If you want to go back to the 15,000-calorie potato chip information diet afterward, fine, but beginning tomorrow and for at least five full days, here are the rules:
No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, or nonmusic radio. Music is permitted at all times.
No news websites whatsoever (cnn.com, drudgereport.com, msn.com,10 etc.).
No television at all, except for one hour of pleasure viewing each evening.
No reading books, except for this book and one hour of fiction11 pleasure reading prior to bed.
No web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day. Necessary means necessary, not nice to have.
Unnecessary reading is public enemy number one during this one-week fast.
What do you do with all the extra time? Replace the newspaper at breakfast with speaking to your spouse, bonding with your children, or learning the principles in this book. Between 9–5, complete your top priorities as per the last chapter. If you complete them with time to spare, do the exercises in this book. Recommending this book might seem hypocritical, but it’s not: The information in these pages is both important and to be applied now, not tomorrow or the day after.
Each day at lunch break, and no earlier, get your five-minute news fix. Ask a well-informed colleague or a restaurant waiter, “Anything important happening in the world today? I couldn’t get the paper today.” Stop this as soon as you realize that the answer doesn’t affect your actions at all. Most people won’t even remember what they spent one to two hours absorbing that morning.
Be strict with yourself. I can prescribe the medicine, but you need to take it.
Download the Firefox web browser (www.firefox.com) and use LeechBlock to block certain sites entirely for set periods. From their site (http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock.html):
You can specify up to six sets of sites to block, with different times and days for each set. You can block sites within fixed time periods (e.g., between 9am and 5pm), after a time limit (e.g., 10 minutes in every hour), or with a combination of time periods and time limit (e.g., 10 minutes in every hour between 9am and 5pm). You can also set a password for access to the extension options, just to slow you down in moments of weakness!
2. Develop the habit of asking yourself, “Will I definitely use this information for something immediate and important?”
It’s not enough to use information for “something”—it needs to be immediate and important. If “no” on either count, don’t consume it. Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.
I used to have the habit of reading a book or site to prepare for an event weeks or months in the future, and I would then need to reread the same material when the deadline for action was closer. This is stupid and redundant. Follow your to-do short list and fill in the information gaps as you go.
Focus on what digerati Kathy Sierra calls “just-in-time” information instead of “just-in-case” information.
3. Practice the art of nonfinishing.
This is another one that took me a long time to learn. Starting something doesn’t automatically justify finishing it.
If you are reading an article that sucks, put it down and don’t pick it back up. If you go to a movie and it’s worse than Matrix III, get the hell out of there before more neurons die. If you’re full after half a plate of ribs, put the damn fork down and don’t order dessert.
More is not better, and stopping something is often 10 times better than finishing it. Develop the habit of nonfinishing that which is boring or unproductive if a boss isn’t demanding it.
COMFORT CHALLENGE
Get Phone Numbers (2 Days)
Being sure to maintain eye contact, ask for the phone numbers of at least two (the more you attempt, the less stressful it will be) attractive members of the opposite sex on each day. Girls, this means you’re in the game as well, and it doesn’t matter if you’re 50+. Remember that the real goal is not to get numbers, but to get over the fear of asking, so the outcome is unimportant. If you’re in a relationship, sign up to (or pretend to) gather information for Greenpeace. Just toss the numbers if you get them.
Go to a mall if you want to get some rapid-fire practice—my preference for getting over the discomfort quickly—and aim to ask three people in a row within five minutes. Feel free to use some variation of the following script:
“Excuse me. I know this is going to sound strange, but if I don’t ask you now, I’ll be kicking myself for the rest of the day. I’m running to meet a friend [i.e., I have friends and am not a stalker], but I think you’re really [extremely, drop-dead] cute [gorgeous, hot]. Could I have your phone number? I’m not a psycho—I promise. You can give me a fake one if you’re not interested.”
8. Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to organizational decision making: It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.
9. 2004 at the time this was written.
10. LOL.
11. As someone who read exclusively nonfiction for nearly 15 years, I can tell you two things: It’s not productive to read two fact-based books at the same time (this is one), and fiction is better than sleeping pills for putting the happenings of the day behind you.
Art of Refusal
Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.
—RALPH CHARELL
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
—DAVE BARRY, Pulitzer Prize–winning American humorist
SPRING 2000, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
1:35 P.M.
“I think I understand. Moving on. In the next paragraph, it explains that …” I had detailed notes and didn’t want to miss a single point.
3:45 P.M.
“OK. That makes sense, but if we look at the following example …” I paused for a moment mid-sentence. The teaching assistant had both hands on his face.
“Tim, let’s end here for now. I’ll be sure to keep these points in mind.” He had had enough. Me too, but I knew I’d only have to do it once.
For all four years of school, I had a policy. If I received anything less than an A on the first paper or non-multiple-choice test in a given class, I would bring 2–3 hours of questions to the grader’s office hours and not leave until the other had answered them all or stopped out of exhaustion.
This served two important purposes:
I learned exactly how the grader evaluated work, including his or her prejudices and pet peeves.
The grader would think long and hard about ever giving me less than an A. He or she would never consider giving me a bad grade without exceptional reasons for doing so, as he or she knew I’d come a’knocking for another three-hour visit.
Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.
Think back to your days on the playground. There was always a big bully and countless victims, but there was also that one small kid who fought like hell, thrashing and swinging for the fences. He or she might not have won, but after one or two exhausting exchanges, the bully chose not to bother him or her. It was easier to find someone else.
