"Anything that is of value in life only multiplies when it is given." Deepak Chopra
Tomorrow I head off to Vegas for a few days with Paul, Kapil and few of Paul’s friends. I just checked the weather, should be close to 100 degrees! Part of me wants to actually get out of Sin City (for at least a few hours), and visit Zion National Park while I am out there. We’ll see how things go.
This weekend I headed down to Portland, Oregon to hang out with my sister, Padma, and brother in law, Josh. Very relaxing.
I learned previous years and didn’t even try to head down after work on Friday evening. Last time I made this attempt, it took me almost 6 hours to make what should be a <3 hour trip. Instead, I slept in and headed down on Saturday in time for lunch.
After our dosa making competition, which I hopelessly lost to Josh, we lounged around and then headed over in the evening to visit family in Tigard, just a few miles outside of Portland. After an invigorating game of 500 (Which I won! This game is where you throw a football to a bunch of people while calling out a number. The person who catches the ball gets the points. The first to 500 wins. ) we had dinner (I stayed out of the kitchen this time) and all went to bed. The best night’s sleep I had in a long time.
Sunday I had the bright idea of visiting Mt. Hood. While it had been pretty warm the previous week (70’s), this day it barely crept above 55. Driving up to the Timberline Lodge, we saw a sign that said “39 degrees.” It didn’t look cold though :) .
Getting up to the parking lot, I opened the door to strong gusts of wind that practically took my breath away. Instead of a 2-3 hour hike, we instead made a dash to the lodge entrance, looked at the mountain from the comfort of indoors, and walked right back to the car! We opted to try a hike somewhere closer to sea-level!
On the way back to Portland, we stopped at Oxbow Park. We went for a “walk” (given that we could practically see a road the whole time, I can’t really call it a hike). This park was really awesome. It would be a great place for camping or a picnic. There are tons of old-growth trees and lots of dense and varied foliage. The trails pass by some little streams and very old trees. You can also walk down to the Sandy River and skip some rocks. As an added bonus, the Salmon Berries were out, which made for a nice snack as you walk along.
On the way back to Portland food was once again on my mind. We made a quick stop at Powell’s bookstore, and then visited Blossoming Lotus. This place has very high quality food, and a great raw-food menu, in addition to Vegan fare. I had a Thai Bowl (noodles, tofu, veggies in a peanut-ginger sauce, served cold) as did Sujatha. Padma opted for the Raw-Pizza. Josh had the Southwest bowl (rice, beans, avocado and other stuff). We all started off with a sampler plate with raw-crackers (made from some sort of seeds) and different spreads (hummus, tempeh, pumpkin seed spread).
On the way home, we stopped for Gelato (I had sorbet0) and grabbed a movie (Night at The Museum). It was actually quite entertaining.
Perhaps the best part of the weekend was that I didn’t bother to check e-mail at all. I had my laptop with me and intended to get some work done, but realized the stupidity of it. I could finish my work during normal work hours, why destroy my holiday?
Come to think of it…I am even thinking of deactivating the data-plan for my Windows Mobile smart-phone. Even though it doesn’t cost me that much (the cost is subsidized by the carriers for Microsoft employees), I think that removing the temptation to check e-mail outside of work could have other added benefits in terms of lower stress and some time savings.
These are all things I have been guilty of (and sometimes still am). Though, in my effort to pull the slack time out of my day and put it into more productive endeavors, I’ve purged most of the these things from my routine.
How about you?
1. Checking e-mail first thing in the morning. This scrambles your brain for the day before you’ve even had a chance to think.
2. Not making a commute productive by taking mass transit or carpooling. Since I’ve started taking the bus a few months ago, my commute (30min morning, 1-1.5hr evening) has gone from being a nuisance to a pleasure. I read, listen to music and just relax. I also get a forced walk to and from the bus-stop, which is a great way to unwind after the day. I know this one isn’t really “in the office” but it has a big enough impact on your day that it deserves attention.
3. Not getting into the office at least 90 minutes before your first meeting. If you don’t get in early enough you’ll start your day off with randomizing meetings, which sets a poor tone for the day. Like it or not, the morning is often the time of the day when people are most creative, and best suited for solitary work on big projects and such.
