The 4-Hour Workweek: E for Elimination

The second lesson from The 4-Hour Workweek written by Timothy Ferriss is: E for Elimination. (Read more on the first lesson here)

Forget about time management. Being effective is more important than being efficient. Ferriss wants you to know that:

•  Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
•  Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.

According to the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, 80% of the wealth and income are produced and possessed by 20% of the population. This can also be applied outside of economics: 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort and time, 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its products and customers.

Therefore, the New Rich (as defined here) understand the 20% of the sources that cause your problems, your unhappiness and another 20% that may bring you your desired outcomes and happiness.

Next is to have selective ignorance. The first step is to develop and maintain a low-information diet. Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value, information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources. Lifestyle design is based on massive action—output. Increased output necessitates decreased input.

Ferriss reads only the front-page headlines through the newspaper machines. All he needs to do is to ask the rest of the population in lieu of small talk: "Tell me, what's new in the world?" And, if it's that important, you'll hear people talking about it. Same thing Ferriss followed on presidential election. Despite being in Berlin, he made his decision in a matter of hours. He contacted his friends who shared his values and asked them who they were voting for and why. He let other dependable people synthesize hundreds of hours and thousands of pages of media for him. It was like having dozens of personal information assistants, and he didn't have to pay them a single cent.

Learn to interrupt interruption. Create an e-mail auto response to answer all the ‘interrupting’ e-mail. Check e-mail twice per day, once at 12:00 noon or just prior to lunch, and again at 4:00 P.M. Both 12:00 P.M. and 4:00 P.M. are times that ensure you will have the most responses from previously sent e-mails. Never check e-mail first thing in the morning. Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 A.M.

Find your focus. Avoid postponing more important projects due to interruption. In the next section, A for Automation, we'll see how the New Rich create management-free money and eliminate the largest remaining obstacle of all: Themselves.

 

Reference:

Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek