What Not to Do and How Not to Do it
by Paul Lemberg
Published on this site: April 1st, 2006 - See
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How can you get more done?
Can you really do more than you already do? Is there still
room left on your plate for even one more thing? The truth
is I don't know anyone (successful) who has too little to
do. Not one of my many clients-nor any of my friends, acquaintances,
or people I meet on planes-none of them has ever said they
have too little to do.
Doing more to get more done is simply not an option.
The answer to doing more is doing less.
Less?
Do less?
Are you kidding? How's that going to help? "I don't get
enough done as it is," you say, "and there's always
more to do at the end of a day!"
Ask this transformational question: Is each activity you currently
do providing the greatest possible payback? Or like many people,
are you spending much of your precious time doing things which
produce a relatively lower return? The key word is relatively.
To do more, you've got to figure out what not to do.
For most people, 100% of our time is filled with
- Routine day-to-day matters,
- Things we told other people we would do and
- Responding to (sometimes trivial) interruptions. To try
to make something important happen, we end up shoving that
thing into our schedule.
How well does that work? How well does a five pound bag hold
ten pounds of stuff? You get the idea--not very well at all.
And, of course, all the important stuff ends up spilling out
onto the floor.
For some people, the bag is so full--there are so many to-dos
on your to-do list, your reach the uncomfortable state of
overwhelm. Your creativity gets totally locked out and your
mind can't even consider other, perhaps more important things.
You've got to figure out what not to do.
I've done casual research on this subject asking audiences
of executives what things they do that they know they shouldn't.
This list of guilty pleasures includes answering emails as
they come in throughout the day, handling the company finances,
interviewing all candidates for all jobs, purchasing, filing,
writing marketing copy and advertisements, signing all the
checks, exercising final say on small product changes, and
so on.
That's not to say these things aren't important--some are,
even vitally so. The question is-are these the most important
things for you to be doing, especially at this point in your
organization's development?
Often when I ask these questions, people respond by saying
there is no one else who can do that as well as they can.
This thinking is typical of what Adam Smith called "absolute
advantage." Smith advocated doing all the things which
you do better than anyone else. It is obvious, commonsense
thinking. The trap for someone who is by nature highly and
broadly capable is that you can end up doing everything, reluctant
to let go of anything.
To the rescue is 19TH century economist David Ricardo's Law
of the Comparative Advantage of Nations. In a bold, counterintuitive
bit of reasoning, Ricardo said to maximize wealth, each country
should devote its energy to producing goods they sacrificed
the least to create. In other words, Comparative Advantage
says to produce the goods which create the highest value per
unit of work. Everything else, regardless of how much better
you do it than anyone else, should be done by others.
Assume your company makes a sophisticated high value product
and you can sell as many as you can make. The product uses
several cheap components, which by the way, you can also make
better and cheaper than anyone else. Ricardo says that given
limited resources (your time, for instance) it is a mistake
to manufacture any of the components; each unit of time spent
making the cheaper components instead of making the high-valued
product costs you money --opportunity cost. To make the mostprofit,
spend all your time making the high-value product, and purchase
the components.
Ricardo's law boils down to this: do the thing which brings
the Greatest Return -and nothing else. That which brings you
thegreatest value, and only that, is your comparative advantage.
Keep a list of all the separate things you do during the course
of a day/week/month. You may think you know, but each time
I ask an executive to try this exercise, they are surprised
by the outcome.
Make a notation of what you are doing every 15 minutes. Keep
this record for as long as you can-at least two or three days;
a week or even two will reveal even more. (You must write
this down. The process won't work if you try to keep it in
your head.)
What have you been doing? Have you been squandering your comparative
advantage?
Is each action on your list Highly Productive? Is each thing
on your list Making You Money, or Changing The World (at least
a little bit?)
No? Most people spend at least some of their time doing low-contribution
activities. For most people, even if they consider what are
doing important, there are usually even more important things
they should do instead.
Once you've understood how you actually spend your time, you
have three possible courses of action:
You can dump things-there are always some things which are
of such little value that no one should be doing them.
You can delegate important things to capable people in your
organization or outsource them to firms which specialize in
those things.
Lastly, you can do the things which make the largest difference.
Apply Ricardo's principle of comparative advantage. Figure
out what specific actions contribute the most and do only
those, offloading or dumping the rest. Do the same analysis
for each department and each member of your company and create
extraordinary results.
To do more-to get more done in terms of value-you have to
do less.
Business Coach http://paullemberg.com,
Paul Lemberg is the President of Quantum Growth Coaching,
the world's only fully systemized business coaching
http://quantumgrowthcoaching.com
program helping entrepreneurs to rapidly create More Profits
and More LifeT. Guaranteed.
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