Achieve More While Doing Less

Achieve More While Doing Less

By David R. Butcher

 

When confronted with a daunting quantity of work, it may help to concentrate less on time and more on efficiency. Some say working smart beats working more. Here are some ideas for working better, not harder.
Many of us are trying to do a lot more with much less: fewer resources and less time. A possible solution to this imbalance is to concentrate on effort and accomplishment and not on the amount of time spent.
"The more goals you're chasing, the harder it is to keep enough attention and energy focused on any one of them," the Dumb Little Man blog says. "Many of us could achieve much more by doing a bit less."
Here are some ideas for doing just that:

• Do the most important thing first. Figure out your top goal and write it down. Focus on that first. Brazen Careerist's Penelope Trunk recommends "running a morning dash." When you sit down to work in the morning, before checking your e-mail, spend an hour on the most important thing on your to-do list. Even if you can't get the whole thing done in an hour, you'll be much more likely to go back to it once you've gotten it started.
• Decide what else to fit in. While your other goals are subordinate to your top priority, sometimes you can fit a couple of other goals in. "Look at your other options, and see what would support that [top] goal (and what might detract from it)," Dumb Little Man advises.
• Do less of what is extra. "Do less by identifying and reducing unnecessary activities," Marc Lesser, author of the book Less: Accomplishing More By Doing Less. "In this case, 'unnecessary' means those things that are not in alignment with what we want to accomplish." Consider the principles of lean, eliminating non-value-added activity to improve efficiency and achieve both on-time delivery and operational excellence.
• Know when you work best. "You can increase your efficiency by taking a look at when you are most productive," productivity Web site Productivity501 says. "For example, if you can focus the most from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m., set this as your optimal work time and give yourself goals so you can be completely focused during that time period. Put all of your really hard work into that work window."
• Consider Parkinson's Law. Parkinson's Law states that "work will fill the time available for its completion." Lifehack recommends giving yourself strict deadlines and cultivating a desire to finish projects rather than simply checking tasks off on a to-do list. Break down large projects into smaller pieces, and strive to complete those pieces instead of just working on the project aimlessly.
• Stop setting goals in terms of time. "Energy management, as opposed to time management, forces you to think of results as a function of energy, not time invested. Working intensely for a short period of time can accomplish more than working for days, tired and distracted," according to Lifehack. Break up the bursts of peak energy with mini-breaks, as these "allow our minds and bodies to relax and recover in preparation for the next burst of focused intensity," Experience Life Magazine advises. "Trying to work without breaks is counterproductive. It opposes our natural, fluctuating energy patterns, leaving us mentally scattered and far more vulnerable to both distractions and burnout."

"Our daily incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time; the pressure to produce a to-do list and tick off items by each day's end — seems to decide the direction and quality of our existence for us," Lesser writes in the prologue to Less: Accomplishing More By Doing Less. "But if we approach our days in a different way, we can consciously change this out-of-control pattern. It requires only the courage to do less."
What do you think? Could your job (or day-to-day life in general) benefit from paring down the time spent working on it?

Resources
Could You Achieve More By Doing Less?
by Ali Hale
Dumb Little Man, Jan. 13, 2009

10 Tips for Time Management in a Multitasking World
by Penelope Trunk
Brazen Careerist, Dec. 10, 2006
Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less
by Marc Lesser
New World Library, Feb. 1, 2009
Five Ways To Do Less (And Accomplish More)
by Marc Lesser
Accomplishing More By Doing Less, Aug. 13, 2009
Work Less, Accomplish More
by Mark Shead
Productivity 501, Nov. 14, 2006
6 Rules to Work Less and Get More Accomplished
by Scott H. Young
Lifehack, Oct. 23, 2007
Do Less, Accomplish More
by Marc Lesser
Experience Life Magazine, December 2009