“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.” — Lao Tzu

I dream of being lazy, of having all day to just do whatever I feel like at any moment.  I dream of being able to do only a few things that don’t take a lot of time, but that matter a great deal – or not.  I don’t see anything wrong with wanting to do less.  The world is full of energetic and ambitious people being busy but not doing a whole lot that matters.  The world is full of active people trying to force their ideas on others.  How I wish they would get lazy and shut up.

I don’t like chores and I choose to avoid them to whatever degree possible.  When I have free time and free days, I don’t often exert myself; a lot of people viewing me sitting around reading a book might call me lazy. That’s OK, I’m not going to spend my precious minutes doing things I don’t want to do and I don’t think anyone else should either.  Today I was sitting on a bench in my back yard reading a book while the hummingbirds buzzed around.  It was glorious.  My lazy butt wasn’t bothering anyone, but some ambitious hard-working neighbor was outside blasting his 1,000 decibel leaf blower.  Please neighbor, be lazy on Saturday afternoon!

The word “lazy” carries a negative connotation and is mostly used in a pejorative manner.  Something similar to “Get your lazy butt off the couch and do something around here” has probably been uttered billions of times and most of us have said or heard it.  People who lack the drive to work hard and succeed in the manner the culture defines as proper are also frequently considered lazy.

Despite working extremely hard through a lot of my life, I’ve been called lazy at times.  I’ve called other people lazy when I probably shouldn’t have.  Most of the time people are simply projecting their values on someone else.  We throw the word “lazy” around far too often when we are judging other people’s free choice to live their lives as they see fit.  If you are taking care of yourself and are not a burden on others, as far as I’m concerned you can be as lazy as you want.

Imagine a young man who gets home from work, changes clothes and throws his dirty outfit on the floor of his bedroom, invites some of his buddies over and they order pizza and beer and settle in to watch a football game.  They leave pizza cartons and empty beer bottles lying around.  His apartment is a mess with junk piled everywhere.

This young man has a new girlfriend with a “better” job (i.e. makes more money) and she moves into his apartment.  She is a very neat, hard-working, ambitious young woman.  We all know what happens.  Slowly over time she starts demanding that he conform to her lifestyle.  She’s always on his back about getting a better job.  She calls him lazy for not doing more household chores.  She’s always mad about his mess and she tells her friends he just sits on his lazy butt watching TV.

But why are her lifestyle choices better than his?  Why does his choosing to live by a different set of values make him lazy?  What makes her right and him wrong?  She simply has a different set of values than him and wants him to change to conform to hers.  We have to be very careful about thinking we are superior to someone else because we choose to work “harder” or live differently than they do.  They are not lazy because they make different choices than we do.  They may be lazy by the technical definition of the word, but that shouldn’t carry a negative connotation; it’s simply a different choice.

Imagine another young man who chooses to live simply.  He doesn’t want or need much.  He has a part-time job in a bookstore to pay his meager bills and he spends his much valued free time reading and being in nature.  His small apartment is very neat and minimalist.  It’s not that he works hard at keeping things neat, he just doesn’t do or buy things to make much of a mess.   He’s a nice quiet guy whom people like despite thinking he is a little bit strange.  His new girlfriend dreams of a house in the suburbs raising soccer-playing kids and driving an SUV.  They are in trouble.

I think most of us would think the second young man is superior to the first, even though he actually works less than the pizza-eating beer drinker (BTW, I drink beer).  The soccer mom, the ambitious career woman, the beer drinker, and the simple man are all different people with different values. This article is not about picking more compatible mates, even though that is important.  Even in much less extreme cases, people expect their partners to have the same values as themselves.  Your partner is not lazy because he or she chooses to be different than you.  Your choices are not intrinsically better, they are just different.

There are times however, when I think it is appropriate to call someone lazy and to judge them harshly.  Anyone who forces someone else to take care of them is in my mind a lazy bum.  I’m not talking about people who are physically or mentally incapable of taking care of themselves, but those who can but don’t.  The word “force” is key here.  When you vote the taxpayers money into your pockets so you don’t have to support yourself, you are a lazy bum.  When you force someone to wait on you, you are a lazy bum.  As long as people are freely choosing to take care of others, I have no problem with it.  Remember Tom Sawyer who recruited people to whitewash the fence?  Was he lazy or smart?

