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6 Rules to Work Less and Get More Accomplished

It’s impossible, right? In order to get more done, you need to invest more time. Working ten hour days will make you more accomplished than a colleague that only works seven. Studying three hours a day will get you better grades than the guy who skims through a few chapters before the test.

More work = more results.

I disagree. Working smart beats working hard. In some cases working more can actually damage the amount you get accomplished. In both cases, the degree effort matches outcomes has been overstated.

Working less and accomplishing more isn’t easy. It requires thinking creatively to find more effective ways of doing things. But first you have to be open to the possibility that your methods aren’t as efficient as they could be. Once you do that you can look for ways to get more accomplished without just increasing your to-do list. Here are a few guidelines to start looking:
1) The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule basically suggests that a small amount of inputs contributes to a much larger amount of outputs. Using this rule means to minimize time spent in the unproductive 80%.

In application, you can’t simply cut everything that doesn’t directly contribute to your bottom line. Some things, however trivial, still need to get done. The purpose of 80/20 is to force you to be more ruthless in cutting time in areas that contribute little. Here are a few suggestions:

Cut e-mail time to invest more in larger projects. Say no to people who want commitments that don’t contribute enough value. Spend more studying core concepts and key terms than less important details.

2) Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s Law states that “work will fill the time available for its completion.” This is a side effect of focusing on doing work instead of getting projects completed. Give yourself strict deadlines and cultivate a desire to finish projects, not just check tasks off on a to-do list. Here are some applications:

Set a timer for 90 minutes to finish a small project. When the timer sounds, you can’t continue working on it, so think fast and don’t waste time. Chunk mammoth projects into smaller pieces. Strive to complete those pieces, rather than just working on the project aimlessly.

3) Energy Management
Energy management, as opposed to time management, forces you to think of results as a function of energy, not time invested. Working intensely for a short period of time can accomplish more than working for days, tired and distracted. Working yourself into low energy can actually make you accomplish less than if you rested. Here are some ideas:

Work in bursts. Divide yourself between complete rest and complete focus. Don’t constantly switch in-between which leaves you neither rested or productive. Kill projects. Don’t spread tasks that only take a few hours over several days. Sit down and finish them in one sitting. This method of killing projects keeps your energies focused and time saved. Rest, health and fun matter. Enslaving yourself to your work can actually accomplish less. Master the ability to recharge yourself when you need it.

4) Only Use Sharp Tools
There’s an old story of two lumberjacks in a tree-cutting contest. The first picked up a rusty axe and ran into the woods immediately to start chopping trees. The second spent almost until the end of the contest sharpening his axe. After which he walked up and quickly felled the biggest tree. The moral? Don’t use rusty tools.

Don’t waste your time doing things you don’t intend to be excellent at. Delegate them to someone who does have a sharp tool. And for the things you do want to master, make it a priority to sharpen your tool beyond what is necessary to cut. Skill saves time.

5) Rule With Numbers

Assumptions are the biggest waste of your time. When your intuitions about the world don’t match the way it works, you can never be efficient. The only way to combat false assumptions is to test them and follow them up with numbers. The results of a test can save you hundreds of hours if it shows a current process has no impact or suggests a faster alternative.
Here are a few examples:

A/B Tests - Test out two different methods simultaneously. This can allow you to know with greater accuracy which method works best. Track Numbers - Don’t just weigh yourself or count calories, track them. See how they go up, down or change over time.

6) The Marginal Rule of Quality

Is it better to be a perfectionist or sloppy? One can never get a project finished the other requires constant repair because they waste too much time. I think the answer is simpler: when the extra input you invest exceeds the output gained, stop working on it.

An even better extension of this rule would be to say you should stop working on a project when the extra input invested gives less output than doing a comparable task. Here are some applications to try:

Measure the difference between different amounts of time spent. Try doing your e-mail for 30, 60 and 90 minutes per day. Compare the effectiveness changes when you change the amount of time. Can you really justify spending two hours doing e-mail? Compare the amount of time spent polishing with time needed for repairs. If it takes more time to polish than repair, you’re better of quitting early. If repairs are draining your time and polishing is fast, slow down and be careful.

Random Quotations - An excellent source

Visit http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

A sample

You can't love anyone until you understand that you can't love everyone. - Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, October 20, 2003

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it. - P. B. Medawar (1915 - )

The Pyramid Structure

All of us have been reading newspapers for many many years. Just in case you have not noticed the following about news stories;

This structure is most commonly used in the newspaper industry. Here, at the beginning of an article, the whole story is told in one bold paragraph, in a few short statements at the beginning (the apex of the pyramid). The next paragraph tells the same story with more detail, and the third paragraph the same story with even more and longer detail. This technique allows the editor to cut the article to fit the space available from the bottom of the pyramid of copy.

This can be useful for presentations because it allows you to take a similar editing approach from the bottom up.

