So, in this week’s blog post I’m going to share some old thoughts and knowledge around productivity and just some general wisdom from Tim Ferris. For those of you who doesn’t know who Tim Ferris is, he’s an American entrepreneur, investor, and he’s the author of many books, one of the most prominent one is the 4-Hour Work Week. He also has an eminent podcast, The Tim Ferris Show in which he interviewed world-class performers such as Mark Zuckerberg, Ray Dalio, James Clear and many others across various fields.

Alright let’s just dive into the first one, which is…

The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen

When Tim just arrived in California from his vacation or “mini-retirement” across London, Scotland, Sardinia, Slovak Republic, Austria, Amsterdam, and Japan, he already know that there are probably dozens of bad news awaiting him in his email and he intentionally let that happen. A few of the problems were:

·      One of our fulfilment companies has been shut-down due to the president’s death, causing a 20%+ loss in monthly orders and requiring an emergency shift of all web design and order processing.

·      Missed radio and magazine appearances and upset would-be interviewers.

·      More than a dozen lost joint-venture partnership opportunities

And what did he get for the exchange?

·      I was able to shoot every gun I’ve ever dreamed of firing since brainwashing myself with Commando

·      I was able to film a television series pilot in Japan, a lifelong dream and the most fun I’ve had in months, if not years.

·      I took a complete 10-day media fast and felt like I’d had a two-year vacation from computers.

·      I followed the Rugby World Cup in Europe and was able to watch the New Zealand All Blacks live, a dream I’ve had for the last 5 years.

Fundamentally this is another word for prioritizing the most important things in our life at the moment and just fully immerse yourself with what you are doing right now and deal with the problems later, the small problems not the big one, because if it’s a big one then you’ll already make it a priority.

It’s all about where we are putting our attention to and appreciate it. Most of the time when we are relaxing or indulging ourself there’s this itch in our mind that we have work to do, assignments to complete, and exam to face and we’re in the state in-between those two clashing feelings between enjoyment and the urge or the worriedness. As Tim said it :

Even when you’re not traveling the world, develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll never find time for the life-changing big things, whether important tasks or true peak experiences. If you do force the time but puncture it with distractions, you won’t have the attention to appreciate it.

 

Time without attention is worthless, so value attention over time.

Here are some questions from Tim that can help you to shape your priority and take a clear picture of it.

·      What is the one goal, if completed, that could change everything?

·      What is the most urgent thing right now that you feel you “must” or “should” do?

·      Can you let the urgent “fail” — even for a day — to get to the next milestone with your potential lifechanging tasks?

·      What’s been on your “to-do” list the longest? Start it first thing in the morning and don’t allow interruptions or lunch until you finish.

There’s no doubt that small problems will emerge and pile up but after you complete the one big and important task you’ll see that the granular problems can be easily fixed and managed.

The 80/20 Principle

Or the Pareto Principle, named after the economist Vilfredo Pareto, which states that 80% of the outcome come from the 20% of the input. It basically means that most of our results come from the small yet crucial things that we’ve done. Even though it’s only an observation, not a law, we can still apply it in our daily lives to find out which is the granular activity that drives most of the result or happiness.

Again, this is another word of prioritizing. Sometimes we tend to just make the unimportant things to become important and vice versa. So, it’s best for us to take an overview or a bird’s eye view of our daily activities and see what really matter to us. Below are a few questions around the 80/20 principle from the 4-Hour Work Week.

·      Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?

·      Which 20% of the products and costumers drive 80% of company profits

·      Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?

The ratio doesn’t have to be 80/20. It could be 90/10 or 95/5, or in other words the minority own the majority.