How To Do More By Working Less

Do More By Working Less - The Guy In The Hammock

We all want to do more by working less.  We want to do more, do it faster and spend less time doing it.  After all there are only 24 hours in a day and nothing short of a tear in the space and time continuum is going to change that. Let’s just fess up. We all want to triple our productivity in the time we have. My tingly business expert spidey sense knows this, and even Amazon.com tells me this is so. One Amazon search will net you over 19,000 hits! I don’t even want to Google it for fear of breaking the Internet.

Working faster and getting more done, all while working less, is the Holy Grail and height of entrepreneurial excellence for the majority of us. We’re not greedy. We just want to make a boatload of money in the least amount of time so we can use that extra time to make more money.  Note: This is not true in my case any more, but it was.  So, what is stopping us from doing more by working less?  Blame the net.

 

Do More By Working Less

Surfing Porn

Oddly enough, we want to produce more, and we’re working longer hours to make it happen, but our productivity is decreasing. We’re working more, doing less. What’s kicking our butts? The productivity killer seems to be the Internet. Whoa!! What’s wrong with this picture? The Internet is the most amazing productivity platform ever, allowing us to talk, work, learn, and find virtually anything, at any time.

So why is it pouring glue, not oil on the productivity wheels? Well, along with providing us the most efficient workplace of all time, it’s also the most exciting water cooler, break room and time waster of all time. Along with unlimited access to the world, we’ve got unlimited access to sports, movies, stupid pet trick videos, e-mailing, chatting,  just zoning out on stuff, and porn. Lot’s and lot’s of porn.

We’re becoming a nation of squirrel brains, distracted by shiny objects or the headline of the next great business article or YouTube video. We’re logging on for 5 seconds to check on an important email from a client and then clicking, clicking, clicking until five hours later we realize we’ve watched an hour of viral videos, know what celebrities are divorcing, marrying and having babies. We’ve learned five new ways to lose weight, have beat our high score on our favorite video game, and have liked every friend’s FaceBook status, but we’ve done no work at all.

You think I’m exaggerating? Nielson reports that 65 percent of all streaming content is watched during the work week, between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. And those YouTube videos? Hah! YouTube reports that 2 billion videos are watched each day on their site alone. That’s a lot of lost productivity, especially considering that most watched videos don’t have much if anything to do with business unless your business is cats, puppies, rainbows and friends face-planting into immovable objects.

 

Taming the Snowball Effect

Snowball Rolling Down Hill

So just stay off the Internet then, right? That’s what all the productivity books tell you to do: turn off the Internet and turn off your e-mail. Duh. Who needs a book to figure that out? Simple. No Internet, no distractions, work gets done. The problem is you actually need the Internet to get work done! So shutting down the desktop amusement park isn’t going to work. There’s gotta be a better way. And there is. No expensive software needed either. All you need is a piece of paper, a pen and a highlighter.

Here is what you will need to do:

• Draw a line down the paper, top to bottom about one-quarter of the way in from the edge. This should create two columns on your sheet of paper: a small column to the left, which you’re going to label TYPE, and a second, wider column to the right of that, labeled TASK. Notice that there is no column for “DUE DATE.” That’s because due dates make us rush to the urgent tasks, the stuff with the closest DUE date, but not necessarily the stuff that’s most important.

• In the task column, write down all the tasks you need to accomplish. While you’re doing things if the thought of a new task comes to mind, write it down in the TASK list, right then and there. This is important, because if you try to simply remember the new task, you will either forget it or be distracted from the task at hand by trying to remember what else you need to do.

• Next, once all your tasks are written out, go down the TYPE column and put a dollar sign ($) next to the tasks that will bring you revenue within the next 30
days.

• Last, but not least, go back through the list and put a smiley face :>) next to the items that serve an existing client. When you look over your columns, you will notice that most of your tasks don’t actually generate revenue or address a client. Those unmarked tasks are the items that you can tackle later. Is this not the coolest thing ever so far?!

Now go through your list and, first, do those items that have both a dollar sign and a smiley face together. This is something you’ll do for a client and that will also bring in revenue for you. Do that task now! After that, do all the tasks that have smiley faces, followed up by all the ones that have dollar signs. Once you finish all those tasks, you are ready to go on to the naked tasks — the ones with no dollars and no smiley faces.

Oh, and there’s one more thing— the most important thing and the key to why this plan works– when you start working on a new task, use your highlighter to mark it. This way, when you get distracted by a phone call or an e-mail, or someone stopping by to chat and trash talk about the game of the week, you can go right back to your sheet, see what you had highlighted, and get it done. Once you complete a task, put a line through it. It is really gratifying to see items crossed of the list.

 

Get’r Done

I know it’s hard to resist the urge to log online and check your e-mail every five minutes, or watch the new Justin Bieber video (hey, with almost 500 million views, someone is watching it!), but with this new system you can slip a little, since you’ll be able to get back on track instantly – making money and helping clients.

 

Read More On The Subject. . .

Want to learn more about working less while getting more done?  I highly recommend reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

Comments

13 thoughts on “How To Do More By Working Less”

  1. Hey Mike, totally agree with your attitudes regarding internet, in fact it is not something new to me as I ve already read TPE and so on…but the use of $, 🙂 etc is of course a fresh idea for me and I really like it, it really makes sense, thanks for the great tips!

      1. Actually what I have been doing was using textual tags based on importance, context etc for the task items.
        BTW I have another problem if you can help me: Think of a situation when you are taking a shower or lying on the bed. You are alert, but there’s nothing to distract you. It’s in a situation like this, where your mind is free to roam, that it bumps into new ideas. I m having a hard time capturing those ideas right away without interrupting that free roaming of my mind. 🙁

        1. I totally hear you. I have the same experience. My “genius” moments (which are very rare) happen in the shower or when I am sleeping. I do have pen and paper next to my bed and write notes if I wake up. They are sloppy as all heck, but ledgible the next day.
          In regards to the shower… I use a mnemonic strategy. It is really effective. Here is an article I wrote about how to do it. Hope it helps:
          http://www.toiletpaperentrepreneur.com/skill-toolbox/acquire-a-photographic-memory-in-3-minutes-guaranteed/

          1. Thanks for answering, specially for the link which I have missed before somehow 🙂

  2. Hi Mike,
    Such a straightforward and simple idea.
    I’ve heard you explain this before but hadn’t tried it.
    I used it today and it cut to the chase and made clear what must be done.
    I am going to come up with a similar symbol system for personal tasks as well.
    Thank you!

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