How To Do More By Doing Less
August 26, 2007
(Photo by bookchiq)
Let’s do a little poll here; have you ever wish that you have more time? Yes? Read on.
It’s not surprising to me. I’m one of those who wished I have more time too. The modern life today is filled with so many demands from multiple sources and people; you may be struggling to juggle demands between your clients, bosses, team members, peers etc etc etc… The buzzword at work is “multitasking”. It seems like what originated from the computing world now applies to humans as well. I see it on job descriptions quite a lot. They might as well go buy some computers instead of hiring people.
Simply because you are trying to juggle between some many roles and their associated demands, your task list grows at a rate beyond what you are capable of handling alone. So what results is some (or maybe a lot of) frustrations and disappointments. Thus it’s natural that many people (including myself) are wishing that we have more time.
Well, the mentality behind this is that having more time allows us to finish these “to-dos”. But let’s sit down and think for a second. Does having more time really help?
In my opinion, it’s a resounding ‘NO’! It’s simple, having more time allows you to do more things, yes. But that only means you are working more hours, not accomplishing more.
Do NOT mistake work for achievements!
Yes, drill this into your head. The fact that you are working does not mean that you are accomplishing anything worthy.
Have you ever seen a person in the office who seems really, really busy… and you wonder why he’s so busy? And it makes you feel like you’re lofting around, because you’re not as busy? Wait, wait, wait… step back. Ask yourself, how much is this guy (or gal) really contributing in terms of value? How much is this guy been valued as a subject matter expert whom people consult for advice or directions? I bet if this guy is really a busy bumblebee who is taking and following instructions all day, he doesn’t have a clue as to what is really happening around him, or to the business. And because he doesn’t have a clue, he can’t give directions or well-rounded advice. He’s basically busy following instructions.
Now, I’m not saying being hardworking is bad. Definitely, diligence is a positive attribute. But what I’m saying is: let’s be smarter about this. You want to be diligent, but you want your hard work to make a difference and contribute some value. You’re not working hard just for the sake of working hard, right? It’ll be such a rude awakening to find that you have slogged for months only to realize later that you have not make any difference at all, wouldn’t it?
Manage Your Task List First, Your Time Second
So where does that leave us; if having more time is not the solution? Let’s look at the other end of the problem, your task list;
Take a look at your task list. If you don’t have one, start one by listing down ALL the things that you need to do, and those that you do routinely. It can include anything like chairing a meeting, writing a proposal, submitting a report, meeting a client etc etc etc… so long as you need to spend some time on this action, it’s in your task list.
It’s quite a long laundry list, isn’t it? No wonder you wish for more time.
The next step is to apply the 80/20 principle. For the benefit of those who haven’t heard of this principle before, it simply means that
80% of your results are driven by 20% of your efforts
This is a statistically proven principle from Pareto. It originated from quality management and continuous improvement field. However, this concept is found to apply and also adapted to many other areas of life. For example, it is commonly said that 80% of your business revenues are coming from the top 20% of your client base, or 80% of money in the world are held by 20% of the population. Lastly, 80% of your REAL work is done within 20% of your working hours. Think about it; how much time do you really spend on productive, value-added work in a day, and how much time spent on clearing emails, fighting other people’s fire, chatting at water coolers, surfing the web etc?
Fact is, you only need to focus on the top 20% most important area of your work to drive 80% of your success or results. The remaining 80% of efforts are secondary and they don’t achieve a lot for the amount of time required. In fact, most of the time, the remaining 20% of the results are so negligible that others are not going to notice any significant difference even when you missed the last 80% of effort. What this means for you is that:
- Don’t be a perfectionist. You’re only killing yourself.
- You don’t have to react immediately to all requests that come your way. Only 20% are really important and matters at any point in time.
- Don’t worry about trying to accomplish 100%; minor mistakes don’t leave an impression with people. Your 80% results already guarantee your success.
Back to your task list; circle the top 2 or 3 tasks which you believe are in the top 20%, which will give 80% of the results. DO THESE FIRST. For the rest, leave them in your task list, but forget about them for now. FOCUS only on the top 3 tasks NOW. You can circle back to the rest once you are done with the top 3. By doing so, you make sure you have covered 80% of results. Even if you don’t get the other tasks done, you have already covered enough ground. That’s great, isn’t it?
Naturally, your next question would be, ‘how do I know which are the tasks in the top 20%?’
Well, honestly, I can’t answer that. The answer will vary very much depending on your situation, your job role and scope, and what’s important to you on a personal level. Nonetheless, I am going to give a couple of generic pointers here which should provide guidance. It’s not exhaustive, but it’s a starting point.
- Prioritize base on value - One way to pick the top 20% tasks is to a put a value to them. For example, assuming you are an Account Manager covering a few accounts. You have multiple information and work requests coming in on a daily basis and all are urgent (from your clients’ point of view). You are already clocking more than 50 hours a week, yet your task list continues to grow. When serving multiple clients, it is natural that each of their requests is urgent to them, but that doesn’t mean they are the same to you. In this case, one possible way to pick the top 20% of tasks can be based on the top revenue generating account (remember that 20% of your client base accounts for 80% of your revenue?) You want to be sure you satisfy your top client first before others. Ultimately, it’s better to risk dissatisfying a 20K client, than to risk the same for a 500K client, isn’t it? The same principle can apply for projects, sales opportunities etc.