Be that kid.
Doing the important and ignoring the trivial is hard because so much of the world seems to conspire to force crap upon you. Fortunately, a few simple routine changes make bothering you much more painful than leaving you in peace.
It’s time to stop taking information abuse.
Not All Evils Are Created Equal
For our purposes, an interruption is anything that prevents the start-to-finish completion of a critical task, and there are three principal offenders:
Time wasters: those things that can be ignored with little or no consequence. Common time wasters include meetings, discussions, phone calls, web surfing, and e-mail that are unimportant.
Time consumers: repetitive tasks or requests that need to be completed but often interrupt high-level work. Here are a few you might know intimately: reading and responding to e-mail, making and returning phone calls, customer service (order status, product assistance, etc.), financial or sales reporting, personal errands, all necessary repeated actions and tasks.
Empowerment failures: instances where someone needs approval to make something small happen. Here are just a few: fixing customer problems (lost shipments, damaged shipments, malfunctions, etc.), customer contact, cash expenditures of all types.
Let’s look at the prescriptions for all three in turn.
Time Wasters: Become an Ignoramus
The best defense is a good offense.
—DAN GABLE, Olympic gold medalist in wrestling and the most successful coach in history; personal record: 299–6–3, with 182 pins
Time wasters are the easiest to eliminate and deflect. It is a matter of limiting access and funneling all communication toward immediate action.
First, limit e-mail consumption and production. This is the greatest single interruption in the modern world.
Turn off the audible alert if you have one on Outlook or a similar program and turn off automatic send/receive, which delivers e-mail to your inbox as soon as someone sends them.
Check e-mail twice per day, once at 12:00 noon or just prior to lunch, and again at 4:00 P.M. 12:00 P.M. and 4:00 P.M. are times that ensure you will have the most responses from previously sent e-mail. Never check e-mail first thing in the morning.12Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 A.M. to avoid using lunch or reading e-mail as a postponement excuse.
LIGHT GRAY INDICATES TIME AVAILABLE FOR HIGH-PRIORITY TASKS. Courtesy of SANDIA
Before implementing the twice-daily routine, you must create an e-mail autoresponse that will train your boss, co-workers, suppliers, and clients to be more effective. I would recommend that you do not ask to implement this. Remember one of our ten commandments: Beg for forgiveness; don’t ask for permission.
If this gives you heart palpitations, speak with your immediate supervisor and propose to trial the approach for one to three days. Cite pending projects and frustration with constant interruptions as the reasons. Feel free to blame it on spam or someone outside of the office.
Here is a simple e-mail template that can be used:
Greetings, Friends [or Esteemed Colleagues],
Due to high workload, I am currently checking and responding to e-mail twice daily at 12:00 p.m. ET [or your time zone] and 4:00 p.m. ET.
If you require urgent assistance (please ensure it is urgent) that cannot wait until either 12:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m., please contact me via phone at 555–555–5555.
Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish more to serve you better.
Sincerely,
Tim Ferriss
MOVE TO ONCE-PER-DAY as quickly as possible. Emergencies are seldom that. People are poor judges of importance and inflate minutiae to fill time and feel important. This autoresponse is a tool that, far from decreasing collective effectiveness, forces people to re-evaluate their reason for interrupting you and helps them decrease meaningless and time-consuming contact.
I was initially terrified of missing important requests and inviting disaster, just as you might be upon reading this recommendation. Nothing happened. Give it a shot and work out the small bumps as you progress.
For an extreme example of a personal autoresponder that has never prompted a complaint and allowed me to check e-mail once per week, send an e-mail to [email protected]. It has been revised over three years and works like a charm.
The second step is to screen incoming and limit outgoing phone calls.
1. Use two telephone numbers if possible—one office line (non urgent) and one cellular (urgent). This could also be two cell phones, or the non-urgent line could be an Internet phone number that routes calls to online voicemail (www.skype.com, for example).
Use the cell number in the e-mail autoresponse and answer it at all times unless it is an unknown caller or it is a call you don’t want to answer. If in doubt, allow the call to go to voicemail and listen to the voicemail immediately afterward to gauge importance. If it can wait, let it wait. The offending parties have to learn to wait.
The office phone should be put on silent mode and allowed to go to voicemail at all times. The voicemail recording should sound familiar:
You’ve reached the desk of Tim Ferriss.
I am currently checking and responding to voicemail twice daily at 12:00 p.m. ET [or your time zone] and 4:00 p.m. ET.
If you require assistance with a truly urgent matter that cannot wait until either 12:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m., please contact me on my cell at 555–555–5555. Otherwise, please leave a message and I will return it at the next of those two times. Be sure to leave your e-mail address, as I am often able to respond faster that way.
Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish more to serve you better.
Have a wonderful day.
2. If someone does call your cell phone, it is presumably urgent and should be treated as such. Do not allow them to consume time otherwise. It’s all in the greeting. Compare the following:
Jane (receiver):Hello?
John (caller): Hi, is this Jane?
Jane: This is Jane.
John: Hi, Jane, it’s John.
Jane: Oh, hi, John. How are you? (or) Oh, hi, John. What’s going on?
John will now digress and lead you into a conversation about nothing, from which you will have to recover and then fish out the ultimate purpose of the call. There is a better approach:
Jane: This is Jane speaking.
John: Hi, it’s John.
Jane: Hi, John. I’m right in the middle of something. How can I help you out?