The art of getting things done is a skill, but just like paining it requires some talent but more importantly hard work. And it starts with realization that being effective is not the same as being efficient. General Von Manstein from the German Officer Corps once made the following inelegant statement, but one that it touches the heart of the issue at hand.
“There are only four types of officers. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm…. Second, there are the hard-working, intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are intelligent, lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.”
To the mindful reader it will become obvious right away that intelligence and laziness (or rather “deliberate idleness”) were what the German general praised so highly among his officers. Analogously, business professionals must demonstrate a level of idleness combined with intellectual sharpness, which in turn can be mastered if one develops a superb sense of business priorities. But priorities alone will not get a person very far, in addition a incredible rigorous personal effectiveness process and techniques are needed. And these can be learned, in fact they are easy to learn and master.
It’s habitual to hear how most of working professionals struggle with their workload, one can hear it in corridors, at the coffee machine, or when opening a conference call. And being constantly on the treadmill of work, most of us are too busy to ever stop and reflect over how to do things better, or just differently. And so, it comes as no surprise that there are only a handful of us who ever get as far as reading a book on the subject of personal efficiency. In this article we would like to share with the reader a handful of tips inspired by two famous books, “The 80/20 Principle”, by Richard Koch, and “Getting Things Done: The Art Of Stress-Free Productivity”, by David Allen
Both of these books offer deep and revealing insights, are remarkably simple, and practical. The art of getting things done is accessible to everyone, and once mastered it opens the realm of possibilities for being more efficient at work, but also in personal life.
Who hasn’t heard of the 80/20 principle? This principle, first defined by Vilfredo Pareto, asserts that a majority of causes, inputs or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs or rewards. Taken literally, this principle means, for example, that 80% of what you achieve in your job comes from 20% of the time spent. Examples of the 80/20 principles are everywhere, e.g. 20% of criminals account for 80% of all crime or 20% of all motorist account for 80% of all accidents. Thus for practical purposes, four fifth of the effort – clearly a dominant part – is largely irrelevant…how disappointing?
Without a doubt, all of us are intelligent human beings, and yet, so many of us fall victim to ill-defined priorities, or put differently, a mistaken belief that in order to achieve more in life we must produce more. Such linear view of our work and our surrounding ignores the fact that the world is an evolving organism where the whole system is more than the sum of its parts. What’s more, relationships between the parts are nonlinear, because causes are difficult to pin down, and since there are complex interdependencies between causes, and also as causes and effects are often blurred.
For example, think of the feedback loops whereby small initial influences can become greatly multiplied and produce highly unexpected results, which can be explained only in retrospect. Or consider the phenomenon of the “tipping point”, where a feedback loop (or simply a force) persists to cross certain invisible line to reap huge results, such as epidemics.
In case you didn’t know, it is the force of the tipping point that the American Revolution was started by Paul Revers who started a word-of-mouth epidemic with the phrase “The British Are Coming!”. His message galvanized the people not because of what he had to say but who he had to say it to. What was exceptional about Paul Revers was that he knew a lot of people across many different social groups, and this in turn made his message travel at the speed of light.
Time-management often advises people to categorize their list of “to do” activities into A, B and C priorities. In practice most people will classify 60-70% of their activities as A or B priority, and then conclude that they are short of time to get it all done. And basically, this is why people are interested in time-management in the first place, because they always are overloaded with priorities.
But, the name time-management gives the game away, it implies that time is a scarce resource that can be managed more effectively and that given a chance it will escape us. In other words, many of us think that that “time lost can never be regained”.
Fortunately for many of us, the 80/20 principle – if applied with rigor – will override the conventional wisdom about time.
For one thing thus, we squander with time simply because there is too much of it. In practical terms, we can better manage our work and life priorities if we:
Time revolutionaries can start the revolution by following 7 steps outlined below.
If, having defined your priorities, you are still left with an enormous amount of input to manage then two things are possible. First and foremost, you have probably assigned a priority tag to too many things on your “to do” list. If you suspect this may be the case, we suggest you re-read the section above and get a copy of the “The 80/20 Principle”, by Richard Koch. If, on the other hand, your well-defined priorities leave you with an overwhelming quantity of input to handle then the problem may lie in how you manage that input. And this is exactly where your personal effectiveness and performance can get a boost with a handful of tips from the efficiency guru, David Allen. His personal effectiveness process and techniques boil down to organizing your tasks and activities into the work flow outlined below.
This simple process flow shows that the process of getting your “to do” tasks and activities can be organized into the following sequence of steps:
It would go largely beyond the scope of this article to comment on the mechanics of individual elements of the workflow. And we cannot pretend that we can do a better job than David Allen, and thus encourage the reader to get a copy of his book. However, suffice to say that the purpose of the whole work-flow management is not to let your brain become lax, but rather to enable it to move toward more elegant and productive activity. And in order to earn that freedom, your brain must engage on some consistent basis with all your commitments and activities. In other words, you must be assured that you’re doing what you need to be doing, and that it’s OK to be not doing what you’re not doing. By setting up a work-flow management system that is current and functional you will gain full control over not just your career but your life in general.
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The FutureEdge CFO Academy (“aka” Blog) is our central repository for all meaningful information and content that FutureEdge CFO cares for and supports, which we package and make accessible to anyone who visits our site to facilitate creative thinking and inner reflection. We aspire to cultivate a growing body of knowledge that is uniquely our own, but is acquired externally, and we share it to promote the values we stand for, but also to help make sound decisions and take the most effective action.
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