Those who choose to take it easy are just fine in my book.  The fact that they choose to do something different than what you think they should do, only means that they choose differently than you.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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If you have followed me for any length of time you will realize that I am NOT a proponent of doing things that make you miserable.  I do not recommend staying in a job you hate or any other life-killing behavior.  However, on the assumption that at the moment you are in a circumstance or situation that is making you miserable, and that at the moment it is the best alternative you have in front of you, there are some things you can do to improve your experience of it.

This article is focused on work, but the general principles can be applied to any circumstance you turn into misery for yourself.  The following are some of the things that work best for me and I think if you put them into practice they will work for you as well.  I’m going to use the example of a job you don’t like for much of this article, but the ideas can be applied to anything.

Accept That You Don’t Control the Universe

If I could snap my fingers right now and be free from having to earn a living, be transported to a beautiful white sand tropical beach in front of a lovely glass-fronted home, and be waited on by beautiful half-naked girls in grass skirts, I would snap my fingers.  But alas, the universe doesn’t work that way.  Instead I will continue to write this article.

You control your actions and sometimes things go your way, but mostly they do not.  Even if it is possible, whatever it would take me to get to the home on the tropical beach with the grass skirts would not be worth it (and after a few months it would lose its impact), so here I am writing this article happily.  When you accept that you control your actions but not the outcomes, you automatically become much happier and thus less miserable.  Stop continually focusing on the gap between where you are and where you want to be and your misery level will drop dramatically.

Accept That You Choose Your Actions

If you say you have to go to a job you don’t like, you are speaking a falsehood.  You do not have to do anything.  You are choosing to do it because you believe it is the best alternative you have at the moment.  I know people who don’t work, who don’t have an income, and are overweight.  Somehow they have shelter and eat more than they need without going to a job they hate.  And they have consciously made that choice.  When you truly accept that you are choosing your actions, there is an immediate and significant change in attitude that improves your outlook.  You chose it so stop wallowing in your self-pity.

If You Are Going to Do It, Get Something Out of It

This is one of the most neglected methods of finding the positive in something you don’t like.  I guarantee you there are a huge number of opportunities in and at your work to develops skills that will improve your life.  You can learn peaceful well-being at a job you don’t like and you will thereby gain a huge benefit that will last the rest of your life.

Ignore what you don’t like about your job and instead focus on your skills training.  Screw the job and enroll yourself in The University of Self-Growth – your employer is paying your tuition and providing the classroom.

• When you walk into the office instead of telling yourself how much you don’t want to be there, enthusiastically and with a smile greet the people you see.  Start your day off with a bang and practice an optimistic outlook.
• Practice not gossiping and talking about other people negatively.
• You can literally spend all day practicing being in the moment, not being affected by what happened five minutes ago and not worrying about what is going to happen tomorrow.  An incredible skill-building opportunity!
• Work on building personal and professional networks.
• When you write emails or other documents, practice your written communication skills.  Work on a crisp, clear, style of writing that is perfect for emails.  You can also practice presentation skills and computer skills.
• Take any training offered that gets you away from the job and lets you build useful skills.  Ask for training for anything you can relate to your job.  You will be surprised how often it is allowed.
• By definition if it is a job you don’t really like, you will have tremendous opportunity to practice the skills of remaining calm in stressful situations, detaching from outcomes, looking for the bright-side of things, and being happy no matter what your circumstances.
• Work on improving your negotiation skills.
• Practice the art of listening.
• Practice the art of understatement.
• Practice being engaging and witty.
• Stay alert at all times for opportunities to grow in some way.  You will never run out of them.

To get the benefit, you have to stay aware of consciously building specific skills.  Otherwise, you’ll just fall back into the “I hate my job” habits.

Reflect on the Positive

Take some time to deeply reflect on the positive benefits of whatever it is you are choosing to do that you don’t like.  And I mean some time to reflect deeply.  If you go to a job you don’t like five days a week, then spend 30 minutes any time you feel down reflecting on what you get out of it.  I know people who say they don’t like their job who use that job to obtain:

• An active single social life at trendy places
• A beautiful climate-controlled home
• Travel and Vacations
• Nice cars and clothing
• A wonderful family who is well clothed, fed, and schooled

The list is endless.  Reflect on the fact that probably most of the people in the world would snap their fingers to have the life you you have.  Think about the other joys you have in your life that the job you dislike makes possible.  Think of that beautiful smiling child you are taking care of by doing what you are doing.

Whatever it is you are doing, reflect on why you chose to do it and focus on those positives and do not dwell on what is making you miserable.  I’ve done this and it works wonders for me.

