Several months ago I introduced my Roundtables to Tim Ferris aurthor of The Four Hour Work Week.  He is a little off center entrepreneur selling brain nutritional products and devoted to studing martial arts.  He took the 80-20 rule seriously and focused on the 20% of his customers who produced 80% of his profit and essentialy stopped all other distracting activities like: watching TV, reading newspapers, email and the list goes on.  He claims he can run his business with 4 hours a week. 

 Now is has a features article ont the front page of the STYLES SECTION of the Sunday NY TImes.  He is travellng Silicon Valley helping executives ‘go on the wagon’ and abandon text messaging and multi tasking  He speaks at Princeton and MIT and Harvard Business School.   You can hear him at www.fourhourworkweek.com

Why?  All the old time management wizards worked at getting 60 to 80 hour work weeks down to 40 hours–a 50% reduction at best and few could achieve that change.  Ferris takes you to a new frontier-95% reduction.  And in doing that he forces you to think very, very differently.  Dan Sullivan the Canadian coach for entrepreneurs par excellence finds that those he coaches in his expensive seminars can get down to an 8-10 hour work week or 4 days a month.  See details at www.strategiccoach.com .   Sullivan works to this objective in a very logical way.  Entrepreneurs should focus only on their unique strength-what they can contribute to the business that no one else can.  This is their talent and passion anyway.  To free up the other days Sullivan encourages massive delegation.  He also suggests you burn your office so althe paper in it does not hook you into distraction.  I have asked over 1,000 CEOs, ‘If you could delegate the stuff that is not your talent and passion, and delegate to competent people, how much would you have to work in aonth to keep business moving ahead as it is now?’  Univerasly the answer is 4 days a moth plus or minus 2.  Only starts ups have higher answers.  Ferris goes from one day a week to four hours.

There is only one fallacy here which may not apply to you.  Suppose you really like the work you do?  WHy would Picasso want to work only 4 hours a week?  So the questins is what will you do with your freee time?  Ferris now spreads the word and works out.  What will you do?  Now a passion for your work shoulod be a ral passion and not a neurosis!

 Next is the challenge of delegation.  Ferris not only delegates his email to assistants in India, he also delegated his on line dating search.  There are people willing to work for you to free you up for 1) pursuing your real passion which might not be work or 2) focusing on the right things at work to drive your business success.  Many will hesitate to cut loose the junk and pay others to do it becasue they don’t have the funds.  This type of thinking will keep you in prison for ever.  One of the most powrful and paradoxical insights is that progress is often slowed or blocked becasue we refuse to let go.  We want security before letting go and it simply is not there.

The man had fallen over a cliff and was falling to his doom when he grabbed a passing bush.  His fall stopped and he found hismelf hangin by a small branch half way donw a steep cliff.  Terrified he looked up appealed. ‘Is any one up there?’ 

A booming voice replied. ‘I am son!’

‘Help me?’

‘I will save you. LET GO!’

The desperate man pondered this a moment, and replied, ‘Is any one else up there?’

The ability to let go is at the core of the pradox of all growth as described in my article The S Curve.

I encourage everyone one of you to read the For Hour Work Week and decide about your life.

If you are not sure why you need time, take a look at 100 Life Goals.

Will Phillips

Tags:   FOcus · Life Work Planning · Time ManagmentNo Comments