4. Responding to e-mails as they arrive. Without attention and focus is tough (impossible) to let the creative parts of your brain really shine. Despite the fact that smart people tend to take pride in their ability to multi-task, science has shown that it actually decreases intelligence and creativity.
5. Checking personal e-mail at work. Yet another randomizer. 99.999% of personal e-mail can wait until you get home.
6. Having small gaps between multiple appointments. These just eat away your day. It is dead time. Be proactive about managing your calendar so this doesn’t happen.
7. Reading papers, e-mail newsletters or distributions lists. Again, you can go for months without reading the news and still be more informed than your co-workers. It’s called listening to other people and just being aware of your environment. Proactively seeking out more news to ingest is a sure-fire way to waste time.
8. Not having an 80/20 mentality for figuring out what to work on. No matter how much time you free up with great time management skills, it won’t matter if you can’t figure out what the important things are for you to focus on. You will always find something to do to fill up your day. Is it the right stuff?
9. Finishing meetings after the scheduled ending time. If you have 5 meetings and let each one run over by 5-10 minutes, you are wasting a significant chunk of your day. This tends to be the result of a lack of leadership by whoever called the meeting. Don’t be afraid to set a hard rule and politely leave at the agreed upon time. Eventually, the meeting organizer will learn to keep to a schedule.
10. Not ignoring the phone. All workplace phones have voice-mail. Use it. If your workplace is very phone-centric, just make it a point to return calls at set times during the day, or use caller ID (common for workplaces) and set rules for who you will pick up for. Let everyone else go directly to voice-mail.
I wrote about getting more from less. The way I figure, this is not about being lazy. It is about utilizing the most precious commodity we have in this lifetime, our time, in the most effective way possible.
This applies to how we work, how we workout, how we relax, how we play and just about everything else we do. Everything we do takes time. It pays to spend more time on the things that are going to give you MORE REWARDS and less time on the things that are most likely to result in boredom, frustration or perhaps even PAIN.
This philosophy is a simple and intuitive one to grasp. Yet, it is so hard to implement. Why?
I think that most of us feel genuinely guilty if we don’t work hard. We actually go through self-sabotage if we don’t give it a full effort. If we don’t work hard, we don’t expect out-sized rewards either. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When you consider a hard-working and very intelligent person or a lazy and equally intelligent person….which one do you think would be more successful in the long run? The lazy person of course!
It is the smart and lazy person that knows how to delegate, knows how to say NO to stupid projects, knows how to network, knows how to outsource, knows how to sell their results and skills in ways that get them noticed. In general, it is the smart yet lazy person that gets ahead.
What happens to the smart yet hard-working folks? They do OK, though they probably end up working twice as many hours…for a smart yet lazy boss!
The message here is that it pays to learn how to be lazy (and smart!). If you want to be in control of your life, find some of these people, and learn how they make such a big impact yet manage to get out of the office at a reasonable time. Model their best behaviors. Soon enough, maybe you’ll be one of them :)
We grew up learning that hard work pays off. We learned that short cuts weren’t going help us get ahead in the long run. We learned that we should put up with effort and struggle in the short term to enjoy the long-term fruits of our labor.
It turns out that this mindset is not only misleading, but could actually prevent you from achieving what you want in life. It could also prevent you from actually having the TIME to enjoy yourself. We seem to have forgotten that it is not the hard work that pays off, but working on the right things that pays off.
OK, here is the latest installment of my experiment to gain massive amounts of strength and size with minimal time spent in the gym. This is a 30 day challenge. So far, the scale isn’t showing a pretty picture.
HOWEVER, my strength gains are DEFINITELY PLEASING. Also consider that I started challenge pretty well-trained. That is, I have been weight training regularly for the past 12 months or so. I wouldn’t attribute the gains in strength to just going from out of shape to somewhat in shape.