Don’t Take The Train Ride of Misery

An architect was building a magnificent cathedral.  During an inspection he passed three workers toiling away in the hot sun doing the exact same task – smashing rocks with a sledgehammer.  He asked each what he was doing and why.  The first man answered “I’m breaking rocks because I get paid to break rocks.”  The second man answered “I’m making small stones that will go into the wall of that building and I do it to feed my family.”  The third man answered “I’m helping construct a wonderful cathedral.  People will come from far away to gaze upon its marvels.  I’m doing it so I can learn how to build a cathedral.”

When you are starting to do whatever it is that is making you miserable, you have a choice and it is truly your choice.  It is not being forced upon you.  You can chose to hope on the train full of miserable complaining people and join in all the wallowing, or you can skip it and take a nice pleasant walk instead.  This was a very hard lesson for me to learn, but I finally learned it.  I spent years talking myself into frequent misery and joining others on the misery train.  I still fall into that trap sometimes because I am human.  As often as I can remember to make that choice, I talk a pleasant walk instead.

If There Was Ever a Job For the 80/20 Rule

If you can get 80% of the results with 20% of the effort then this is the time to apply it.  If you don’t like cleaning the house then don’t try to make it spotless.  Get in the moment and spend a small amount of time happily making it look decent instead of a lot of time making it look perfect.

Apply the 80/20 rule at work every day.  On the least desirable tasks, spend 20% of your time getting most of the results and then move on to something better.  Most people have far more leeway in their job than they believe.  If you will simply get the courage to take control and empower yourself you will be surprised by the results.

You can’t work intensely and enthusiastically for hours on end without burning out.  Besides if you don’t like your job you’ll never be motivated to work like that.  So what most people do is a half-assed, hit and miss, watching the clock, wallowing in their misery job.  So consider an alternative win-win that you can feel good about.

Work intensely and hard, really getting into it for a period of time; say 30 to 45 minutes.  Then alternate that with a break; even a longish break.  Take a walk, take a nap, meditate, listen to some music, read a book, surf then internet, go into the coffee bar, or whatever you can get away with.  If you do this throughout the day, your employer and you will both benefit.  You will contribute more to him and you will get more out of it than doing it the miserable half-assed way.  You will probably be many times more productive than you were before.  I can also guarantee you that the time you spend working will be more enjoyable as a result.  Forcing yourself to go with gusto for a period of time is much easier and more enjoyable than sloshing through a whole day.  Don’t feel guilty or feel like you are cheating because you are not.  It is a win-win.

Focus is the Key Point

You are miserable when you focus on the things that are wrong.  You are happy when you focus on what is right.  Focus on what you can learn from whatever you are doing to help you in the future.  Focus on the moment and not the miserable past or your worried future.

In A Word It’s “Attitude”

I could go on and on, and perhaps I’ve gone on too long already.  I wish I could explain it in 200 words, but I can’t.  Ultimately it’s something you have to experiment with and work out yourself.

The bottom line is you can choose a positive or a negative attitude about whatever you are doing and in that choice lies the difference between joy and misery.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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The way we work and live is not conducive to maximal effectiveness.  In our rush-around modern lives we try to live by one long pulse during the day and then rest at night.  We are working too long and too continuously.  We are burning up our mental and emotional reserves without giving them a chance to renew.

The sleep cycle is critical to our health and most people need more than they get – 7 to 9 hours.  During the day we need to adopt a more pulsing rhythm; one that can be likened to waves.  The crest of the wave represents your burst of focus and activity and the trough your renewal time.   Instead of pulsing like waves we are paddling continuously on a flat ocean.  As a result we are less effective.  In the push for more-better-faster, we are actually doing less-worse-slower.

We are much more effective if we work in bursts of intense and focused energy and then take time to rest and renew.  Given the chance many people naturally take a nap in the afternoon.  Research indicates that after an afternoon nap you can continue to produce at a high level the rest of the day.  Without a nap, output falls dramatically.  The culture in many organizations will prevent napping, but it is a highly recommended way to renew.

Here are some tips you might want to consider.  Even though you are not working as many total hours you will likely produce a lot more.

Work in 40 to 90 minute pulses

You need to work long enough to really get absorbed and into the flow, but not too long.

Renew in 10 to 60 minute breaks

The length of the break depends on the length and intensity of the pulse.  There are no rules here.  Find a rhythm that works for you.  The key is to ride your waves and then take time to renew.

