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.