James Wilding's Weblog

In this post I want to share some advice on how you can work fewer hours without compromising productivity.

If you’re self-employed or freelance, the goal here is to free up more of your time to relax and enjoy yourself or to work on other projects. If you’re an employee working for the man, our aim is to cut down on the hours which you have to work to accomplish your key tasks (leaving you more time to either catch up on your todo list, or play solitaire).

For me, cutting down your work hours is a matter of asking three simple questions about your work:

1: Does This Work Need To Be Done?

The first question is the most obvious — cut out the things that aren’t absolutely essential, and you’ll save yourself time. The criteria by which you judge a task’s importance will vary, but a good rule of thumb is this: if you don’t do this “important” task, will the consequences be irreversible? You’ll be surprised how many times you’ll answer “no” to that question.

2: Do I Need To Be Doing This?

Often it’s faster and more productive to have someone else do something for you — especially when the other person is an expert and you’re not. Don’t be afraid to delegate and free up your time to focus on the essentials.

By the way, this question is different to “Do I want to be doing this”! Sorry. Sometimes you have to work on something that you don’t want to work on: that’s unavoidable. The idea is to delegate work which can be done equally well, or better, by someone else.

3: How Can This Be Done Better?

Not “done faster”; “done better“. This question helps you future-proof your work: the best way to avoid emergencies and panic in the future is to do a good job now.

Make a list of the key goals of whatever project you’re working on, and ask yourself whether you’re going about accomplishing those goals in the best way. Change isn’t always necessary, but sometimes you’ll realise that a lot needs to be altered — that can be daunting, but it’s worth putting in a little more time now to save yourself a lot of time in the future.

The Results

Does this work in practice? For the past three months I’ve been using this strategy and I’d say I’m around 25% more productive, and 25% less busy. Most importantly, I feel much more relaxed and on top of my work. So give it a try — I hope you get the same results.

Real productivity comes from creativity, and to get creative you absolutely have to let your mind relax. That’s when the good stuff comes: clever ideas, cool solutions to old problems, and that magic feeling that get when things get done effortlessly.

Work is too much like work

You know that feeling you get when you’ve been thinking long and hard over a particular problem: your head feels like mush, your eyes hurt, you can’t focus. Your mind feels tight, it feels like you’ve lost touch with your real energy. After close to ten years’ of meditation, I can tell you that this is a Bad Thing.

My suggestion is that “work”, in the traditional sense of the word, is one of the worst ways to get things done. Work means mental exertion, which in most cases nowadays means a ridiculous focus on logic, and the idea that “nose to the grindstone” is the only way to get results.

Doesn’t that sound awful? How about relaxing and letting your subconscious take care of things, instead. It really works: I’ve lost count of the numbers of times a solution to a difficult problem had come to me, without effort, while I’ve been walking, cooking, or playing guitar.

Stop thinking, stop trying

The burden of “work” is too much thinking. Logic, planning, analysis: all of these are good as part of an holistic approach, but bad when they take the lead on business decisions. They serve a purpose, but intuition and the subconscious are much more powerful. Yes, that’s right: I run my business on gut instinct. It’s so much more effective!

My advice is to let your mind slip back into alpha waves, and let “important” decisions take care of themselves. My approach nowadays is to arm myself with all the facts, then completely ignore the situation for a few days: meditate, go walking, work on something else. After my subconscious has had the time to work on the problem, the answer presents itself naturally, and without effort.

Making it work for you

This all sounds very Zen, but how does it apply to you? Well, just try it. You can’t control your own mind, but you can give your mind a break: next time you catch yourself thinking away too hard at a problem, just drop it. Leave the office, go outside, listen to music, do something relaxing. And I think “relaxing” is the key word here: you need to put yourself into situations that allow you to unwind, situations that don’t require logic: this gives your mind the space it needs to work creatively.

Ignore the received “wisdom” that says you have to work hard (and think hard) in order to get things done.

Looking for a simple WordPress theme recently, I stumbled on Manifest. Well, I love it. There are so many WordPress themes out there that (in my opinion) go overboard on the graphics, but Manifest  takes the opposite approach: content comes first (as you can see: I’m using it right here on my blog).

