While most people can conceive of the how the 80/20 rule works and most people understand how to implement the idea into their daily lives. There are other things that Tim Ferriss covers in his book that are not altogether as simple to put into practice. That’s part of why we decided to take The 4-hour Workweek and break down the concepts in the book to a series. For this next idea that Tim presents, we need to re-think how we use our time. At least, how we interpret which actions to take as we travel through time.
As you might already know, you have very little control over time. Time continues whether you like it or not. But you already knew all this. So then, let me ask you, how do you use time? If you are scratching your head, let’s try this another way: when you are working to get things completed, how do you use time to your advantage? If you are still scratching your head, that’s not a problem – what I have to say next will probably change your life.
There is a little known fact of time and it goes like this: work, the things that we have/want/must do, expands to fill the time given. That’s right, you read that right. Work expands to fill the amount of time we give it. Say you gave your self thirty seconds to read this blog post, you would read blips of it in thirty seconds. Say you gave your self thirty years to study this post; the complexity and amount of work you will have done in that time will have grown to obscene levels.
But let’s put this into practice real quick, that’s what make this series really fun. I hope that you still have that 80/20 list I told you to write up last time. If you don’t then no worries. What you are going to do is this, take a piece of paper and fold it in half three times. That’s right, half that way, then half the other way, then half the other way again. This should leave you with a small piece of paper. Now, I want you to write the three most important things that you need to get done tomorrow on it. That’s right, just three.
Take a moment to write the three most important tasks that you need to accomplish tomorrow.
I am going to assume that you wrote all three of those things down. Now, here is where the trick comes in. Work doesn’t like to live in a vague world without deadlines. And when you wrote down your three things, you probably didn’t write what time you have to be finished with those three things. Did you? Okay, so what you are going to do is this, next to each of those three items that have to be completed tomorrow, write down the time they need to be done by.
So you might be scratching you head saying what is this going to do for me? Look down at your list, you have established the three most important things that you need to do tomorrow and the time that they need to be done by. To see Parkinson’s Law in action, I want you to reschedule all of the deadlines for midnight tonight. What would you need to prioritize, what would you need to say no to, what would absolutely have to be accomplished in order to get all of those things done by midnight? Now take this thought experiment one step further. I want you to reschedule all tomorrow’s most important tasks and I want them done in the next hour.
The question isn’t can you do your most important tasks in a hour; the questions is how are you going to get those three tasks done in the next hour?
The point is, unlimited is not helpful and most times it is really counter-productive. When we conscientiously limit the length of time we use, the number of tasks we are performing and the tools to implement our productivity, a strange effect can be seen: the most important work happens in the least amount of time with the least number of tools.
What would your work day look like if you did only the most important in less time?
What if you did it in even less time? What if the game was to see how little time is needed? And what if you took a 40 hour work week and consolidated the most important tasks to four hours a week, what would you do in those 4 hours?
Alixander Court 