The 4-Hour Workweek: Three Profitable Lessons For Business Owners and Creatives-Part 2
Welcome friends, today I’lll discuss three valuable ideas for business owners from the book The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. If you missed part one, where I cover three other valuable nuggets from the book, check it out here..
Hi, my name is Lucas and if you’re tired of doing finances from a place of lack and survival, you’re in the right place.
If you’re not familiar, "The 4-Hour Workweek" is a guidebook that teaches how to escape the 9-5 grind and create the life of our dreams. It’s loaded with a ton of great ideas that I’ve been using for years and believe it may open up a world of possibilities for you. Now Let’s get to it.. (If you prefer to watch the video, please check it out here…)
Lesson 1: Parkinson’s Law
To put it simply, Parkinson’s law states…
“the less time we have to complete a task, the more focused and effective we are at getting it done.”
As Tim points out,
“If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to only do the bare essentials” “If I give you a week to complete the same task, it’s 6 days of making a mountain out of a molehill”.
The less time we have to complete a task, the more productive we are and the faster it gets done. Let’s use email as an example. Before reading Tim’s book and applying Parkinson’s law, I used to answer emails at all times of the day. So, I decided to shorten my email time to 1 hour mid morning, and 1 hour in the late afternoon.
I got so effective at answering emails quickly that within a few weeks I was able to reduce my email time down to 30 minutes per day and I love it! My inbox is no longer a source of stress and I’m able to focus on more important things.
If you’d like to be more effective and have more time, set time limits for each of your tasks. Learn more about Parkinson’s Law and how to apply it to your life in Chapter 5.
Lesson 2: Batch your tasks
Shorten the amount of time you have for a task and get more done but if you’d like to be even more effective, batch similar tasks and dedicate short periods to complete them.
For example, dedicating 1 hour a day to respond to emails. 30 minutes a week to send out invoices and contracts. Four hours a week for Zoom meetings.
By batching your tasks, you’ll spend less time on each one and complete more of them in less time. Let me say that again.
By batching your tasks, you’ll spend less time on each one and complete more of them in less time.
And once you get into a rhythm, chances are high that you’ll be more even more effective. I went from 2 hours of emails each day down to 30 minutes because that’s all i need.
Take a look at your daily and weekly tasks and figure out which of them can be grouped together - for instance, sending out contracts and invoices often go hand in hand so I batch them together.
Lesson 3: Set the rules in your favor
In my opinion, one of the best things about being a business owner is that we get to choose how to spend our time and energy. And that’s where Tim’s suggestion of “setting the rules in your favor” comes into play.
While the world may subscribe to the typical 9-5, there’s no rule saying you must do the same. If you don’t want to work on Mondays, don’t. If you prefer to conduct all business between 4pm and 7pm, do it. And if you’d like to answer emails at 4am because no one will respond immediately, have at it.
As Tim points out,
“99% of what we do is not life or death and does not need to be handled immediately.”
So, I tested this out. When I reduced emails to 30 minutes a day, no one cared or even noticed. It’s your business and your life, make your own rules or society will do it for you. Set the rules in your favor and teach people how you like to work.
Occasionally I have a client text me important info related to a job, but I can’t keep track of that so I invite the to email me the info. I don’t like getting stuck on super long phone calls so I don’t answer them. Instead, I respond via email.
At first, I was nervous, to implement a few changes thinking people would react poorly but no one even noticed. My fears were all just stories in my head.
As we wrap up, I invite you to try three things:
Test Parkinson’s Law - give yourself less time to do each task
Batch all of your tasks
Set the rules in your favor - teach people how you do life and business and they will adjust
And there you have it.. Three profitable lessons from The Book, The 4-Hour Workweek. And if you have not watched part one in this mini series, check it out as cover Tim’s ideas on single tasking, the low information diet and the famous 80/20 rule, otherwise known as Pareto’s law. All three will have you doing less work an producing more results.
If you know anyone that could benefit from this video please share the love. Thank you for your time and energy! I’ll see you in the next one!
- Lucas Z.