Month: May 2015 (Page 2 of 3)

This module is dedicated to the art of inertia. A simplified definition of inertia is that it’s a property of matter in which an object continues in its existing state — be it rest or continuous motion. Basically, it’s hard to get started, and it’s easy to keep moving.

Utilize this principle in your life: start with the hardest task first, and the rest of your day will be a success. If you wake up and start the day by finishing that huge, intimidating project, you will reap the rewards of that labor; the rest of the day will seem easy by comparison, as you’ve already gathered the momentum (another physics analogy!) to crush all obstacles in your way. If you wake up and spend your entire morning watching random videos on YouTube, then you’ve already lost the war.

Three is a very powerful number that shows up everywhere. It seems that at one point in time, people can only focus on three main things at once, which is something that you should consider in your planning.

If you have ever listed down your goals for the next three months (fantastic exercise I’d recommend), I’d hazard a guess that most people have around five to ten aspirations in a three-month time frame. That’s absolutely fine, but if you try and accomplish more than three significant goals, you probably won’t accomplish all of them (if you do, kudos to you, but I’m betting that it won’t be sustainable). What you should do is pare down this list of goals until there are only three of the most pressing goals remaining, and attack these goals furiously.

The Rule of Three is the reason that I created Three Iron Laws of Efficiency, and not any more.

I promised that we’d return to Parkinson’s Law and here we are. Parkinsons’ Law is an integral building block of schedule blocking (pun intended, of course). Parkinson’s Law as you might recall, states that a project expands to fill the time allotted to it.

Schedule blocking combats this phenomenon. It means slicing your day into individual blocks of time, and assigning tasks to each individual block. I like to divide my blocks into one to two hour blocks, which allows ample time to immerse into a task. The power of blocking is at play here: by creating finite divisions of time, it sets a soft deadline by which I must be done with the task and adds an extra psychological motivator. The presence of the soft deadline also prevents time creep, when a short project stretches into an unproductive work marathon.

Without schedule blocking, you will have a difficult time realistically figuring out how much you can accomplish. The twelve hours of a working day might seem like a lot of time, but once you factor in the time you spend with other miscellaneous tasks peppered through your day, it’s much less time than you initially perceived. If you don’t keep track of all your commitments, it will likely overwhelm you and lead to poor performance.

I like to use the Cal Newport scheduling system, where you keep track of daily events on a calendar (I use Google Calendar) and then record all your tasks for the day onto a piece of plain paper, separating them into their own distinct time blocks. It’s super easy, efficient, and highly recommended.

Newton’s Second Law (of Efficiency) states that: Work accomplished = intensity x duration. This is pretty straightforward, I believe, but it’s definitely an underrated aspect of efficiency. The “duration” aspect of work accomplished is very defined and easy to understand — if we were to suppose that “work accomplished” was only a function of “duration,” it would mean that results are only dependent on the amount of time spent.

This is a sentiment reflected by the “Ten Thousand Hour Rule” popularized by Geoff Colvin in his book “Talent is Overrated” and Malcolm Gladwell in “Outliers.” The “Ten Thousand Hour Rule” basically states that it requires a minimum of ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. I agree with the overall message of this rule, in that achievement requires a large amount of time and commitment, but I think that it requires a critically important addendum, which leads to the “intensity” portion of the efficiency law.

“Intensity” encapsulates a bevy of different factors. You can increase intensity through a variety of ways — marshalling all your concentration into one task or perhaps training with better techniques. We often marvel at individuals who can accomplish huge amounts of work in minute partitions of time, whereas it might have taken us substantially more time. But it makes complete sense; if this person works for three hours at the highest level of intensity, then he accomplishes just as much as you do in ten hours with a lower intensity level. It’s simple and easily understandable, yet people still “multitask” and think they’re being more productive.

The takeaway is that you can accomplish more work by focusing on intensity rather than duration. The old adage holds true: “Work smarter, not harder.”

Some time ago, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto found that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people; similarly he found that 80% of the peas produced by his garden were produced by 20% of the plants. The idea is that a few causes are responsible for a disproportionate amount of impact in any given environment, which is why the Pareto Principle is sometimes known as the “law of the vital few.” You’ll also hear the Pareto Principle referred to as the 80/20 Principle, but note that often the ratio is often even more heavily skewed (85/15, 90/10, or even 95/5).

The common reason that the Pareto Principle is cited in reference to efficiency is that it explains how we are able to make incredible leaps and bounds in our learning in relatively short amounts of time. Josh Kaufman’s TED Talk titled “The first 20 hours — how to learn anything” encapsulates this idea of short, smart, deliberate practice to achieve competency in anything (link here). Watch it yourself, but he basically explains how he breaks down his process of skill-acquisition into a deliberate formula, accomplishing a tremendous amount of progress (in his case, guitar-playing) in a short time span. It truly demonstrates the power of the Pareto Principle, showing that small actions can have disproportionate impact.

However, it’s important to realize the implications of the Pareto Principle. A corollary of the Pareto Principle is a version the Law of Diminishing Returns: every unit of progress is incrementally harder than the previous unit of progress.

We should note this alternative perspective of the Pareto Principle and realize if you truly want to shine in something, it will require a huge time and effort investment. The Law of Diminishing Returns is best understood by using a Pokemon analogy. When you first start out in your Pokemon journey, it requires relatively few experience points to level up your Pokemon. But as your Pokemon get to higher levels, it becomes increasingly harder to make them “level up.” Everyone knows that it is much harder to train your level 99 Swampert to level 100 than to raise a level 5 Torchic one level. In terms of experience point acquisition, it takes 700 times as many points to level up the Swampert than the Torchic.

The same principle holds true for all pursuits, not just Pokemon training. The Pareto Principle is a fundamental building block of efficiency because it reminds us that our time is limited, and we must judiciously allocate our time and resources to the true tasks that require this precious time.

How else should you apply the Pareto Principle to your life? The Pareto Principle can guide you in delving into making significant progress in a multitude of areas (ie. Josh Kaufman), or the Pareto Principle can also show you that to join the top echelon of individuals, you need to work extremely hard.