HTH and The 4-Hour Workweek

This will be a quick post because we have storm coming in, so I'll have to shut down soon.

HTH had a fairly visceral - and extremely appropriate - response to my quote from The 4 Hour Workweek yesterday that discussed the combination of Pareto and Parkinson. As I mentioned, I knew that there would be points of disagreement with Mr. Ferriss. The first and foremost will come from anyone who provides a service - like HTH does - for a living.

The current economic wisdom claims that the only jobs that will not be able to be outsourced - to be done more cheaply elsewhere - are in the world of service. I'm not sure that I fully believe that, but I can see why that is being said. The beauty of the 4-Hour Workweek is that many of his principles can be used to create more time for service. There is a fair amount of "back office" work that is associated with any service provided. All of that work adds to overhead costs, which decreases the profitability of service companies. Every minute HTH or I spend on operational work is paid for by his billable hours. In other words, streamlining non-billable work will increase the actual bottom line effect of every billable hour. Corporate America has been hiring people like me for years on the basis of this very principle.

However, the service itself cannot be provided using the ideas I discussed yesterday. Service requires an open mind and the willingness to listen. In my job, I listen to people and teach them how to fix whatever problems are plaguing their work life. HTH listens to the machines (yes, they talk to him - really!) and fixes whatever problems they present to him. The solutions can be provided more efficiently, based on the experience and skill level of the problem solver. But the listening cannot be reduced by efficiency methods. In this case, efficiency improvements - usually measured by time spent on a job - would reduce the effectiveness of the service. And ineffective service, no matter how efficient, is worse than no service at all.

So, to use the entire 4 Hour Workweek well, it is important that you be producing a thing. The principles can free up your time and attention so that you can be more present in whatever you choose to do - whether it be provide a service or go skiing in the Alps. But services are, first and foremost, about being available to solve the problem - and billing the customer for that time. Nobody in the service world will ever want a 4 hour workweek! Or, as HTH so succinctly put it in his initial response, "That is just wrong!"

HTR Research - The 4-Hour Workweek

I've started reading a book. I am sure that this comes as no surprise to any of you! However, this book is actually having a demonstrable impact on the HAVE TO reduction world, so I thought I'd share.

I have to confess that I was a bit hesitant about buying The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I found the author's blog a bit too gung-ho markety for my taste for some reason. However, the lovely PL recommended it in the comments. So, after she and I had lunch on Saturday, we went to the bookstore. I read - and did the exercizes in - the first 89 pages by Sunday night.

The back story to this book is the tale of a successful entrepreneur who built up a business to produce a "health supplement". He worked himself into 70+ hour work weeks full of drama. He then figured out how to work himself from that extreme to the other extreme. He now works 4 (or less) hours a week. And he wrote this book to tell us how. Obviously, not everything that he says will apply to me. I am not an entrepreneur. And our small business is service oriented - we don't make widgets. However, the premise, so far, is working pretty well for me.

There are a few big ideas that I have started implementing. From his "D is for Definition" section, I spent some time writing about what I wanted and what was stopping me from doing those things. However, unlike my normal course of (in)action, I then- as directed- laid out small steps for my top 4 wants over the next 3 days. And I did them. They were little things, but doing them worked. I actually made progress on some goals!

By then I was into "E is for Elimination". There, he uses the Pareto principle (which came up in Friday's post) combined with Parkinson's law - which states that the task will swell in perceived complexity and importance in direct relation to the time available to do it. Or, as he puts it on pg 75:

"1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20).
2.Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson's Law)."

So, that is what I have been doing. I went through the exercizes and admitted to doing a number of things to kill time when I don't want to do deal with important (but usually painful) tasks. And I'm taking the week off from them. For my work life, that means curbing my obsession with hitting send/receive on my e-mail and staying off the internal IM system. It is amazing how quickly I can get my work done now! I accomplished 3 things on Monday that I successfully avoided for 5 or more business days. Not only that, but I was so energized by those accomplishments thacrossed off a list of personal and small business items AND made it to the gym! And I did the same thing today!

Now, I sincerely doubt the Tim Ferriss would agree with the things that I have prioritized. I used some of my newly recovered energy to clean house. I suspect that he would tell me to find a good maid. I went grocery shopping today. I bet he wouldn't see that as a priority. But I am using time or energy I free up from one area of my life to build systems in another area that will then free up time and energy from that part to build systems for another part that....

As you can see the Elimination phase might go on for a while. I have 20 more pages to read in the E is for Elimination section, so I'll finish those off this week - possibly tonight since hockey playoffs are on TV. I expect to work through the Elimination phases over the next 2 or 3 weeks and then I'll... oh, yeah. I'll go to Europe for 3 weeks... But the systems will be in place, and perfectly workable when I get back. Then we can move on to Mr. Ferriss' "A is for Automation" section. Won't THAT be interesting.

All in all, I suspect that this book will probably work really well for some people and not at all for others. I'm planning to blatantly use what aligns with where I'm heading and ignore the rest. I must not have ignored anything important yet, though - because I'm already getting results!