Read time: Approx. 4 Mins | 2 Mins Highlighted sections
.
I believe there are two things that everyone wants to be in life; one is hyper effective in their work and the other is a ninja. I have therefore combined the two so as to make it easier.
.
Why Read:
You should read this article because it explains the 5 killer rules for working effectively. These are rules that work and are simple and practical to put into operation. We only have a short period of time on this earth so why waste it if we don’t need to. 5 minutes of your time invested now will result in considerable savings in the future. Also, being a ninja is cool.
.
Disclaimer
.
Whoa Tiger, just a friendly footnote before you read on. I do not advocate violence in any circumstance and so you must use these rules solely for effective working and not for causing injury by force…unless of course the 12 year old kid won’t give you any of his candy and you really, really want some – but even then, it is a last resort.
.
The 5 Killer Rules
.
Timeboxing – The Rule Of Setting Boundaries
.
Not as violent as it sounds, timeboxing is one of the easiest and most effective ways of staying focussed and limiting wasted time. Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time available for it so we use timeboxing to put this law to work for us.
.
A 30 minute task can easily become a 4 hour marathon episode if the entire afternoon is dedicated to it or no clear timebox has been defined for completing the task.
.
It is important to define a beginning and end time for any given task – this time frame is it’s time box, hence the term timeboxing. I like to use time boxes of half an hour as you will be surprised at how many tasks can be complete within this 30 minute period. I also tend to begin any task time box on either the hour, quarter past, half past or quarter to as it makes it easier to work out the end times very quickly.
If you get into a habit of not breaking these time boxes you will find very quickly that all your faculties; concentration, focus, creativity etc will work more effectively to accomplish the tasks if there is a definite end goal.
.
Pareto 80/20 – The Rule Of The Vital Few
.
The Pareto Rule is probably the single most important principle I follow for all aspects of my life including effective working and I believe the very first Ninja was in fact called Pareto. It is that important it actually makes up one third of my “Light Touch” philosophy for business and for life.
The Pareto 80/20 principle or the “Law of the vital few” states that all things being equal, 80% of your effects come from 20% of the causes. With regards to productivity this translates to the fact that “80% of your results are going to come from the key 20% of your time” and thus you are going to spend 80% of your time working to achieve the final 20% of results.
.
With this in mind it is important in any given task to focus on the 20% of effort that is going to give you 80% of your results and refrain from exerting another 80% of effort to achieve the final 20% of results.
.
This is basically the benchmarked principle of “good enough.” If you can except that whatever you are working on will not be perfect but it will be “good enough” and in doing so will only take you 1/5 of the time then the world is yours. The world belongs to people who understand that “good enough” is the key to success.
.
Flow – The Rule Of Perfect Working
.
Flow is what happens when you are completely absorbed in the task that you are doing and all your faculties are lined up to concentrate on this activity.
.
Flow is best describe by the example of the avid gamer fixated on the screen or a ninja in mid ass kicking. Every part of his being, hands, eyes, mind, body, hearing is completely focussed on the game and beware anyone who tries to invade into this world of concentration. Flow is incredibly effective and will produce most of your best work in any given activity and thus is to be greatly treasured.
Unfortunately Flow comes and goes and is difficult to manufacture effectively as genuinely some tasks are impossible to get enthusiastic about and even the ones you do love will not always infuse you with energy 100% of the time. However, it is important to understand your own personal flow and when you are in it and thus use it to your advantage. The trick is to try and not cut this period of hyper productivity short if it is at all possible. A further article on flow is to follow as it remains such an important productivity tool.
.
Deadtime – The Rule Of Utilizing Time
.
Before you say it, no, this is not the thing ninjas shout before going into battle, that would just be childish. There seems to be a lot of opinion that there is never enough time. Whether enough time to learn new things or immerse yourself in topics that interest you but are not necessarily essential to the running of your life.
However I would like to put the record straight that this is simple not the case, there is actually plenty of time to immerse yourself in whatever topics interest you and become an expert in it while not giving up any of the things you currently enjoy. It is simply a case of designing the right systems to use your time more effectively. People have a tremendous amount of deadtime in their lives, time where their mental abilities aren’t necessarily engaged.
