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High Level Summary
Introduction
Big Ideas:
- “If you don’t love doing something, then don’t do it.” Ray Bradbury
- “The one charm of the past is that it is the past.” Oscar Wilde
- “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” Andy Warhol
Chapter 1 – This Problem Is Really Serious
Big Ideas:
- “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller’s Day Off 1986
- “Karoshi” – Death from overwork usually manifests as a heart attack or stroke.
- We are busy now in a way our parents never were.
- Work intrudes into our personal life in ways unimaginable just a few years ago.
- The notion that people can work continuous long hours over extended periods of time and still be productive is laughable.
- Clear goals or objective pushes, produce amazing results.
- Productivity impact of endless long hours results in nil or poor productivity.
- Productivity impact of purposeful hours results in high productivity.
- People under pressure don’t think faster.
Chapter 2 – Why Time Management Courses Don’t Work
Big Ideas:
- “There’s nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” Peter Drucker
- In any given time period, you have things you:
- have to do
- like to do
- hate to do
- really love to do
- actually have to do
- “Have to do” is usually much bigger than every other pile of stuff.
- Time management is about getting the “stuff” in your piles done more efficiently.
- Time management doesn’t reduce how much is in the piles or added to them over time.
- The problem is that there is just too much to do in the time available.
Chapter 3 – You Will Never Get Everything Done
Big Ideas:
- You must accept and internalise and get comfortable with the idea that you will never get everything done.
- “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” Socrates
- Most people will try to “clear the pile” and find it doesn’t work so then they stop doing the things they “like to do” and the things they “really love to do” resulting in no work / life balance.
- And the cycle continues as they continue to try and “clear the pile”.
- Therefore, you have to learn to identify the important stuff (the “right stuff”) and say no to the other stuff.
- The “right stuff” is the combination of things from all 4 categories that is right for you and end up being the “actually need to do” list.
- We need to think of work and life as a funnel where lots of “stuff” is being fed in at that top. The first filter that “stuff” needs to pass through is the filter of “to do or not to do. Then the second filter that “stuff” needs to pass through is the “doing it on my own terms”.
- The “stuff” that passes through both of these filters is the “right stuff to do”.
Chapter 4 – Knowing What The “Right Stuff” Is
Big Ideas:
- “Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing that right things.” Stephen Covey
- Think of a Venn diagram:
- A – what you think you should be doing
- B – what your Boss thinks you should be doing
- C – overlap where what you do maps to what your Boss thinks you should be doing (“right stuff”)
- This is the impact of unclear performance indicators. The efforts in A that are not in C will be considered by your Boss as wasted effort and not adding value. The “stuff” not being done by you in B will seem to your Boss as “stuff” not being delivered.
- What you want to get to is clear performance indicators to all A and B to fully overlap.
- Specificity is one of the keys for ensuring you are doing the “right stuff”.
Chapter 5 – Filter 1 – To Do Or Not To Do
Big Ideas:
- “The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” Stephen Covey
- Filter 1 – To do or not to do:
- Crucial decision about what to do and what not to do
- Prioritising viciously
- There are a variety of tools you can use:
- First things first – Stephen Covey
- 4 Quadrants – Stephen Covey
- Or you can use the following process:
- At the end of each day, take tomorrow’s stuff and catorgise as:
- A = Must be done tomorrow, can’t go home until it is finished, everything else must wait – world will end stuff
- B = Would be nice to get this done tomorrow, but don’t have to
- C = Realistically, I’m not going to get this done tomorrow
- D = This can actually be delegated
- Then when you come to work do the Ds first, then the As and then call it quits.
- Stuff that doesn’t make it through the first filter in the funnel has to disappear as it will eventually clog the filter
- To make it disappear – say “NO”
- The aim is to get clarity on the criticality of the work
- If you say “no” and the world ends then it’s the right stuff and should move through the filter
Chapter 6 – Filter 2 – Doing It On Your Own Terms
Big Ideas:
- “it just shows what can be done by taking a little trouble, ‘Brains first and then hard work. Look at it. That’s the way to build a house’” A. A. Milne – The House That Pooh Built
- All tasks come with constraints
- However these constraints didn’t come from a deity, they came from another person telling you what they want you to do, act, respond.
- If there are perfectly sound business reasons why something can’t be done we need to tell them that early and tell them what can be achieved
- This is the same in our personal life as well
- You need to do enough planning to make sure you don’t end up making rash decisions and commitments
- By building a plan, you can see very quickly whether the constraints have any basis in reality or not
- As a result you end up committing to something doable or have grounds to negotiation the constraints.
Chapter 7 – Don’t Feel Guilty
Big Ideas:
- “if you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another plant with a different reality system’” Wayne Dyer
- 2 things can derail your do less journey
- Guilt
- Approval seeking
- Guilt – worrying about things that happened in the past, has to be one of the silliest and least productive things we do.
- The idea of doing less will trigger guilt
- Approval seeking is a “mugs game”.
- There will be as many people who approve of you and what you do as there will be who don’t
- Better yet, develop a zero tolerance policy and seek out a role model
- Is simple
- If you allow people to show their disapproval – they will
- If you don’t – they won’t
- A role model is someone we should behave like.
- Allows you to ask yourself “what would so and so do in this situation?”
- Pick your model and next time you feel resistance, ask yourself, would that person:
- Change their position,
- Water down their statements,
- Feel unhappy because someone disagreed with them.
- Gone along with the crowd.
- Said yes when they should have said no,
- Been intimidated?
- So finally, it may be that when you start to do less the evil twins of guilt and approval seeking will appear.
- Have a plan and act.
Chapter 8 – It’s About Good Habits
Big Ideas:
- From Samuel Smiles:
- “Sow a thought, and you reap and act;
- Sow and act and you reap a habit;
- Sow a habit and you reap a character;
- Sow a character; and you reap a destiny.”
- Better to become proactive and offensive.
- Don’ think in terms of full days and a crowded life, you think of empty days and a life waiting to be filled
- Instead of “do I really have to do this”? ask “why should I invest my precious time in this?”
- “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve encountered to help me make big choices in life.” Steve Jobs
Chapter 9 – The Harvest
Big Ideas:
- You’ve got clarity
- The mountain of stuff can be easily divided to “the real stuff” and “chickenshit”
- Spend a day just focused on “the real stuff” and note how energised and uplifted you feel
- You’ve become a productivity machine
- In short – you’ll be happier
- As soon as you stop doing, the power of doing less starts to flow.
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Take care and talk soon
Thrive; don’t just Survive with Janette