Tim Ferriss is among the most popular writers around on productivity, picking up skills, and escaping the 9-5 lifestyle.
His first bestseller,
The Four Hour Workweek, came out of from his own experience of going from working long hours, seven days a week to figuring out how to run a business more efficiently.
But even for people not ready to take that step, Ferriss has some valuable tips for figuring how to get dramatically more done in less time, leaving more room to get ahead, relax, and do the things that make you happy.
Interest, energy and ability go up and down all the time. Trying to work through it when you're miserable is unproductive.
The way many of our jobs and careers are planned leads to doing the same thing for hours, even years on end. It doesn't account for the fact that people aren't built to work that way.
Your interest and ability to do a particular job or task varies over time. It's more effective to plan for it than to simply try to work through it, or spend unproductive hours staring at a screen.
Design your work day, and potentially even your career to take that into account.
Doing less is not being lazy. Don't give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal productivity.
Often, our workplace culture places way too much emphasis on face-time, late evenings, early mornings, and eating lunch at the desk as a sign of hard work and dedication.
Long hours show neither. There's a big difference between being productive and being busy. Instead of measuring the amount of work you do, measure results in terms of the amount of time, and eliminate the less important things that take forever.
Eliminate work for work's sake.
Ask people for forgiveness instead of for permission.
Waiting for someone else's approval is the easiest way to delay or avoid something you don't really want to do. That way, you can blame inaction or failure on them instead of yourself.
And if you do want to do it, but think someone will deny you, just go for it. Unless the damage is catastrophic, you'll be able to fix things or apologize. People are hesitant to try new things, but once the ball's rolling, they'll rarely stop it.
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