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The key to our goal is not how much time we spend on achieving it, but how effectively we work. Here are five tips to help you get the most out of your mind and body.
Working 24 hours a day, people try to realize themselves and achieve success. However, the key to achieving your cherished dream is not to spend more and more time on work: with a few simple rules, you can work more efficiently with much less effort.
1. Consider your biological clock
In a book with the long title Sleep for Success! Everything you wanted to know, but were too tired to ask,” two psychologists argue that it’s not fanatical workaholism that allows you to increase the return on work, but a measured and constant schedule with a full time for sleep — at least 7-8 hours. The authors show how sleep affects the overall feeling of life and health, and, consequently, the productivity of work. But this is only the beginning: each person must choose for himself the optimal routine of life. For example, the most productive period for most «larks» is the time from 10.00 to 13.00. These are the best hours for making critical decisions (if you decide to ask your boss for a raise, go to him at this time), as well as for doing things that you usually try to put off until later. Then, until about 15.00:15.00 p.m., there is a period in which it is better to rest — if you can not spend these two hours for lunch, then you can at least devote time to duties that do not require much concentration, such as answering emails. From 18.00 to 19.00 is the second productive period, and it differs from the first: at this time it is better to do something that requires not active actions, but perseverance and attention: for example, balancing, planning an event, and the like. From 21.00 to 21.00 is the time for outdoor activities: you can spend this time learning something new. But after XNUMX all work must be completed, otherwise you risk getting insomnia.
Dr. James B. Maas, Rebecca S. Robbins «Sleep for Success! Everything You Must Know About Sleep But are Too Tired to Ask» (AuthorHouse, 2011).
- Expect more from yourself
2. Remember the 80/20 rule
This rule, sometimes called the Pareto law (the only problem is that an Italian economist discovered it over a hundred years ago for a completely different reason), describes the pattern according to which 80% of the result comes from 20% of the effort. It is important to understand which tasks are of critical importance, and to direct the main energy to solving precisely these tasks. This approach is advised by British investor and business consultant Richard Koch in a book that has become a classic for venture capitalists: there is no point in spending money on something that does not play any role. Koch urges not to confuse your strategy with ordinary time management: the task is not to find time for everything that you consider necessary, but to cut off that part of the “necessary” that does not really play an important role. The author offers a number of techniques that allow you to achieve success not only in business, but also in your personal life, making relatively modest efforts.
Richard Koch «The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More with Less» (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1997).
3. Finish everything you can finish
Few things are more dangerous for work than having unfinished tasks that can haunt you for months — that’s why you should strive to get rid of any «long-term construction» in work. However, even more harm from tasks that no longer make sense to perform. Kill failed projects, advises Isabelle Royer of the Harvard School of Economics: this will not only save you from unnecessary efforts, but will give you the opportunity to work on other projects that can be more successful. Royer cites several examples of companies that spent years and years investing time and resources trying to pull off something that didn’t work out from the very beginning — for example, the technology company RCA (Radio Corporation of America) in 1964 released the first video disc to the market, where image and sound were read by a special needle. The disk and the system that allowed it to be read were neither convenient nor in demand, but the company used the strength of hundreds of employees over 17 years to keep their product from sinking into oblivion. Only VHS video cassettes, which appeared in 1981, finally buried this disc. Among the universal reasons why entrepreneurs (and all people) do not want to understand the obvious, Isabelle lists: irrational pity for the effort expended, incorrect assessment of the situation (RCA managers believed that bad advertising was to blame, not the complexity of the sound reading system and the poor functionality of the disk ) and the fear of exposing oneself to the general ridicule — just the latter, the company’s managers could not avoid.
Isabelle Royer «Why Bad Projects Are So Hard To Kill», Harvard Business Review, 2003, Issue 12.
4. Play with numbers
“It seems to me that …”, “I think that …”: these phrases are real devourers of time and effort. If you rely on approximate ideas about the situation, you are very likely to get a false picture and choose a completely wrong strategy. Meanwhile, almost everything can be accurately measured — including the effectiveness of efforts. If you feel like you’re underpaid, study the job market and find out if you’re actually paid less than someone in a similar position with comparable work experience. If you suspect that your colleagues are to blame for your failure to work effectively, make a list of situations in which they really harm your work — and try to minimize them. Apply measurements to solve any problem — for example, test two different methods for solving the same problem and compare their effectiveness: the time you spent, the number of goals you managed to achieve.
Douglas K. Smith «Make Success Measurable! A Mindbook-Workbook for Setting Goals and Taking Action» (John Wiley & Sons, 1999).
- On good terms with time
5. Write down goals and how to achieve them
In 1979, the staff of the Harvard MBA program conducted an interesting study by asking graduate students whether they wrote down their plans for the future. Only 3% answered positively, another 13% reported that they have plans, but they do not write them down. Finally, 84% said they don’t have goals in life yet. Ten years later, the researchers interviewed the same respondents again, trying to find out what they had achieved in life. The results were astonishing: the 13% who had goals but didn’t write them down on paper earned twice as much on average as the 84% who didn’t. But that wasn’t all: the 3% who wrote down their goals earned, on average, ten times more than the remaining 97% combined! In other words, it was these 3% who became millionaires in just 10 years, becoming top managers of large companies. Business coach Mark McCormack, who talks about this study, advises writing down not only goals, but also the expected ways to achieve them. Designate a goal. Then try to identify the tasks that need to be solved to achieve it. Now select the tools that you will use to solve each of the tasks. Identify the obstacles that may stand in your way. If you draw all this on paper, there will be much more benefit than if you did not analyze your desires in any way.
Mark McCormack «What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School» (Bantam Books, 1986).