Renewal breaks must be real

Switching from an intensely creative effort to processing a batch of email may seem like a break, but it is pseudo-renewal.  It may be better than nothing, but you need real renewal.  Some suggestions:

• Take a 20 to 30 minute power nap
• Go for a walk, preferably in nature – don’t think about work
• Talk a casual stroll around the office
• Focused breathing
• Meditation
• Work Out
• Yoga
• Eat lunch away from your desk, preferably with friends
• Get up and go chat with a colleague or friend
• Read something light and cheerful
• Close your eyes and listen to some music

Some day organizations will wake up and pay for output and not time.  In the meantime, if you work for someone who doesn’t get it then you might have to get creative:

• Take your laptop or paper materials and go hide in a conference room – look like you are going to meet with someone.
• Put on some headphones with music and pretend you are looking through some papers – you don’t actually have to be doing anything other than resting.
• Walk around the office like you are going to the printer room or break room, etc.  Take your time.
• If you are on a leash and collar go sit in the bathroom.  It may sound silly, but desperate circumstances call for desperate measures.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Master Your Workday Now!: Proven Strategies to Control Chaos, Create Outcomes, & Connect Your Work to Who You Really Are is a really good book.  I rate it five stars.  Check out Steve Pavlina’s review on Amazon; he gives it a huge thumbs up.  Pavlina spends most of his review describing Part I of the book, but Parts II and III are also really well done.  Amazon is currently offering a 48% discount.

I use a short version of his to-do method and I think it is extremely effective.  It’s described in the video below.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Limiting the time you spend on various tasks to a specific number of minutes will help with you with focus, procrastination, and problems with perfectionism.  Studies have shown that people generally perform better under a strict deadline.  I use a countdown timer like Cool Timer or VersaTimer on my computer.

Give yourself a specific amount of time to finish a task and then don’t cheat.  Live with your time limit.  When the time is up, stop.  Allow what you’ve accomplished in the time limit to be good enough.  Give yourself 30 minutes to clean a room and then let the result stand.  Give yourself two hours to write the report and then let that be good enough.  Forcing yourself to live with what was accomplished in your time limit will help you implement the 80/20 rule and overcome your perfectionist tendencies.  If for some reason you simply have to spend more time, do it later under another time limit.

I find this is a fantastic way to focus on an activity and prevent myself from being distracted.  It works wonders for tasks I am not excited about performing.  It keeps me from wanting to check email, get a drink, go to the bathroom, or find other ways to procrastinate.

Don’t just use time limits for obvious tasks like the given examples of cleaning a room or writing a report.  Use them for other things like commitments you might have or volunteer efforts.  Put a limit on the hours per week you are going to commit to coaching the little league team.  Make sure you are clear on the limit for the time you will dedicate.  Commitments without clear limits can become bottomless time pits that suck your life away.

It should go without saying if you cheat on your time limits, you will know they mean nothing and in the end simply wont work.  I have begun self-enforcing limits on many of the things I do and I find that it works wonderfully.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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I sat down to write an article on why being busy is a mistake and I decided I should check the dictionary definition of the word.

bus·y –adjective: actively and attentively engaged in work or a pastime

That’s not exactly what I had in mind.  That definition of “busy” makes being busy a good thing.  If I’m sitting on a beach lost in a good book, then I’m busy; I’m actively and attentively engaged in a pastime I love.  It’s very important to me.  However, most people wouldn’t call me busy nor look upon what I was doing as something important or productive.  The soccer mom with 1,000 things to do while helicoptering around her children would be called busy.  If she was my wife I would be called lazy.

Imagine an office.  Compare and contrast two employees.

One of them has a to-do list of hundreds of tasks.  She is constantly on the go with phone calls, emails, instant messages, and meetings.  She moves at 100 mph, barely stopping to breathe.  She comes in early, works through lunch, and leaves late.  She’s always connected  and working issues when out of the office.  She is definitely “busy”.

The other employee casually and calmly walks in around 9:00 AM.  He spends a bit of time chatting with some of his co-workers.  Then he quietly sits down and concentrates on some work.  He doesn’t go to any meetings.  At 11:45 AM he opens his email and spends a few minutes answering them and makes a few notes.  At 12:00 PM he wraps up for the day and leaves.  He doesn’t seem to be “busy”.

In a modern corporation the second person would probably be fired while the first would be considered an extremely valuable employee.  Most people knowing nothing else would probably strongly prefer the first over the second as she demonstrates hard work and extraordinary dedication.  In my former days I would have done the same.

