If you are like me, even small jobs manage to take up all the time available to do them. Most of us end up working a lot of unnecessary hours when we simply focus on time management. We have been trained like monkeys to mistake busyness for productivity.

In other words, we develop time wasting habits but come out looking like we have done a good day’s work. I don’t know about you, but I feel like a puppet whose strings are being pulled every which way. I’m thinking that it might be better to focus on increasing my hourly earnings than on simply managing my time better. I gleaned this idea from Tim Ferris’ book “The 4 Hour Work Week.” I recommend you get hold of a copy. It’s readable, enjoyable and inspiring.

Parkinson’s Law states that “a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.” Ferris solution is to set unreasonable time limits so that there is no chance for this to happen. This approach can initially seem a bit too pressured but I can vouch for the fact that it forces you to very carefully target your activities and focus your attention. The results can be surprising. As Ferris says, the 9 to 5 work day is arbitrary and doesn’t have anything to do with how long it actually takes for people to complete their work. By making it difficult for jobs to take longer than necessary, the idea of a 4 hour work week seems less of a fantasy and more of a reality.

Ferris combines Parkinson’s Law with Pareto’s 80-20 principle to take this idea even further. Pareto’s Principle states that eighty percent of your work will provide only twenty percent of your income and twenty percent of your work will provide eighty percent of your income. This means that by focusing on the twenty percent of tasks that provide most of your income you will end up streets ahead financially. Combine this with tight time limits for these tasks and you will also find yourself with a lot of extra time to have a life.

I admit that my life runs more smoothly when I ignore activities that are not essential and focus on those that make the most difference to my life. I can easily feel very overwhelmed by constant demands on my time and then guilty if I don’t manage to get everything done. Prioritizing tasks quickly allows me to stop feeling guilty and focus on what is important to me.

Working to tight deadlines works surprisingly well for me too. I am one of those people who will spend far too long on research and ‘thinking’ before I write an essay or research article and then churn a good product out under pressure. Why waste the hours before getting down to it? By setting tight limits in the first place, I am able to use my time more effectively and at the end of the day, it makes no difference to the quality of the work or the actual writing time.

A lot of people work this way. Have you heard people saying they work best under pressure? By selecting tasks and giving them short deadlines for completion, these workers are always working at their best. You can go as far as you want with this idea. By deciding how much time you would currently allocate to completing a task and then dividing that by 2, you will automatically double your productivity. Now you’ll just have to decide what you are going to do with all that extra time.

Sue Heming is a Contributing Editor to Your-Debt-Consolidation-Loan.com
 

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