Jim Barraud, Manifest’s creator, describes the theme thus:

A clean and streamlined theme that focused on the content and not the distractions. It utilizes a single column, 500 pixel wide layout. No sidebars. No widgets.

There’s so much to love about that quote. Single column. Focus on content. No sidebars. No widgets. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

I’ve always loved websites and blogs which are pared right back to the bone — nearly too simple — for the simple reason that I spend so much time on the web! After surfing through websites which bash me round the head with flashy graphics, it’s such a relief when I come to rest at a site designed by someone who knows the meaning of negative space and subdued (if any) graphics.

And aspiring writers: this is the kind of presentation that you should be wrapping around your lovingly crafted blog posts: let your language speak for itself.

So: a beautiful, simple, elegant theme: download Manifest here.

DODOCase is a Moleskinesque case for the iPad, hand-made using bamboo and fabric. It looks lovely, and is the first iPad case I’ve seen which strikes the right balance between form and function (unlike Apple’s own iPad case, which looks like something out of Star Trek).

I don’t even own an iPad, but I’m already blogging about the DODOCase  and have bookmarked the website, so kudos to these guys for excellent marketing!

Photo by adamjackson on Flickr (license)

It was my mum who introduced me to libraries, back when I was around eight years old. I remember being taken into the nearest small market town, to the local library — which was an ordinary, concrete box full of old-fashioned wooden shelving and plastic chairs — and being encouraged to pick out some books. I’d always had access to a small collection of books to borrow from my primary school, but I’d never used a public library before: I soon took to it.

When I was young, I used to borrow Doctor Who science fiction, and Arthur Ransom — now I’m older my tastes have changed, but I still love using libraries. For someone who is (to my friends, anyway) notoriously drawn to the peaceful places of the world, and who also likes taking on new information, a library really is a wonderful place: peaceful and intellectual. In fact, that probably sums me up (although I’m not really sure just how intellectual: ask my old teachers!) — short of letting me keep a huge collection of books in the middle of a forest, there’s not much more you could do to make me feel at home.

On a less personal level, libraries are an absolutely wonderful way to read without spending insane amounts of money. My last two trips to the local libraries (I’m lucky, I have two) yielded novels by Lawrence and Zola, two books on archeology and pre-history by Francis Pryor, a collection of writing by an American poet I’ve never heard of, and a book of critical prose by Irish poet Seamus Heaney. It was my first visit for a while, I might have overdone it a little!

To buy those books on Amazon would have cost me close to £100. To borrow the same books from a library cost me less than £5.

Our culture makes little distinction between reading a book and owning a book, which is probably down to clever marketing by publishers and book sellers. In fact, I know I own several books which I’ve never properly read. This is a waste: of money, trees, ink, and time. You don’t need to fill your book shelves with thick bunches of tree pulp just to impress your friends and literary contacts: by all means keep a book if it means something to you, or if you enjoy reading it, but why buy something just because you feel you ought too, because everyone else is doing it?

Literature shouldn’t be — and at ground level isn’t — about fashion: it’s about ideas and communication. If you have even a half-good memory, borrowing a book from a library is just as good as buying it for keeps.

Photo by eifion on Flickr (license)

Oscar Peterson is one of the best jazz pianists ever, and this is one of those pieces that has me hitting play again as soon as it’s over. Beautiful.

Nice.

A quote from a Derbyshire dry-stone waller:

When you pick up a stone, you have to use it. Otherwise it’s just wasted effort.

If you’ve ever watched a dry-stone wall being built, you’ll know that it’s a beautifully haphazard, half-planned process of improvisation. Strikes me that the same is true about business (and life). Don’t think too much; just act. Do something with what you have to hand. Improvise as you go along.

I’ve seen hundred-strong government organisations here in the UK waste weeks — literally weeks — of working time because they planned too much up front. Completely false veneers of “this is what’s going to happen when” strangled everyone’s ability to think on their feet! This kind of over-ambitious forward thinking is pointless: you don’t know what’s going to happen in six days, let alone six months, so why pretend otherwise?