Now I think differently about all this.  Nowadays, knowing nothing else I would choose the second.  The first employee may be “busy”, but that doesn’t mean she’s doing valuable or important work.  In fact her busyness may be disrupting other people and preventing them from doing important work.  The second employee may be a game changer.  The fact that somebody works 15 hours a day means nothing.  What matters is what they create, not how many things they do.  One good idea is worth more than 1,000 trivial completed tasks.

I used to be busy in a way that looked more like the first.  Now my goal is to be more like the second; I’m much of the way there.

Important work can be hard and lonely.  Doing a 1,000 small things is like a drug addiction.  Every time you respond to an email, go to a meeting, complete a trivial tasks, it is like taking a hit.  You get a temporary high.  You feel good about completing something.  You feel important and needed.  It’s a sickness and an addiction with long-term consequences you don’t want.

Everybody has the same amount of time.  Everybody gets 1440 minutes a day.  Don’t say “I don’t have time” or “I’m too busy”.  In that respect we are all equal; we all have the same allocation of daily minutes.

I’m tired of being busy in a 24/7 connected world.  I want to be valuable.  I want to do what is important to me.  I don’t want to be in a constant state of high-tension stress because I’m “busy” and because I have too much to do.  I want to be calm and reflective and quietly go about getting important work done.  I’ve decided being busy is no longer for me.

“Less is not more.  Less is better.” — Leo Babauta

You might also be interested in Scott Berkun’s The Cult of Busy.

What do YOU think?  Are you busy?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Switch

This is the second part of the series on change made simple.  It is based upon the excellent book by Chip and Dan Heath: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.  You can read the overview here: Change Made Simple – Overview.

In this article we discuss the first of the three main components of the process – Direct the Rider.  Directing the rider is all about providing clarity to yourself or others.  It’s about solving specific problems and taking specific actions instead of trying to boil the whole ocean.

Find The Bright Spots

To pursue the bright spots is to ask the question “What’s working and how can we do more of it?”

I thought this chapter of the book was a very good one, but you are going to have to read it to get the full effect.  The bottom line strategy here is to stop focusing on problems and instead look for things that are already working.  Once you find these bright spots, simply expand them and do more of those things.  After reading this it sounded like obvious common sense.  However, people almost always focus on fixing problems instead of focusing on solutions that already exist.  This is really brilliant advice and I’m already thinking about many situations in which I can look for the bright spots and expand them.

Many real-world examples are provided.  In one case, a man named Jerry Sternin went to Vietnam to try and help address a decades long problem of malnutrition in children.  He had little time or resources to address what looked like an intractable problem with poverty and lack of education.  Those standard explanations were already in play and they were huge problems that would require massive expenditures of resources to even attempt to address.

Instead of writing position papers on these known factors, Jerry Sternin searched the villages looking for well-nourished children who might be exceptions to the general problem.  He was looking for the bright spots in a sea of malnutrition.  He found them, he discovered the simple solution, and he worked with the villagers to expand that solution to nearly 3 million other children.

The authors tell stories of changes in medical practices, changes in delinquent behavior at school, and other examples where people with little resources or authority were able to bring about big changes by simply looking for what worked and doing more of it.

This is a simple, direct, and elegant approach.

Script the Critical Moves

To spark movement in a new direction, you need to provide crystal clear guidance.  That’s why scripting is important – you’ve got to think about the specific behavior that you’d want to see in a tough moment…

The bottom line here is that in trying to change, analysis paralysis will disrupt  and cause a retreat into the status quo default.  The authors describe research in human behavior that support their point.  People with more choice are less like to choose and therefore less likely to change.

“The status quo feels comfortable and steady because much of the choice as been squeezed out.  You have your routines, your ways of doing things.”

“Successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors.  In short, to make a switch you need to script the critical moves.”

I don’t have a really good way to summarize the excellent advice in this chapter because every situation is so different.  One of the authors’ favorite examples which seemed to work very well was a 1% milk campaign.  I’m sure my friend Vin of Natural Bias would not think 1% milk was a healthy choice.  However, whether you agree with the chosen goal or not, you can’t deny the simple effectiveness of the campaign to get people to buy 1% milk.  The critical move for a healthier diet was a simple script – Buy 1% milk.  It wasn’t about eating a certain number of fat grams or calories, it wasn’t about cutting back on potato chips.  It was a simple script to change from whole milk to 1% milk.  If you want people to eat healthy you need to provide a specific and simple script.  Saying “eat healthy” or “follow the food pyramid” isn’t going to accomplish anything.