.
Running, commuting, cleaning, brushing teeth or doing the gardening are all examples of this dead time. This is the time that can be utilized to invest in learning.
.
Get yourself a good MP3 player, get online and get hold of some podcasts of anything that interests you and start to immerse yourself in the topic while you go about your day to day life. People have an average of 6 hours deadtime a day, utilise just half of this with learning and thats an extra 21 hours a week, 84 hours a month or over 1000 hours a year. More than enough time to become an expert. Read the post on “Bending the Rules of Time” for more detail.
.
Planned Obsolescence – The Rule Of Resting
.
There is a time to work and there is definitely a time to not work, in the Ninja code this is translated as “There is a time to kill and a time not to kill”. It is important to have planned times where work is banned and you can give yourself the opportunity to relax. Depending on your type of work this could be the weekend or a few days set aside during the week in which work and the activity of work is banned.
.
To work effectively you must set aside time each week to take a break to let your body and mind unwind.
.
Contrary to popular belief this will not mean that you get less accomplished but quite the opposite it allows your mind to batch its input from the previous week and work through thoughts and ideas in the subconscious ready for conscious consideration once you come back to work. Say no to weekend working for higher productivity.
.
The Last Bit
.
Thats it, re-read the post from time to time if you need to to refresh your memory but that is it. You should now feel more ready to make the most of your time in the future – assassin style. Sometimes I find it helps if you now go and put on a pair of completely black pajamas and jump around the room. Its just more authentic that way.
I hope you have enjoyed the article. If you have any other killer rules for time management and productivity to share it would be awesome if your would leave a comment below explaining them for everyone that reads this blog. As it says below, it has been scientifically proven that if you do so you will become considerably more attractive to the opposite sex. Also ninjas will come and prod you if you don’t.
For this blog alone I will allow URL links back to your own articles on productivity as I believe it will help my readers.
For some reason the coding on my site is screwed so if you do not have a website just type in www.google.com or you facebook profile or something into the website section. I will correct it soon I promise.
Twitter Updates
Man, you’ve got my number. I definitely want to be a ninja. And timeboxing as you call it has worked wonders for me. I personally love using http://e.ggtimer.com to set really strict deadlines to get work done. Basically if I feel an article will take 1 hour to finish I’ll set the timer for 30 minutes.
I don’t always finish the work, but I’m always intently focused and get the vast majority of it completed.
Thats a good working style David. I’ll give the eggtimer a go and see how it works.
Woops, sorry about my last comment. Not sure why the name filled was filled wit my website.
No worries David, it’s a problem with my coding. Still trying to fix it.
I’ve recently been struggling with the realization of how limiting a 24 hour day can be with commuting, time at the office and sleep taking up big chunks of time. It’s helpful to multi-task when it’s possible to take advantage of dead time, but at the same time embrace single-tasking and be present, especially with friends and family.
You are definitely right. I wouldn’t advocate trying to multitask when you are involved in something important such as relationships.
Well, I definitely want to be a Ninja. You got me there.
I have a question about time boxing: Doesn’t it cause stress? And if it doesn’t cause stress, are you taking the time-limit seriously and really sticking to it?
I’ll check out that e.gg timer thingy as well and see if it works for me. Thanks for the link, David!
Hi Shane,
I, personally, have not found time boxing to cause stress. I try to keep to the deadlines I set as much as possible and in most cases I manage it. Obviously from time to time this is not always possible and sometimes I have considerably underestimated the amount of work. In these cases I either stop at the deadline or extend it by another timebox. It get easier with practice and I would definitely suggest sticking with it for 28 days to form the habit.
I also really enjoyed your latest article on Habituation and Homeostasis for building productive habits.
.
Excellent short article on productivity. If I were choosing 5, these would all be at the top of the list. I might add single-tasking and taking frequent breaks.
Hi Stephen,
I would tend to agree with you. The article was actually written after a request from my Dad for something he could print out and stick up at his office to help him work more productively. There’s a few more I would have like to add but wanted to keep it the the top 5 that I have seen the greatest results from.
