Adopting the goal of “spending as little time working as possible” might sound lazy, or “un-entrepreneurial,” but it has actually increased my freedom, my happiness, and even my productivity tremendously.
What happens when you make that your priority, is that you get stingy with how you spend your time. Everything gets ranked. You do the day-to-day essentials (again, in order of importance), and then look for fun ways to grow. I have an endless amount of busywork at my fingertips. But it’s both less rewarding, and less valuable than reading a book. It’s amazing what happens when you give yourself permission to drop everything and go read. Here are a couple of them:
One, in running your life this way, you spend waaaaayy less time on social media. The time you do spend is fun too, because it’s interactive, you’re doing something or saying something you want to say. Got a new recipe? Share it. Got a life-tip? Share it. Scroll through everyone’s weekend photos? Meh, I’d rather go read that book. All the unrewarding things that numb your brain just disappear, and you never miss them.
Two, having a good book waiting is awesome because it compresses the time it takes to do everything else. A task always expands to fill the time it’s given, so think of what happens when you aren’t running out the clock until 5 anymore. You’re getting shit done fast so you can go and read. Or maybe you take an hour in the middle of the day and just read without distractions, only to quickly finish up the work later when you’re refreshed.
Three, not only does this approach compress the time taken by productive tasks, it eliminates the amount of time you spend on busy-work. You start comparing the value of each task to the value of that time spent reading, and it’s amazing how few things make the cut.
Four, it drives further improvement in efficiency. Time is the ultimate resource you want more of, so live accordingly. Don’t just work harder and longer for the sake of being able to work longer and harder tomorrow. You don’t want that drain on your energy. Instead, figure out how to make the time you spend working count for more. Likewise, say no to the things that don’t offer you as much value per hour as reading a good book. You have to draw the line at some point and say, “this is worth my time, and this isn’t.” You’re gonna die eventually, do you really want to spend your life doing TPS reports?
Finally, you might retort that you can’t afford to take an hour off. Perhaps you run a “real business” rather than a blog/podcast schtick. But here’s my answer, if you wan’t take an hour off, what are you doing? Isn’t the point of entrepreneurship to create freedom for yourself? Odds are, if really bad things are happening when you take so much as an hour’s break, you need to re-evaluate and address the way you and your business operate.
Here’s how I’ve implemented this in my own life.
First and foremost, you’ve got to prioritize ruthlessly. Do the most important things first and then move down the list. At the same time, include leisurely activities like reading as priorities and be willing to rank certain tasks below them. You need to manage not just your business, but your life because most small business owners are their business. The end goal is to create a better life for you and your family. Money is a part of that, your business is a part of that. But ultimately, they aren’t worth very much if you can’t enjoy them.
The other note I’d make on ranking is that to some extent you ought to go by what gets you excited. If something needs to get done, but sucks, find another way to get it done that sucks less. Or ideally, find a way to make it unnecessary. Here’s a general framework for how I look at prioritization in what I’m doing.
1) Conduct interviews (ie the main, big thing I set out to do). Nothing gets ranked above it within the business because it is the point of the business: Explore entrepreneurship, and share my findings with others.
2) Set up future interviews. (See 1). It’s fun connecting with people. It gives me energy and it makes me excited for the future work I’ll be doing with them.
3) Market. This is only really a priority when I’m excited about the interview and have something meaningful to say. A generic “blah blah blah person has insights” doesn’t excite me, and worse, it dilutes the value of my future messages. So limiting myself to marketing projects that feel fun, and shunting everything else down to the bottom of the list is the lazy system that actually works.
4) Edit podcasts. This needs to get done, and I’m figuring out ways to automate as much of this process as possible. A well-trained monkey should theoretically be able to do this. Probably, I should find someone online who will do it cheaply.
Finally, Read. The thing to understand is that any one of these items above can be a huge waste of time if done with a bored, unproductive mind. If I’m “technically” working on one of them, but not making much progress, I should read instead.