In most cases the best, and most realistic, course of action is to keep in mind a general sketch of the outcome you want, and fill in the details as you go. Like building a dry-stone wall, this approach empowers you to act in the moment, intuitively, without having to stop and think, “what happens next?”.

Photo by jansmith on Flickr (license)

Triage is a medical practise in which doctors determine the priority of patient treatment based on the severity of the patient’s injuries or illness. It’s commonly (but not solely) used in emergencies, when there’s a sudden unexpected demand on medical resources. People with life-threatening injuries get treated first, those with serious but non-life-threatening injuries are second priority, and the “walking-wounded” — with minor scratches, broken bones, etc — come last.

It’s not great if you have a sprained wrist and have to wait three hours to be treated, but it works!

I’ve always thought that triage is a great way to approach unexpected or excessive demands on your time during work. There are two ways this can happen:

1. The work emergency: when something suddenly goes wrong, and you have to decide what to fix first (and how to keep on top of ordinary work).
2. The demanding client: who drops a mass of unplanned work in your lap, and asks for it to be done yesterday.

(Of course you can often say “no” to the demanding client, but that’s not always an option.)

How To Triage Your Todo List

I normally triage my work in the opposite order to doctors: I do the easy stuff first, and leave the complex work for later. This gives my subconscious time to work on the more demanding work while the rest of me takes care of the simple stuff. I often take this approach even if the complex work is more urgent: by giving myself time to think, I’m better prepared when I come to the tough stuff, and can complete work just in time for deadlines.

You can see how this helps with productivity. By triaging demands on my time, I’m effectively helping myself do twice as much work: 1) I do the simple stuff, and 2) while I’m doing the simple stuff I simultaneously think through and plan the complex work.

Questions To Ask Yourself

Here are some questions I’ve found help me when prioritising my work:

• When does this work actually need to be done by?
• Am I doing this now because it needs to be done now, or because someone told me it’s important?
• Is the work really so important that it can’t wait?
• Am I working on something out of panic rather than planning?
• What are the consequences if I don’t get this work done today?
• Can I live with the consequences if this work doesn’t get done today? (usual answer: yes!)
• Who’s dictating deadlines: me or the client? (clue: it should be you)
• Do I need to take a break?

Some deadlines are life-threatening and need to be dealt with immediately, but most are far more flexible than everyone thinks. Take a deep breath and let yourself see what’s really important, then you’ll get more done.

So, the church is at it again.

Today the Church of England’s General Synod meets to discuss the prospect of ordaining women bishops. Women priests have been allowed for a while now (where “a while” means about 0.0001% of the 2000-year life of the church), but women bishops? Goodness me no.

The main theological argument against women bishops (and women priests, for that matter) seems to be this: Jesus chose male disciples; those disciples chose male successors, therefore a precedent has been set. It’s men all the way down, whether we like it or not. Jesus knew best, and he picked guys.

This is an important point. Purity of tradition, and all that. Unwavering faith to ancient ideals in the face of a spiritually bankrupt modern world. Unquestioning reverence for the son of God. All good things.

But maybe we’re not taking this far enough.

As we know, the disciples were not just men: they were technically Jewish men (Christianity being an offshoot of Judaism back then). And if biblical scholars are to be believed, that all had beards. Well: those are two important precedents right there, and is the church following them? I hope so, for my eternal souls’ sake (Rowan Williams is doing alright on the beard front, but last time I read the news I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a Jew).

Also: all of Jesus’ original disciples are dead. Have been for years. And, they lived in Israel. So what we’re really looking for are bearded, middle-eastern, kind-of-Jewish, male, dead people as bishops. That’s the only way to ensure the purity of the faith, and create the kingdom of God on earth.

Or maybe that’s just going too far. I mean, why should the modern church be inflexibly ransomed to every single tiny decision made by Jesus two thousand years ago, which decisions were obviously informed by cultural and religious considerations almost entirely irrelevant to life today?

Oh.

I love good covers of good songs: they give you a new perspective on something you already know and love. And it’s amazing how different those perspectives are when you compare two cover versions of the same piece of music: each takes its own approach.

Here are two cover versions of “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”, by Tears For Fears: the first is by Andy McKee, the second by Clare and the Reasons. Enjoy.