10 Strategies for
Working Much Smarter
Thai Nguyen
Whether you’re in Australia, England, or
America; blue-collared, white, or pink,
we’ve all got 24-hours to work with. Success comes down
to what we’re able to do in those hours. No entrepreneur can keep the sun
from setting or add hours to their day,
but there are strategies that will help maximize work
habits and productivity.
Here are 10 strategies for efficiency and
effectiveness:
1. Parkinson’s
Law
"If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a
minute to do,"observed Cyril Northcote Parkinson. We’ve all
experienced Parkinson's Law.
We struggle for a month to finish a project, then
magically get it done in the final week.
Or, the house is a mess for weeks,
then spotless within a few hours of the in-laws showing up.
The law provides great leverage for
efficiency: imposing shorter deadlines for a task,
or scheduling an earlier meeting. Find the sweet
spot for productive hustle.
Rushed work can be a recipe for reckless work.
2. Finding your
flow
For athletes, it’s called being “in the zone,” where
you’re so focused that you're numbed out
to any distractions. It’s a state we can all tap
into: writers, musicians, and entrepreneurs.
Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi's research is focused on
these flow states
that optimize our performance by finding that balance between challenge and skill.
If
the task is too challenging and beyond our skill, then we go into anxiety and
frustration,
but not challenging enough and we fall into boredom.
Stretch yourself, but don't snap. We're at our most
efficient when in the zone.
3. Single-tasking
There’re many compelling cases against
multi-tasking. A study found that even folks walking
while talking on a cell phone run into people more often
and were so distracted,
many failed to notice a clown riding a unicycle.
Telling an entrepreneur not to multi-task, however, is
like telling a pig to stay out of mud
but the truth is, multi-tasking a misnomer better termed
“task-switching.”
We don't juggle so much as we jump around. The
problem is ending up with too many
open projects, and spreading yourself too thin. A
good quote on scaling back is by
Alexander Graham Bell: “Concentrate all your thoughts
upon the work at hand,
the sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
4. The 2-Minute
Rule
From David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’, he
explains that the most productive people
capitalize on the little windows of time opening up
during the day. Having an inventory
of two-minute tasks on hand whenever windows appear will
increase productivity.
Cleaning out the inbox, checking voicemail, approving a
request, all in brief openings
in the schedule, builds our efficiency muscles
and gets the ball rolling for bigger tasks.
A major cause of procrastination lies in over thinking
the next step.
Allen says it takes less time to do the action than
the time spent thinking about it.
5. Working to
circadian rhythms
Nerve cells in our brains control our circadian
rhythms, which influences sleep-wake cycles,
hormone release, emotions and energy levels.
Constant operation outside circadian rhythms (e.g.
international pilots) creates fatigue.
Efficiency lies in synchronizing specific work with these
biological peak times.
Dr. Steve Kay says analytical work is best within a
couple hours of waking,
when the morning rise in body temperature increases blood
flow to the brain.
Alertness slumps after lunch as the digestive process
saps energy.
This analytical disengagement is the best time for novel and creative thinking,
according to Professor Mareike Wieth.
Exercise increases efficiency. Dr Gerard
Kennedy notes more Olympic records are broken
in the late afternoon than any other time. Muscle
strength, lung capacity,
eye-hand coordination and joint flexibility peaks
between 4pm and 6pm.
Three sweet spots for maximizing your efforts: the
morning analytic spike,
a creative spike after lunch, and a physical spike in the
afternoon.
6. Reverse
engineering
Most commonly applied to industrial machinery and
computer software,
reverse engineering can be applied to different
fields, products, and strategies.
It is disassembling and analyzing the
components that make up the whole. Efficiency comes
not only with seeing how parts relate, but being able to
work on aspects out of order.
Tim Ferriss notes his rapid mastering of the tango
through deconstructing the dance,
and learning the female role along with the
male.
Expert linguists do the same, breaking a language
into pieces
and having a bird's-eye view of the most common
grammatical structures.
7. The
Willpower trinity
Stanford Professor Kelly McGonigal says the key
to hitting goals is understanding
the three powers of willpower: I
will power, I won’t power, and I want power.
• I "won’t power'' is resisting temptation, such as
saying “no” to social media.
• I "will power'' is to choose an alternate behavior
-- sending a social, but networking email.
• I "want power'' is remembering your why, your
goal, be it expanding your career,
business
or profits.
Willpower is like a muscle. When we fail to reach goals,
it’s due to solely relying on I won’t power, but we can
only say “no” so many times before we crumble. However, bringing in backup,
and using all three aspects of willpower, will
triple the likelihood of success.
Resist, replace, remember.
8. 57 on, 17 off
The entrepreneurial hustle makes breaks non-existent.
Recent studies show only one-in-five employees
take lunch breaks,
despite clear cognitive benefits for our
fatigued brains.
So what’s the perfect work/rest ratio? DeskTime App played
Big Brother,
monitoring employees’ computer use. They found the most
productive 10 percent worked hard
for 52 minutes, then took a break for 17. It’s
backed by scientists, pointing to the natural rhythms of our
attention span. Our brain can focus for up to 90 minutes,
then needs
roughly 20 minutes of rest. Strategic breaks equals efficient work.
9. Power
poses
If it weren’t true, it’d be preposterous to think
simply changing your posture affects productivity. Professor Amy Cuddy’s Ted
Talk highlights the psychosomatic and neurological responses
caused by our posture. Taking a high-power pose causes an
increase in testosterone
(confidence, assertiveness, energy) and a decrease in
cortisol (stress, anxiety, nervousness). A confident,
testosterone-perked person is much more productive
than a cortisol-crippled, stressed person.
Our brain is wired to respond to certain physiologies.
A forced smile will still release
endorphins.
Pulling yourself out of a figurative slump is as
simple as pulling yourself out of a physical slump.
10. Validated
progress
A good warning from Eric Ries: “If we’re building
the wrong product really efficiently,
it’s like we’re driving our car off a cliff and bragging
about our awesome gas mileage.”
Along the same stream of the Sharpe
ratio’s risk/return measures in finance,
and the “minimum viable product” in the tech world, the
strategy is about being calculated
and conscious in our efforts, with a flexible, rather
than fixed process and goal.
It’s being productive and ready to pivot, rather
than simply charging full-steam ahead.
A case-in-point is Nick Swinmurn's startup of
Zappos. He validated his idea without blowing cash
by first going to a shoe store, taking photos and
posting them online.
When sales came in, he went and bought the shoes. He
didn't need to pivot, just perseverance.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239216
You can TCR software/engineering
manuals for spontaneous
recall – or pass that exam.
I can Turbo Charge
Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what
I’ve read.
I can TCR non
fiction/academic books around 20 times
faster and remember what I’ve read.
Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook
group ?
Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:
All aspects of regular, each-word reading and education.
Turbo Charged Reading uses these skills significantly
faster
www.innermindworking.blogspot.com
gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life
www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com
just for fun.
To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read,
the more things you will know.
The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”
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