As of late I have been looking for ways to “Hack My Time”.
With multiple projects going on at the same time I need to continuously find better ways to leverage my time better. While browsing Reddit a few days ago. I ran across a post about The Rule of 3. Which lead me to another post on a blog named: A Year of Productivity. The purpose of the blog, according to the author…
is to dedicate a full year of my life to devour everything that I can find that’s related to productivity. – Chris Bailey
I found this to be quite interesting.
He has a call out section in his header that urges you to “Steal his posts”. Chris Bailey says:
The goal of this project is to make me and you more productive, and to dive deep into the world of productivity – not to make money.
I implemented the methods below in my daily activities and seen very positive results. I also took him up on his statement, and wanted to share this with you guys. I hope that you find it as useful as I did.
A question was recently posed on the popular question-and-answer website Quora that asked, “What’s the single most valuable lessonyou’ve learned in your professional life?”
The top answer is one that I recommend you read in whole, and it promotes the virtues of the 80-20 rule. The rule says that 80% of the results you achieve come from 20% of your efforts. According to Edmond Lau, this “20% of work consists of [your] highest leverage activities”.
The 80-20 rule is one that’s widely-known and referred to, particularly in business, where 80% of your sales often come from 20% of your customers. What really makes Lau’s answer unique, though, is his application of the principal to how he manages his time.
It doesn’t matter how productive you are if you’re not doing the right things in the first place.
Some of the more interesting high-leverage activities he engages in are:
- Mentoring new employees (since one hour of mentoring will likely pay for itself ten times over)
- Building and automating repetitive work
- Investing in learning
- Pushing back on meetings without an agenda, or ones he doesn’t want to be a part of
All of this of course begs the question – what are the highest-leverage activities in your work and home life? It’s one thing to do things more efficiently, but are you actually doing the right things?
It’s a question I’ll be thinking about over the next several days, particularly as it pertains to this site.