Any goal requires some level of commitment. It also requires an uncanny ability to push through when things seem to be going anywhere but up. Thinking about some of the big goals I’ve had over the past few years, I’ve seen the following pattern emerge. I’m calling them the Five Phases of Progress, though until you reach step 4, you’ll be doubting yourself the whole time.
Phase 1: Excitement
Phase 2: Challenge
Phase 3: Disillusionment
Phase 4: Progress
Phase 5: Success!
Read on for the details….
Here are some great posts that I’ve ran across recently.
We just wrapped up our Seattle PowerGroup meeting, where we watched The Secret. This is a movie about aligning your thoughts, feelings and emotions to that which you wish to see in your life.
What is The Secret? It is The Law of Attraction.
<Update: the post has been saved! I reader of this blog happened to have it opened in his web browser, and was nice enough to mail it to me! You can read the post here.>
Last night I wrote a post called “The Five Phases of Progress.” I spent about an hour typing that thing out. Today, I accidentally deleted it. So if you end up coming to this page for that post and see a 404 error, you’ll know why. Sorry. Read this instead.
Does anyone know how to recover a post you delete from Wordpress? If so, pls send me mail (ravisraman@gmail.com) and I’ll be forever grateful.
I might retype it at some point.
Maybe if I had as much creative skill as Peter, I would take the time to review my moleskine more often!
I am deep in the throes of withdrawal due to my new e-mail policy.
You see, e-mail addiction is just like any other addiction. Think about the symptoms for any hardcore drug of choice. Anxiety. Needing a hit first thing in the morning. Impacting your social life. Impacting your time with friends or family. Now take a hard look at how e-mail is impacting your life. Any similarities?
In fact, for me, it is much WORSE to cutoff the e-mail than it was to deal with a coffee/caffeine addiction! I really used to love my Americano’s.
As part of my Seattle Experiment, I’ve been weight training using a single set (to failure) protocol. After two weeks of this method (4 training sessions), I can truly say that it is working (I am getting stronger, even though my weight isn’t changing). Amazingly, I am also spending hardly any time in the gym. So far, so good.
Here is a run down on the exercises I typically will do. Note that there will be some variation to this routine. For example, I will vary the tricep or bicep exercises and sometimes do dead-lifts instead of squats or pull ups instead of rows. Other than that, I’ve kept things constant.
The simple questions can be the HARDEST ones. Whether you are in business for yourself as an entrepreneur or a cog in the corporate wheel, the question still applies.
I’m in the business of HELPING PEOPLE. This applies to my corporate job and my non-corporate personal endeavors regarding personal development.
I’ve been following a HIT <high intensity training> training protocol for the past 12 days. The routine, as mentioned on Tim Ferriss’s blog and outlined in The Colorado Experiment, calls for training less frequently, using very slow reps whereby you reach muscular failure in a single set.
Started reading Man’s Search For Mean, by Viktor Frankl. yesterday.
The book is a look inside the horrors that happened during the Holocaust in Germany’s concentration camps. Frankl, a psychiatrist, provides an intriguing view into not only what happened, but how people reacted to and attempted to find meaning withing the confines of this bleak environment.
It’s been a week since I’ve implemented my twice a day e-mail policy.
In practice, there have been a few times when I’ve “slipped” and checked outside of my predetermined times. There have also been a few times when I had to check (or at least that is my excuse) for business critical reasons. But even considering these times, I’ve pretty much stuck to it.
Through this single measure along I’ve saved AT LEAST 15 hours of time. As a byproduct, I’ve been able to make a lot more progress in other projects. I also just feel better, with an overall sense that I am actually PRODUCING value and not just CONSUMING it.
Want a sure-fire way to make every day interesting and stress-free?
Empty your cup EVERY DAY.
What does this mean? It means, empty out the expectations and baggage you carry around with you every day, and just experience life assuming that anything can really happen.
I’m starting to crack down hardcore on my TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS. I hate the term “time management” because the thought of having to “manage” anything can in itself be an utter waste of time. However in this case, the fixed cost investment will be well worth it.
The way I figure, since I an 27 years old right now….I have about 25,000 days left to live..give or take a few thousand (yes, I expect to live to at least 100 y/o).