You can’t script every move, and you don’t want to.  However, you want to script the critical moves.  If I look at the maintenance schedule of my car, it is quite complicated.  I can’t possibly keep track of what maintenance is needed when.  However, I would wager that most American car owners are aware of the basic script – change your oil every three months or every 3,000 miles.  That one simple script is all you need to remember because when you take it to the shop, they will tell you what other maintenance is recommended at your current mileage.

“To the Rider, a big problem calls for a big solution.  But if you seek out a solution that’s as complex as the problem, you’ll get the Food Pyramid and nothing will change.  (The Rider will just spin his wheels trying to make sense of it.)  The Rider has to be jarred out of introspection, out of analysis.  He needs a script that explains how to act.”

Point to the Destination

You have a choice about how to use the Rider’s energy: By default, he’ll obsess about which way to move, or whether it’s necessary to move at all.  But you can redirect that energy to helping you navigate toward the destination.  For that to happen you need a gut-smacking goal…

This is a decently long chapter in the book with a lot of good real-world examples making it clear that you need a compelling destination for change to happen.  There is not a lot of description or analysis that I can provide in a summary however.  The point of this chapter is that for change to happen you need a destination that invests you emotionally in the destination, what the authors above called a “gut –smacking” goal.

Goals that lack emotion, and are just SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Timely) don’t work well for change.  You need to point clearly to the destination, make it simple and easy to understand, and make it compelling.

“When you describe a compelling destination, you are helping to correct one of the Rider’s greatest weaknesses – the tendency to get lost in analysis.”

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Switch

Chip and Dan Heath of Made to Stick fame are out with a new book that looks to be a huge winner: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.  Check out 90+% five star reviews on Amazon.  It is currently a best seller on Amazon and the New York Times lists.

Switch is an excellent book with very practical advice that is made as easy to follow as you can imagine for such a broad and complex topic.  I really loved this book.  I bought the book at a Barnes and Noble.  When I was checking out, the sales clerk said “The whole world needs to read this book”.

I’m going to write a series summarizing the ideas and suggestions in the book and this first article in the series will be an overview.

Overview

The book covers individual, organizations, and societal change and does so in a reasonably concise way.  The book is organized around a metaphor of an elephant, the rider on the elephant, and the path the rider and the elephant take.  The elephant represents the emotional self, the rider represents the rational self, and the path represents the environment in which change occurs.  This metaphor works very well.  When the rider and the elephant do not agree, which is often, you have a problem.

The authors describe interesting research on human behavior that is relevant to their topic.  They also use a lot of real-world examples and stories to make it engaging and believable, really believable.  It is really well done.

The book and the process for making changes have three main parts described below.  The authors admit that they leave out a lot of “great thinking” on change in order to create a framework that is practical.  Maybe that’s what separates this book from many others.  Instead of droning on and on about theory, they try to create something that someone can actually put into practice.

You don’t have to finish the whole book to make use of it.  After reading the Find the Bright Spots chapter near the beginning of the book, I was already thinking of ways I could put the advice to use.

The process and the organization of the book into main parts and chapters is described below.

Direct the Rider

– What looks like resistance is often lack of clarity.  So provide crystal-clear direction.

1. Find the Bright Spots
2. Script the Critical Moves
3. Point to the Destination

Motivate the elephant

– What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.  The Rider can’t get his way by force for very long.  So it’s critical that you engage people’s emotional side – get their Elephants on the path and cooperative.

1. Find the Feeling
2. Shrink the Change
3. Grow Your People

Shape the Path

– What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.  We call the situation (including the surrounding environment) the “Path”.  When you shape the Path, you make change more likely, no matter what’s happening with the Rider and Elephant.

1. Tweak the Environment
2. Build Habits
3. Rally the Herd

What’s Next?

Coming next is a summary of the ideas in Change Made Simple – Direct the Rider

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For some of us, myself included, there is an internal battle going on between our natural inclination to go with the flow of unstructured thinking and living and the real-world of dealing with the necessary details of life.

By nature I’m not a planner nor an organizer.  My world is one of increasing disorder.  Whenever I get a wild hair and decide to get organized, the change is only temporary.  Things quickly return to an equilibrium of disorder.  I seem to have a set point of disorder.  Despite repeated attempts I can’t seem to change that set point.

I’m a big picture person.  I don’t like to work the details.  After a few minutes in a spreadsheet I want to commit suicide. I’m a tinkerer and I like to try things out and see if they work rather than trying to plan them out ahead of time.  I don’t like to schedule my day.  I like to work on whatever feels right at the time.  I love the freedom of going with the flow.