Thought for the Day

- Plan your work AND work your plan.

- The Failure to Plan IS a Plan for Failure.

Software firms - big get bigger

by Sudin Apte. NOT all is well on the Indian offshore front. While a handful of offshore players, and in particular the top three, are performing exceedingly well, more than 500 small and medium-size firms are struggling and performing below the industry average. Almost all Indian providers have announced their quarterly results for the period ending December 31, 2006. The top three — Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro Technologies — reported superlative performance, with high revenue growth and sky-rocketing profitability. However, a close look at the performance of the top 20 Indian services firms tells a different story. The concentration of revenues in the top three players is increasing every year, demonstrating the rapid polarisation of the market. While there are more than 700 IT companies in India, the top three account for more than 40% of total IT services export revenues in the current fiscal; just two years ago, the same figure was 26%. The top three have consistently performed above the industry average. They grew by almost 40% during the 2006 Indian financial year. They continued to increase their profitability amid mounting multinational competition, increasing staffing costs and attrition, and growing deal complexity. Incapable of differentiating and beaten by the scale and volume pricing of the top Indian firms, small and medium-size firms face growing challenges. The majority of firms in this space recorded an average 20% revenue increase and 10% profitability, underperforming the top three on both sales and margins. For example, NIIT Technologies and iGate saw profitability at less than 8%; Polaris, whose performance has been choppy over the past two to three years, earned profits of around 12%; while Intelligroup continued to see net losses. Cognizant, HCL Technologies, and Satyam — which crossed the coveted billion-dollar mark in 2006 — sit on the size and scale that puts them in middle of the top three and rest of the industry. They have also gone through some management or strategic direction change in the recent past. They may swing in either direction — toward the success of the top three or get lost in the crowd of 700 other firms, based on how their new strategy works in coming 18 months. We believe that the best strategy for them will be to pick specialisations and remain focused in order to retain differentiation. Most sub-$1 billion-revenue companies are marginalised and facing either survival challenges or acquisition threats. The Indian offshore industry has become synonymous with a handful of companies that hog most of the limelight — but other firms, such as yesteryear's stock exchange favourites Mastek and Polaris, are losing prominence with every passing quarter. When staffing costs are mounting by 12% to 15% annually, firms like Covansys that produce single-digit growth in profits and revenues must change to remain competitive. Some of the most severe challenges that these firms face include: • Diminishing brands that fail to attract the best talent. Multinationals and the top Indian IT firms dominate the premium recruitment options for hiring new engineers — such as the first days of campus recruitment. Our interviews with recruitment professionals at these firms demonstrated that they have several open positions at the middle-management level, but that hiring laterally from the leading firms is difficult. Unable to compete with top-tier firms for talent, small and medium-size firms face serious shortages. • A dispersed client base that inhibits smaller firms from building up domain skills. In the late 1990s, many Indian firms picked up any business that came their way. As a result, most providers have clients across many more verticals and service lines than they can manage or nurture. Our research shows that these companies have no more than five clients in each vertical and service line that they claim to offer. As a result, they are spread too thin and are unable to invest enough in domain-specific centres of excellence and solutions. • A hand-to-mouth business situation that blocks future strategy development. Slow growth, reduced operating margins, and an inability to add new accounts characterise this troubled segment. These firms are unable to invest in developing management skills required for larger deals, building industry solution accelerators, and hiring onshore consulting skills. Business leaders at the mid-tier companies that we spoke with also said that their already-stretched management bandwidth prevents them from tackling issues in basic business operations, such as sales and client management. Most firms in this space — such as Hexaware, iGate, Mastek, NIIT, Polaris, and Patni — are either publicly traded or have VC firm/ private equity funding. Because of the aggressive demands that these stakeholders exert, the smaller Indian firms are further stressed when they fail to meet metrics like "headcount added in a quarter" or "new accounts won" in line with the top three. Given that these companies are in a vicious circle they need to either super-specialise or merge with other firms. Since low-cost and quality have become hygiene factors, firms need to build vertically aligned solutions that solve specific business pains, such as dealer management in auto or deploying RFID- and GPS-based logistics. Focusing on a clearly defined niche — such as HR processes and apps or engineering services for automotive — will allow firms to win over business from volume players like TCS or Infosys. Firms following this route — for example Tech Mahindra, Hexaware, and iFlex — continue to be successful in their niches, in spite of fierce competition. We estimate that more than 200 companies use services from one or more small or medium-size Indian providers. Several of these clients are new to offshore delivery and have worked on a project-by-project approach over the past two or three years. While our research shows that the work currently done offshore is not mission-critical, clients that are using these firms in more significant areas — such as ERP upgrades, remote infrastructure support, and legacy integration — should start tracking their providers more closely and have an exit strategy in case their chosen provider starts to falter. (The author is Sr. Analyst & Country Head (India), Forrester Research)