where you draw your personal line.
Did you beat any tough assignments this week? How did you do it?
Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to The Morning News, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.
Photo credit – piez
