What Lighten Up Is All About and One Reason Why I Married HTH in One Quick Tale

As most of you know, my sister, V - and her kittling Bear - joined our little desert household. She and I were having a big philosophical discussion about self discovery and understanding "WHO AM I" and all of those things the other day.

We were about 25 minutes into the discussion when HTH walked into the kitchen. I turned to him and asked if he had time for a quick question. I then asked if he had some thoughts on how most people deal with self discovery and understanding who they are. As he was gathering a few things to head out the door, he said something along these lines.

Most people don't really want to spend time thinking about who they are, but it isn't actually that hard to figure out. A person is really the sum of all of their actions. Talk and theory are not enough to understand who someone really is. Also, any isolated action is not enough. A person could be fully understood only if it were possible to see all of the things that they do. And with that 2 minute comment, he was out the door.

Needless to say, this hit our discussion like a very small atom bomb. V and I had been discussing the equivalent to the Freudian talk therapy method of self definition. HTH pointed out that the same effect was possible with behavioral modification.

And, in the end, that is what Lighten Up is. I spent many hours in previous years researching, considering, discussing and theorizing about all of the potential changes that would help me feel more aligned with my own life. But, in the end, thinking and discussing is only so useful. I had to just do some things - just like HTH said about the self definition - and that is why I started the Lighten Up year.

What this story also shows is one of the reasons that I married HTH. It would've taken many more hours of discussion before I actually got to the point of realizing that self definition - like Lighten Up - is all about what I do. But, despite the fact that the answer was obvious from the HTH perspective, he understood the question and knew how to answer in such a way that he met me in the middle. Cool, huh?

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!"