Entries Tagged 'Efficiency' ↓

I’ve only used one productivity tool this year. It measures in at 6″x3″ inches has no touch screen or cool Web 2.0 interface and it probably won’t get much advertisement this year. But we’re 5 weeks into this year and I’ve got more done so far than in the whole of last year. Oh yeah, and he only cost me $5. Wanna meet him? He’s a bit of an old timer but he knows a thing or two about productivity. I’d be glad to introduce you …

My only productivity tool this year is My Pocket-Sized Diary. It offers a cruel 3 squared inches of writing space per day. I picked it up in December at my local WHSmiths store.

New productivity tools are often excuses for not finishing something on your to do list. A new tool gives you a quick lift while you check out its features but leave you unfulfilled when you have unfinished tasks at the end of the day.

Haven’t you ever felt you’re just doing things just to avoid completing what you know you should? Don’t get me wrong, there is some great productivity pr0n out there but for overhauling your life you’ll get it done by going simple from the start and building slowly.

Why So Small?

I picked a small diary on purpose. The bigger ones tempt me to fill the days with unimportant tasks and information. The writing area is so tiny that I just have space for the most important tasks and the other ones don’t get recorded and tend to solve themselves.

I Can Carry It And Tick Off Each Task – It’s like a PDA except it cost me $5. It doesn’t need charging, there’s no monthly subscription and I can sleep well at night knowing I’m going to achieve my goals.

It’s Pocket-Sized – If I’m with friends arranging something I’ll take it in my pocket with a pen to write down details. If I get an invite for a night out and I don’t know if I want to go yet, it goes in the “Notes” section in the back.

People Can Relate – People can relate to someone who pulls out a diary in public. It’s nice, simple and anyone could have one. Being around people who use intelligent words that you don’t understand or pull out a shiny new phone makes you feel inferior.

A year from now you could have totally changed your life around with this simple system. Telling friends that you started off with just a $5 diary will be a great Zero-To-Hero story.

Simplicity and Selectiveness : A Productivity System

I used to buy into the idea that a system that captures everything was the pinnacle of productivity but for 99% of people it’s over the top. Define the important, capture it, do it and let the rest slide. Be selective and let your pocket-sized diary be your calm, centred productivity heaven. The essential tasks get recorded there and you are fulfilled when you are done.

You will never be fulfilled if you have an endless to do list. I’ve tried it, but you’re welcome to find out by yourself. Fulfilment is found in accomplishing worthy goals and rewarding progress along the way.

Decline Invitations - If you don’t set guidelines on your time, others will. Decline invitations to do things you secretly don’t want to. Nobody can do this for you. If people get angry, it’s their issue to deal with. Be polite, and move on.

How To Set Goals

My aim for 2010 is to start a new habit each month which I will continue with after that month. I have a great section in the front for this and I hear that Jerry Seinfeld followed a similar system.

I have a couple of lines underneath to write what I want to accomplish that month and each day I circle the day if I’ve done it. For January for example I wrote “Up 9am daily, 200 hits to blog”. Simple and actionable.

It keeps you motivated to see you’ve gone 8 days in a row. It feels incredible to have a one page analysis of all your tasks from this year and see how far you’ve come. It’d be a nice gift to your kids one day.

I go by the idea that habits form goals. What you do daily, you become good at. By setting goals across different areas in this year I am going to totally transform myself in 12 months.

So far, this system has allowed me to…

• Wake at 9am daily
• Give up Alcohol
• Write for 1 hour daily
• Meditate for 30 minutes daily (highly recommended)
• Visualize daily
• Write 30 blog comments each day

And in the next few months I will adopt the habits of …

• Daily Exercise
• Going Vegan
• Earn a full-time income on-line
• Waking at 5am
• Ruthlessly minimizing computer time
• Moving into my own place
• Giving up TV for a month
• Socializing 3 times per week
• Setting an automated plan to pay debt

Once you’ve been doing it for a month you’ll start to see the magic. You will know for yourself that you can do anything if you keep it simple. It’s just a matter of time.

I set myself monthly goals in the same section. The goal for February is “250 daily hits on my blog or 100 daily visitors“. If I set a goal at the start of the month. On the 14th of the month I decide whether or not I’m on target to achieve it. If not, I double the workload, if I’m on course, there is no need to.