- Prioritize base on leverage - Second way is to pick tasks where you can provide the best leverage, due to your experience, skills, knowledge or even position. Mathematically, leverage simply means the amount of output/result based on a single unit of input. The greater amount of result, output or value you can produce for one hour of work, the greater your leverage. Pick tasks where you can provide the maximum leverage and leave the rest to someone else who is in a better position to do them. Managers especially are in a good leverage position simply due to their direct and indirect influence over their immediate team, and with other colleagues. This is where being strategic and delegation comes in (I will elaborate on delegation in a while).
- Prioritize base on damages - Third way is to pick tasks which if neglected, can or already is resulting in massive damages. Damages can come in the form of money, reputation, your job stability or even safety. This is the least preferred way to prioritize, as it usually means you end up in ‘fire-fighting’ mode. Nonetheless, reality tells us that such urgencies do occur, and we have to attend to them when it arises. However, the good news is that if you have done a good job in prioritizing based on value and leverage, the chances of fire-fighting gets minimized. If you are constantly operating in fire-fighting mode, I suggest that take a good look at your choice of top tasks, it can very likely be that you are missing out on the most important and strategic ones, which went undetected until it snowballed into urgencies.
How To Handle The Remaining 80% Of Tasks
So far, we have talked about focusing our time and energy in the top 20% of tasks. In this way, we are doing less, but we achieve more because these tasks provide the greatest value and leverage.
Does this really mean that we can forget about the remaining 80%? Well, again, it depends. In some situations, it really doesn’t matter if some tasks get forgotten; but in most, you certainly have to circle back to them simply because it’s part and parcel of your job and life OR continuous neglect will cause these tasks to escalate into urgencies.
Remember, your aim is to spend the most time on most important 20% tasks at hand, those that you are really good at leveraging on, and provide the greatest value. We want to minimize time spend on the remaining 80%. To that end, I have the 3 suggestions:
- Outsource And Focus On Top 20%
- Delegate Work That You Have Little Leverage On
- Just Say “NO”
In the following sections, I will elaborate on each of these 3 points.
Outsource And Focus On Top 20%
Pay someone else to do it. Is there someone else who can do this task better or more cheaply than you do? When my wife and I first got married and moved into our current home, we spent 4-5 hours every weekend on household chores like cleaning the house, laundry, ironing and general home maintenance. Then we have to rush through our other commitments over the weekend. As a result, we were not able to fully recharge ourselves, or have quiet time for self-growth. We started each week more tired than the last.
We finally decided to hire a part-time helper who does the household chores for $40 for 4 hours every weekend. This move has 2 advantages:
Firstly, the helper is more proficient and experienced than we are in household chores (yes, household chores can be specialized as well); On her own, the helper is able to complete what previously took two of us 4 hours to complete. That is a 100% increased efficiency!
Next, we are able to invest the saved time into other more important or higher value tasks like writing articles and reading. On average, our expenses has increased by $120 per month to outsource household chores to the helper, but we recoup this expense by accomplishing work that are more than $120 in value.
For example, every article that I write takes about 4 hours on average. With the time saved through outsourcing household chores, I can write additional 4 articles every month. This is a long-term investment for me; over time, once my articles hit a critical mass in readership, the value that I create both for my readers and myself are definitely going to be much more than the cost of $120 per month.
So you see, by outsourcing non-critical work in the lower 80%; you allow yourself more time to focus on your top 20% tasks. In doing so, you create more value with the same 24 hours in a day.
Delegate Work That You Have Little Leverage On
Earlier, I mentioned that if you are a manager of a team, then you are in an advantaged position to leverage on those in your team to achieve results greater than the sum of the individuals combined. Now, if you are able to leverage on your team effectively, you can truly achieve “1 + 1 = 3″.
An ideal team should comprise of individuals with varying areas and degrees of expertise, knowledge, and even character. Due to this diverse nature, each individual has different strengths and weaknesses. As a manager, your job is to make sure that each individual’s time and effort are spent in their respective top 20% area, as much as possible.
Your top 20% task should be managing and leveraging on the team members’ expertise to produce the greatest result possible; it should not be diving into tasks and details where you don’t have expertise on.
Let me give you an illustration; you are a team leader of a construction team in charge of laying brick walls. When laying walls, for each wall that needs to be laid, a set of guidelines must be measured and setup so that the brick layer knows where to lay.
You have 2 members. Let’s call them Jack and Jill. Now, Jack is really good at laying bricks. Jack is a guy, and he’s really strong; he can lay 100 bricks in an hour, while Jill being a lady and physically weaker, can only lay 50 bricks in an hour. However, Jill being a lady, is really meticulous. She can set up guidelines very accurately, while Jack does it wrong half the time. As for you, your skill is somewhere between Jack and Jill in terms of both laying bricks and setting up guidelines.