I see you are coming up to a almost a year of blogging now, how has it been?
Great post, good reminders here. The titles you give here and in other articles are excellent. I’ll be using them as fuel.
“This is basically the benchmarked principle of “good enough.” If you can except that whatever you are working on will not be perfect but it will be “good enough” and in doing so will only take you 1/5 of the time then the world is yours. The world belongs to people who understand that “good enough” is the key to success.”
I struggle with that…because after a few conversations…”good enough” is not what separates the people who make it and the people who don’t. Olympians, class leaders, presidents, lawyers, marines, etc…they were certainly more than good enough…yet at the same time I see the time value from merely passing the bar and moving on. I think there needs to be a reinvented pereto’s principle that adds a clause about what is done with that extra %80 you’re saving. I would argue if you reinvest the time in other high level tasks, it’s worth it, if you use it to watch tv all you’ve done is efficiently earned a B- (80). You’re just a smart slacker…nothing wrong with that…but I’m just saying.
Rob, I couldn’t agree more and thankyou for your encouraging comments.
With regards your insights, I have an enormous respect for those that pursuit perfection in any given skill. I currently am living in Thailand where excellence abounds. Unfortunately, for me, this process leave few stones unturned and I am more a person of experience then perfection. There are indeed individuals that excel at one area and make it big because of their talent, but then there are many, many more that don’t. I personally think that being “good enough” or 80% of the way there in a vast range of skills is far more productive and beneficial for the individual as well as allowing for a much richer existence… but that is just me.
Thanks for you comment.
Ahhhh yes! I really appreciate your recognizing that there’s enough time to do whatever you want (paraphrasing). This is something I am constantly repeating and “not enough time” seems to be the excuse of so many for not getting started.
In response to the appendix to this post, and I would only do this with that kind of express permission, here’s a link to a post I just published on how to start the organization process.
http://brainchocolate.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/productivity-tips-and-free-time-management-how-to-create-a-system-that-works/
Thanks and I look forward to reading more,
Nathan
I read you post Nathan and so am happy for the link as I feel it would be beneficial to the readers of this site. Thanks.
Great post man – the ideas are hella solid. I was always one who believed that talking about ninjas and secret warrior stuff works wonders on the web – and this is an example of why.
Your tricks are cool and something that many people overlook – as the value of time in lifestyle design is one of the more important elements. Timeboxing is a cool code name I hadn’t heard before. I’ve tried the timer for 45 minutes thing and then take a 15 minute break, it works wonders for my ADD mind. Speaking of that, times up to head back to the grind!
Hi Greg,
Mate good to hear about your love of ninjas and thanks for the comment.
Hey Jonny! Yeah that’s weird, regarding the messed up code—I noticed your site was showing people’s URLs instead of their names, but I assumed that was a tweak you’d made for some reason. I can give you the proper code, OR the best thing to do would be to upgrade to the latest version of ThrillingTheme because it now has nested/threaded comments!
http://www.thrillingheroics.com/thrillingtheme
Excellent article by the way mate! I bookmarked it weeks ago, but have revisited it a few times
Time boxing! I love it dude, perfect name for it.
Totally agree with limiting time available for tasks. I also like to work in 90-120 minute blocks with 15 min breaks in between – the book The Power of Full Engagement talks about this further but it’s to do with the body’s natural cycles.
Adapted from the 4hww I also use the structure below to get more done. It took me a while to train myself to do this, but ever time I now pick up a new task or project, I automatically run through these steps in my head.
E for Eliminate, do I actually need to do this?
A for Automate, how can I automate this?
D for Delegate, who can I palm this off to that has the appropriate skillset?
O for Outsource, if I can’t delegate, can I outsource this?
Lastly, limiting caffeine intake has been a massive win for me in terms of ability to focus. Attention is a more valuable currency than time – anything that can sharpen your focus and attention goes a long way.
All very good points Tulibo and I was glad to be reminded of EADO. Thanks for dropping past the site.