You can try the same productivity systems and fail again or you can use this system, build slowly, and have success guaranteed.

People will tell you to give them $29.95 for an “insider secret” but real secret is that there isn’t one. This brainless system IS changing my life this year. How do you feel about joining me?

An obstacle to goals that I hear regularly is that people don’t have enough time or resources. They imagine that drastic changes must happen immediately to free these resources. This usually tends not to be the case. You free time for yourself if you want to quit your job by creating a small part time business, sure in the short term you lose time but we’re looking at the long-term here. You gain resources by actively searching for them. They will not come to you without conscious effort.

Efficiency can be stripped down to two basic ideas:

• Minimising your time
• Maximising your output

Eliminate or pass it on

The first technique you should use before any of the others is eliminating unnecessary tasks. If they’re not realted to your goals, remove them. If they are but you shouldn’t be the one doing them, pass them on ASAP. Don’t become a human bucket for people to fill with tasks they could complete.

Pareto Principle

Regularly spoke about in the blogosphere, this theory created by an Italian Economist states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your tasks, so you should identify these tasks and eliminate the rest for time efficiency. This is a universal principle and really helps minimise time input and maximise output. 90/20 is a guestimate and it could easily be 90/10 or other similar ratios.

You can use this just to multiply efficiency rather than time. You do this by finding the 20% of tasks that give 80% of the outcome and then eliminating the lower 80% of tasks. Then you repeat the top 20% of tasks to fill the time you would have took doing the wasteful lower 80%.

Pareto can be used universally, areas may include:

• Dieting – Identify the foods that contribute most towards your health and goals, get rid of the rest and eat these more often.
• Socialising – If you visit several social clubs and go out with work colleagues each week then identify what you want from these social outings, cut of the lower 80% and maximise the results.
• Gym Workout – Identify which exercises are most time efficient and give you the results that you aim for, cutting the rest. A 40 minute jog may be a lot less efficient than a 30 minute slow workout using just your body weight.
• Budgeting – apart from the essential needs, which products that you buy or magazines that you subscribe to create value in your life?

Parkinsons Law

This law states that the task that you set expands to fill the time available for it. An obvious example is a school deadline for homework, you may have 5 days until you hand it in, but you’re still sweating ’til midnight the night before:-). That’s all fair and well but how do we get around this? Because we are aware of this, we can set ourselves self-inflicted mini-deadlines that we should tell ourselves are the actual deadlines even though they’re not.

This makes sure that everything is done on time and that you have no last minute cramming sessions about a deadline that you forgot. Again using the coursework example, you could even use this principle to set mini deadlines within mini deadlines, like write first draft by Tuesday, edit on Thursday, hand in final version on Friday.

Areas where you could apply this include:

• Homework assignments – Set deadlines in half the time the assignment is due for and make it a habit to get them in on time.
• Christmas/Birthday gifts – Even though they say Christmas gets earlier every year, it can creep up on you too, make it a deal to get all presents bought by say December 7th, avoiding the crowds and being efficient in the process.
• Emails – Got alot of emails to be sent out, give yourself an hour a day and see how efficient you become.

Ways you can maximise output

• Automation of processes – Including blog posting, maybe laundry, buy a dishwasher if you haven’t got one. My motto is “If a computer can do as good a job as me, then my time is better spent elsewhere”.
• Get up early – You literally get more hours to your life this way and set up a consistent sleeping pattern in accordance with nature and will have more energy.

Owning time

I dislike the phrase “I don’t have time”. I’m always tempted to respond with a knowing smile. Nobody can claim ownership of time, it’s the way you mould yourself around time that matters. You have to get as much done in as little time as possible, this is my personal definition for effectiveness. Everyone gets 24 hours/day.

Effectiveness before efficiency

Cultivating efficiency is all fine and dandy but don’t lose sight of the main goal, to find a purpose in life and follow it, this would be known as effective. Efficiency is always second place to Effectiveness. Concentrate more on creating value rather than just saving time. This is similar to saving pennies rather than creating pounds. This will also help you escape a belief in scarce resources.