The problem with all this is that for most of us, life insists on a whole lot of details.  You have to take care of food, clothing, shelter, hygiene, pets, kids, bills, taxes, regulations, meetings, email, work, writing, relationships, etc.  Even when we have to deal with those kinds of things, some of us tend to approach them in an unstructured way.

I’ve finally settled on something that really seems to work.  I first got the idea from a wonderful book called Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less.  It can be applied to your business and work life or your personal life.  I don’t go the whole way with what is described in the book because it is just too much for me.  However, the ideas in the book were the inspiration for what I am putting into place.

The bottom line is that for those things you have to do, those things for which a repeatable process can be used, you create a system that is deadly efficient and as automatic as possible.  In this way you burn through those necessary tasks with maximum speed and efficiency and that frees up the rest of your time to do what you want.   In my case that means no planning and no organization.  Instead I do whatever I feel like doing and in the way I like to do it: playing, tinkering, and creating.  I expect to get much better at this as I continue to work these systems.

A Suggested Approach

Seeing the world as a set of systems and subsystems

You start looking at your world and realize that to a large extent it is made up of systems and subsystems.  Think about the human body.  It’s a number of subsystems; digestive, pulmonary, circulatory, immune, etc. put together to make up one primary system – you.  You can take some area of your personal life such as your health and break it down into subsystems like sleep, exercise, diet, regeneration, screening and checkups (for those of us in the older crowd).  Your morning routine could be considered a system that might be made more productive and efficient freeing up time for you to do something else.  I’ve identified online systems for myself like email, blog reading and commenting, blog article research and writing, and social media.  Your work is undoubtedly made up of many such subsystems.

Selection of systems to work on improving

You probably should only tackle one system at a time.  I’ve been working on the online systems mentioned above.  Obviously the most broken, most problematic, most time consuming areas are where you will get the most initial return on investment.  However, don’t just ignore smaller areas.  If you could attack 4 systems and save 15 minutes a day on each, your end result is one hour a day free for you to do something else.  I consider that a big payoff worth a lot of investment.

Elimination

If you’ve read this blog for long, you’ll know I’m a big proponent of elimination.  Take an axe to what you think you need to do and then take another cut at what you think you have left.  Identify the Essential and Eliminate the Rest.  You can eliminate whole subsystems this way.  When you are first looking at improving a system look at what you can eliminate from it first.  For example in my email system I unsubscribed to a whole bunch of stuff that I never read, but that cluttered my inbox and had to be processed.

Delegation

You may or may not always have this choice but I implore you to let go of the control and get creative to see if you can take advantage of delegation.  The work may be essential and maybe can’t be eliminated, but you may be able to eliminate it from your task list by delegation. From your perspective that accomplishes the same thing. In my household I earn the money so the deal I have with my wife is that she takes care of the household details.  I don’t pay bills, deal with insurance, taxes, clean, garden, mow, schedule repairmen, or any other of those messy things I’m not good at and hate to do.  It’s wonderful.  I don’t even think about them.  My female friends are jealous and joke that they want a wife like mine .  The same thing applies to your work.  Wherever you can, delegate tasks to others and free yourself for better things.

Analyze and document the process

Whatever system you have chosen to work on needs to be analyzed in detail and the process articulated in some way.  Unfortunately there is some heavy lifting here that cannot be avoided.  If you fail to analyze exactly what you are doing and how you are doing it, you will not have the foundation you need to dramatically improve the process.  I hate this part, but it is necessary.  You have to pay the price here to get the big payoff later.  I choose to document very lightly and only to the point of making sure I remember and understand every step I am taking.

Simplify

It may seem obvious, but it is often missed.  There are undoubtedly ways you can simplify the process.  If you have to go from point A to point B, the shortest distance is a straight line.  Eliminate any unnecessary steps and look for shortcuts.  If you get good with keyboard shortcuts in working email for example, you can eliminate a lot of moving the mouse and clicking around.  It can dramatically speed up the process.  The main thing is don’t take three steps to do what can be accomplished in one.

Make it repeatable and rigorous

Come up with at process that is rigorous and reliable by making it repeatable.  If you just wing it every time, that may “work”, but it is inefficient and makes it more likely you will spend more time to get less done.  Why do I need a repeatable process for reading and commenting on other blogs?  At first thought that seems ridiculous to me, but I have realized I’m neglecting that task because I do it haphazardly.  I start reading something when I feel like it and then I get distracted and/or bored and end up going off on a tangent or procrastinating.  A rigorous repeatable process allows me to allocate time and get things done that are important to me in as little time as possible.