Because you are neither as good as Jack in laying brick, nor as good as Jill in setting up guideline, you have very little leverage in these specialized tasks; you should delegate these tasks out to Jack and Jill respectively. You want to delegate the tasks to the best person for the job to produce maximum results; as Jill finishes setting one set of guidelines, Jack can start laying bricks. Jill’s high accuracy and Jack’s high speed ensure maximum productivity.
So what are you going to do after you have delegated out the tasks? Remember this next point, it’s really, really important:
A manager’s top 20% task is to create, facilitate, and influence the ideal environment necessary for your team members’ success, to produce the best collective results possible.
Your best leverage is to help your team members be successful at what they do best!
Hence your next top 20% task should include liaising with your suppliers and making sure that Jack has enough bricks and cement needed for his job. Another top 20% task can be liaising with the architect when Jill has queries about layout in the blueprint or the actual measurement on the ground doesn’t match up with the blueprint design. By ensuring Jack always has enough bricks and Jill always have the correct blueprint and measurements, you facilitate the highest productivity possible.
Now, with this new understanding, and assuming you only have 2 hours to spare; it becomes very easy to choose between tasks of laying bricks yourself, or setting up guidelines yourself or having a procurement meeting with your brick supplier or a design meeting with architect to clarify blueprint. Which tasks are in your top 20%?
I hope you see the connections between effective delegation and leveraging. Many people fail to delegate and leverage well, often because we get too caught up with immediate issues and fire-fighting that we try to do everything ourselves, thinking that it is the fastest way to get the problem solved. And we lose sight of the importance of leveraging on our team members. This not only caused ourselves to work on sub-optimal level, but this also cause our team members to work at sub-optimal level, as they do not have the best environment to operate in. This only results in sub-optimal results as a team.
So start managing by doing less hands-on tasks. Stand back, let your team fight the front line, while you maintain a strategic view and facilitate your team’s success. Achieve more by doing less.
Just Say “NO”
In some situations, it is not possible to outsource or to delegate the tasks that are not in your top 20% priority. In this case, the only option is simply to say “No”.
However, the challenge is that it is very difficult to say ‘No’ to someone else. Why is it so difficult to say ‘No’? Well, for various reasons, but they often fall into one or more of the following categories:
- You don’t want to disappoint the requester, because he/she is someone close or dear to you; e.g. a request from a friend or family.
- You don’t want to antagonize the requester, because he/she is someone influential e.g. your boss.
- You want to be seen as a ‘fit’ into a group, to compile with social ‘norms’ e.g. your work place culture.
Basically, you are trying to live up to external expectations.
Ask yourself, how many times have you promised someone else to do something, only to regret it later, and finding yourself dragging your feet to fulfill your promise? Then it is likely that it fits into one of the above situations. You made a promise to do something even though it is not important to you, and you find yourself regretting your decisions later on.
The pressure of living up to external expectations can be very great sometimes, and hence it is not easy to say ‘No’. So how do we get to say ‘No’ to unimportant requests?
The answer lies with knowing your top 20% tasks. Simply said, you need to know your priorities. You also need to realize that, by taking time to do unimportant tasks, you are taking time away from things that truly matter to you. You are living up to others’ expectations, at your own expense. So you’ve got to ask yourself, “is it worth it”?
Now, I am not saying that you need to be a selfish bastard and do everything for your own benefits as the sole intention. There will definitely be times when you need to make sacrifices for your dear ones, whom you cherish and love. That’s fine, but you need to make such sacrifices knowingly; feeling that it is worth it and gratifying for you.
What I am saying is that you need to be mindful of compromising at your own expense, because you feel pressurized to live up to external expectations. You then find yourself filled with regret and burdened, for landing yourself into a situation that you don’t want to be in.
When you have a clear understanding of your goals and relevant top 20% tasks, and you hold it so closely to your heart, you create a very strong ‘Yes’ inside you. This clarity will allow you to say ‘No’ with conviction, and with so much assertiveness, that people who care for you will respect you for your wishes. The ‘No’ ceases to be disappointing or destructive.
Do More By Doing Less - Final Words
So my friend, I hope you see that having more time is not the solution to your time challenges.
What you need is focus; crystal clear clarity of what you want to achieve and what you want to do. You need to be selective about making promises, about adding that task to your task list.
Recognize the fact that the lesser things that you try to do, the more time you have to do the important ones really well. And it is these few important ones that will give you the happiness and achievements that you want in life.
Don’t try to shoulder life’s burden yourself. Rally allies; outsource and delegate when possible. Leverage on others’ strength to get the best results possible.
Lastly, don’t live your life trying to live up to external expectations. Live your life for yourself, and people truly important to you. Learn to say ‘No’ by developing a strong burning ‘Yes’ inside you.
Remember that doing less actually let’s you achieve more, and enjoy the journey ahead.
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