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How to work four hours a week and not sit in the office “from call to call”? Coach Tim Ferriss shares his experience.
How many days a week do you really dedicate to work? Research conducted by Microsoft has proven that only three. But if you think about it, we are capable of more than 72 useful hours and 4 days of procrastination! And it’s not about working non-stop, but about finding a balance between rest and work. Tim Ferriss, author of How to Work 4 Hours a Week, Live Anywhere, and Get Rich, provides six tips for making the most of every day.
1. Manage your mood
We read about how to increase our ability to work, and we try to do as we were advised, but nothing works. This is because productivity tutorials are designed primarily to be read by a robot. Well, or the hero of the dystopia “Equilibrium”. They are not designed for the rich range of emotions that we can experience.
Always start your day calmly. Warm up, stretch, focus on today’s goals and objectives. Prioritize them. At breakfast, try to resist the temptation to read the news feed – it will bring you unnecessary stress and interfere with digestion.
By reading work emails first, you are wasting your personal time working for someone else’s goals.
In no case do not start working right in bed! Many of us are already checking our work email four seconds after waking up and starting to panic because of the volume of work tasks. When we start the morning like this, then all day long we will not do something, but react.
“The first hour and a half of my morning is exactly the same every day,” says Tim Ferriss. – My body is used to this routine, it helps me to keep the situation under control and not to panic during emergencies. And if I’m calm, then I’m productive.” A good start to the day is the key to productivity. But a bad mood is a direct path to procrastination.
2. Don’t check email in the morning
For most of us, this advice will sound like real nonsense. Indeed, how is it possible to wake up and not check your work and home mail, all the news feeds of all social networks? But to the question “What would you like to spend more time in your life?” no one will answer that mail and social networks. Just imagine: when you read letters first thing in the morning, you can’t help but react. This means that you spend the best time (your personal time!) Working for someone else’s life goals instead of your own.
“If possible, do not even open email applications and instant messengers for the first two hours after waking up,” advises Tim Ferriss. — I agree that most people find it difficult to even imagine such a thing. How do I make my to-do list for the day without mail? How will I know what tasks I need to complete today? You will be surprised, but you can create 80-90% of daily plans without looking into Outlook. You can, of course, drop by, but do you need that dose of cortisol and dopamine early in the morning? I don’t.”
3. Before you rush to do something, ask yourself – is it necessary to do it at all?
To the main question “Why can’t I do everything?” there is a very simple answer. Because you are doing too much. Do you want to increase your productivity? Instead of fighting for hours on one task, ask yourself: “Is it really necessary to complete it?”.
“Making something perfect doesn’t make it a top priority,” says Tim Ferriss. “People go to time management training and learn to get things done as quickly as possible. But the problem is that some of them don’t need to be done at all.” It’s funny how we complain about not having enough time and then prioritize it like we have enough. So what to do? Perform only tasks of paramount importance. And nothing more.
4. Concentrate – Eliminate What Distracts You
“All people in the world have attention deficit disorder, which appeared under the influence of life in modern society,” says Ed Hallowell, a professor at Harvard Medical School. Has modern life really distorted our priorities? No. It’s just that around us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, a whole carousel of bright, shiny and such attractive distractions is spinning. Our ancestors lived without it. Therefore, we need to work where there is no this distracting carousel.
“The essence of concentration is to minimize the number of factors that can lead you to procrastinate,” explains Tim Ferriss. “People see concentration as a superpower. This is not true. It is the ability to place yourself in an empty room with only the work to be done and close the door. That’s all”.
The value of self-discipline is greatly exaggerated. A clear daily routine is much more effective
I immediately recall the story of the students at the New Haven school, whose windows in the classroom overlooked the railroad, on which freight trains constantly ran. At the end of the year, it turned out that all the students in this class were lagging behind in the program. They were moved to another classroom, away from the distracting noise of the trains, and their academic performance improved.
In a word, the more we are distracted, the worse. The top management of large companies is interrupted every 20 minutes on average. How do they manage to complete so many tasks in a day? They work from home for an hour and a half every morning, where no one can disturb them. And then they go to work.
What are you thinking now? “I have other responsibilities as well.” “My boss needs my help.” “I was invited to a business meeting.” “My husband is calling me.” “I can’t just go and hide”… That’s why you need a system.
5. Design a system
“I don’t know how I manage to do everything. I just do my best and hope for the best,” these are the words you will never hear from successful people. Every productive person has a daily routine.
“A clear daily routine is much more effective than self-discipline. In my opinion, the importance of self-discipline is greatly exaggerated, — categorically says Tim Ferriss. “Usually I ask people to create a daily routine for themselves so that decision-making relates only to the creative part of their work.”
How to create an ideal system? Tim Ferriss offers the 80/20 method.
- Determine which actions are responsible for the majority of your success.
- Find out what activities reduce your productivity.
- Develop your daily routine so that the first item is several times more than the second.
So, you are ready to wake up tomorrow with a clear head, fresh thoughts and a clear daily routine. But how do you know where to start and what to do?
6. Set your goals for tomorrow before bed.
It is very important. Then you can wake up and clearly understand what you should do and in what order, and no “pseudo-urgency” will ruin your day.
“It’s best to identify one or two urgent and important things before dinner. So you unload your head before bed and prepare for tomorrow, ”recommends Tim Ferriss. Get yourself a nightly ritual. Try to finish work at the same time. Then save all files, disassemble the desktop. Slowly make a plan of action for tomorrow.