Automate

If you make a process within a system repeatable, you have a lot of opportunity for automation.  Automation is the mother lode of payoff.  Automated tasks are like eliminated or delegated tasks – you are no longer doing them.  Email is a perfect example.  I’m creating rule after rule in both Gmail and Outlook to process email automatically and send emails to predefined folders or just automatically delete them.  Some of those folders I review and some of them I keep for records.  For instance, I get a lot of emails saying something was automatically paid or shipped.  Those just automatically get filed for record keeping.  I have blog or newsletters going to other folders, some of which are high priority for review and some which I almost never look at.   The latter should be candidates for elimination.

Time limits

For someone who tends to be unstructured like me, time limits work great.  I’m setting time limits on many of my systems for two reasons.  First to motivate me to accomplish something important to me such as “Read and comment on five favorite blogs”.  And second to finish it “in 30 minutes” and ensure I’m not getting distracted and wasting time.  That is not preventing me,  in my free flow time, from reading and commenting on more blogs, it’s just that by having a system with a time limit, I know I’m getting something important done and not just when the mood may strike or not in my more unstructured time.

Tweak

This is nothing more than maintenance and continuous improvement.  As I discover new tools, have new ideas, or as conditions change, I tweak the system and make it better.

The Future

I’ve only been working the systems like this for a short time, even though I had the idea from reading the book over six months ago.  I really think it has great long term potential to allow me to get the things done I need to get done in a structured way, while allowing the rest of my time to truly be my time.  That is time without the stress and pressure of incomplete tasks.  Sam Carpenter has this to say about his Work the System methodology.  I think he is on to something:

“If you pay attention to the mechanical details of your world and make proper adjustments to the key systems that compose it, you can construct a life that is unencumbered with fire-killing, a life seldom dictated by urgency.  Flexible, strong, and resilient, it’s a life of smooth, calm days; days that have lots of room for thinking and planning, for friends and family, and for just being yourself.”

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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I saw this story in an Early to Rise newsletter a few weeks ago.  It’s from Tom Monaghan, the founder of Dominoes Pizza.

“One night, most of my employees didn’t show up, and I didn’t know whether to open or not. Someone said, ‘Why don’t you just cut out the six-inch pizzas?’ We had five sizes, but most of our business was the smallest, the six-inch. It took just as long to make as the big one and just as much time to deliver but cost less. I decided we would try that.”

“We never got busy that night, and yet we made 50 percent more money than we ever had. The next night I cut out the nine-inch pizza, and all the bills caught up. I learned then that keeping things simple could be more profitable.”

This is really just another way of stating the 80/20 rule or the Pareto principle.  It doesn’t just apply to pizza, it applies to everything.  People can see value in an activity and so they assume they should be doing it.  Wrong!

The Brain Surgeon

Imagine a Brain Surgeon’s office.  Certainly the janitorial duties at the office are critical to success.  If somebody didn’t get rid of the waste, the pile up of waste would destroy the surgeon’s practice.  Does this mean the surgeon should perform the janitorial duties?  Absolutely not and everyone can see that.  Many people can take out the trash but only a few people can perform brain surgery.

More value is created when the brain surgeon concentrates on difficult problems in his patients.  Forget the trash, what about other medical problems?  He may be qualified to treat people with upper respiratory infections, but is that a good use of his time?  No, because he has a valuable and rare skill and he creates the most value when he concentrates on that and lets someone else do the other stuff.  He shouldn’t be spending his time filling out government and insurance company paperwork either.  He can hire other people to do those tasks.

The Lesson

I read one time that many small businesses fail because as the business grows, the entrepreneur spends less and less time creating and more and more time on the mundane tasks of running a business.  Big mistake.

This doesn’t just apply to entrepreneurs either.  You may have a regular job.  There will be many people, including your boss, who think you should be doing various “value-adding” activities.  They will rationalize how various things add value to the business.  So what?  If those aren’t the most value-adding activities you can be doing, then you shouldn’t be doing them.  You should be concentrating on what you do best.

This doesn’t just apply in business.  It applies in your personal life as well.  How much time should you spend dusting up the last remaining dust particle in your house?  Should you really be running all over the place trying to do everything? You should be concentrating on the very most important and doing what makes you happy and allows you to keep your sanity.  Your family will thank you.

We have a hard time cutting out what is not essential because in our minds we create a story that makes everything essential.  It’s not.  Most of it is trivial and won’t matter in the end.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

Get Free Updates to The Rat Race Trap by Email here or via a reader in the top left sidebar.  I would love to have you on board.