Simplifying The Issue Of Time-Wasters [The 4-Hour Workweek Journal]

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Hilary Catherall, co-founder and the president of technology startup DOMITECH, L.L.C., a revolutionary web development company. DOMITECH’s projects so far include www.city-dweller.com and www.saneliving.org. Hilary still holds down her day job for now, and just started seriously applying the principles from The 4-Hour Workweek (4HWW) late last year in hopes of attaining a little Liberation. You can contact her at hilary.catherall@dom-itech.com and read more of her writing at hilarycat.blogspot.com. In this post, Hilary provides insight on the “Elimination” chapter of the 4HWW by best selling author Timothy Ferriss.

In this chapter of the 4HWW, I think Tim is quite clear in sections 2 and 3 regarding batching and empowering. But section 1, about time-wasters, I found somewhat confusing and overwhelming, I think because Tim got a little too specific in his recommendations. Of course, it’s great that he shared what has worked for him - it just may not work exactly the same way for everyone else. So I’d like to boil it down to what I think he’s really getting at.

To take it from the top down, this is in the Elimination section of the book, so we’re trying to eliminate everything that’s unnecessary so as to free up our time for the important. We’ve already weeded out unnecessary information consumption and unnecessary self-imposed tasks; now we need to get rid of those Pesky Other People And we are doing all of this entirely in preparation for Liberation.

We want these Pesky Other People (work-related people - we aren’t eliminating all human contact here ;)) to:

1. Leave us alone whenever possible
2. Engage us only on our own terms the rest of the time

And, just as with raising children, in order to train people to deliver the desired result you’ve got to:

1. Define (and communicate as necessary) appropriate rules
2. Enforce those rules unflinchingly until they get it

What exactly those terms & rules are is up to you, your work, your life, and your preferences. But the key thing to doing the 4HWW is that, in order to Liberate yourself from your day job or business, you’ve got to get them trained to communicate with you on YOUR schedule and at YOUR location, not the other way around. Even if your job is not Liberation-friendly and you’re going to have to create a muse to replace it, you want to go ahead and free up your time as much as you can now so you can work on your muse more.

You simply can’t be available to other people at their whim and on their terms all day long and expect to be able to (a) focus on getting the important things done or (b) ultimately free up your schedule for non-work activities. Like an executive, you have to do the equivalent of telling your secretary to clear your calendar and hold all calls so you can get important things done.

So, which means of communication best allows you to respond at your own schedule and from your own (changing) location? Email does… that’s why Tim prefers it. Phone comes in second. Obviously, in-person is last. That’s why he pushes towards email and harps on getting out of face-to-face meetings.

Of course, if you have no interest in traveling the world, or are happy keeping that down to short non-work vacations, and don’t do business overseas, then you can handle phone calls almost as easily as email, or may not even mind setting up meetings sometimes. The key that remains in this situation is to remember to keep these communications on YOUR terms and on YOUR schedule. Don’t allow yourself to be at other people’s disposal. Telephones and email can’t interrupt you if they’re turned off!

I think that’s it in a nutshell.

Something Tim didn’t talk about very explicitly here, but which I think is relevant, is to look for WHY people want to talk to you, and see if you can address that need through a new process. He did talk about this as it relates to empowering - when he noticed that he was a decision bottle-neck & decided to empower others to handle non-critical decisions. He also mentioned later in the book that if people routinely call with the same product questions, you should set up a FAQ on your website. It just makes sense to do the same thing with all communications. I think this will work better than just trying to “get out of” conversations/meetings.

For example, at my job, people email me or want to set up a meeting to discuss setting up new websites. If I had the authority (which I sadly don’t), I could write up a web form that asks all the common questions and direct them to it. It would then email me their specs and tell them what the turn-around time will be for a response. That would eliminate a lot of communications. Probably I would still have to email them a few specific questions, but that’s still a far better process.

Notice that the line between Automating and Eliminating is getting fuzzy here - they really work together.

Personally, I actually get very few communications and almost no urgent tasks at my day job. I’m also fairly empowered as an employee. And I’m eventually replacing my job with a muse, not becoming a Liberated employee. So I don’t have a lot to do here. I was tempted to think that I did, and got wound up and confused with all of Tim’s suggestions, until I figured out that I was overcomplicating things.

A final thought: If you, like me, found Tim’s obstacle course of auto-responders and voicemail greetings too convoluted or impractical, or didn’t like the idea of boxing yourself into answering your email and voicemail at pre-determined times, here’s my suggestion: Just go offline on your email & turn off your phone except when you have time to run a “batch” process on it. Then, when that first person calls you angrily saying, “Didn’t you get my email?” (or you get the angry email “Didn’t you get my voicemail?”) you can just answer, “No, sorry, I leave my email offline (phone turned off) when I’m trying to complete a major project.” Their irritation will pass and they’ll learn your rule. You will have to repeat this conversation for each unhappy person, but that’s not so bad, all things considered. Follow Tim’s advice on increasing duration between checks until the returns start to diminish.

Original post here: Hilary

11 February 2008 | 4-Hour Work Week, Elimination | Comments