Perfect Life Project

The Multi-Tasking Myth

Multi-tasking is good isn't it. Get twice as much done in half the time! Cram more activities into your day!

Wrong. Multi-tasking makes us less effective beings.While we are being encouraged to do more and more with advanced tools, the truth is it is preventing us from performing effectively.

Consider this:
Brain activation for listening is cut in half if the person is trying to process visual input at the same time. A recent study at The British Institute of Psychiatry showed that checking your email while performing another creative task decreases your IQ in the moment 10 points. That is the equivalent of not sleeping for 36 hours—more than twice the impact of smoking marijuana.

Turn off the twitter, eliminate the email, shun the sms, ban the Blackberry. Do one thing at a time and do it well.

This one piece of advice has made an enormous impact on my life. It can help reduce your daily work / desk time from 8 to 2 hours. It can improve the quality of your output and lead to a much happier, less stressed existence.

Try it.

Less is More

Source: Robin Sharma

The person who does too much accomplishes very little. Less is more. The most effective people in business (and life) have the discipline (and brilliance) to focus on doing just a few things spectacularly well.

Less is more. You can actually be more productive doing fewer things. Please think about that. As Peter Drucker said: "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently, that which should not be done at all."

Are You Perpetually Exhausted?

Source: Donna Karlin, Fast Company

Are you ignoring that exhaustion, telling yourself you’ll take some time off in a month or so?  In the meantime how are you able to effectively lead if you’re too tired to process everything that’s going on around you?

If you don’t manage your energy, it doesn’t matter how you might manage your time as you are not processing what you need to nor are you mentally retaining what’s happening.  Leadership is more than an organizational position; it’s leading your people in a way that they and the organization can move forward.  If you’re exhausted, your mental capacity is diminished and you are not leading, you’re hanging on to the status quo hard enough so you don’t fall.

10 ways history's finest kept their focus at work

I just came across this post at a blog called LifeDev. It was actually written by Albert van Zyl from the blog HeadSpace. Anyway, its really great advice.

The lives of great people give us interesting clues about how to organise our days.

All of them attached great value to their daily routines. This is because they saw it as being part of ‘becoming who they are’, as Nietzsche puts it.

For the same reason they were also highly individual in their routines. They had the courage to go against popular opinion and work out often strange daily plans that suited them.

This is perhaps the first lesson that we can learn – that it takes courage and resolve to design and stick to a routine that suits you. But as Emerson reassures us: ‘The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going’.

There are at least 10 other lessons that the daily routines of the great can teach us:

Hit the refresh button on your life

I am constantly amazed at the amount of information, technology and general "noise" we allow into our modern lives. Mobile phones, PDA's, internet, email, Twitter, SMS, IMS, general media and more. All this is competing for our attention with work collegues, clients, meetings and everything else we try to accomplish during the day.

How do we ever get anything actually done?

My response is to log off and tune out. My best work and best thinking is one far from the daily noise of working life. Fewer interruptions = more clarity in my thinking. And for most entrepreneurs, thinking is where it is at.  

The Perfect Plan for 2008

I recently discussed my ambitions for the coming year in "Making the most of your freedom". Now that I have returned home and back to work I have set about implementing my plans for 2008.

My greatest challenge appears to be juggling a business and some lofty ambitions for the year with my lifestyle goals of working less, travelling and pursuing my sporting interests. Here is what I wish to do in 2008.....

Learning from holidays 2

Six weeks of travel is coming to an end. As I sit here at San Francisco International I can reflect upon a long and enjoyable break. My family and I have managed to see and do a remarkable amount on this trip, from San Francisco, northern California, Colorado, copious amounts of snow skiing, snow shoeing, back to California and Santa Cruz and the mid-Cali coast.....it has been quite the trip, especially with two young children in tow.

Perfect Life Update 2

Last month I wrote an update on my progress since adopting and
implementing my strategies for a perfect life. In it I outlined the actions
I had taken and results I had seen.

Most of the benefits I described related to the improvement in my lifestyle. Less stress, happier, better health, more freedom. The one area I haven't elaborated on is income.

For me, the objective here isn't to become insanely rich. I am trying to build a robust, highly profitable business that allows me to live extremely well without the constant pressure and stress of maintaining such a lifestyle. Obviously a high income is part of it but it is not the be all and end all.

So, many fiscally focussed readers may be wondering whether my strategies have been profitable, or whether I have just been creating a lazy workers paradise that sacrifices profit for fun and an easy lifestyle.

I am happy to announce that you can have your cake and eat it too. The business is performing remarkably well. In the two years since I purchased this agency (now in it's 30th year) it has grown 35%. That's been good solid growth for a mature business.

Simple advice for a more productive day

Are you like so many people who complain that there are never enough hours in the day? Do you find that get to the end of the working day only to find that you are yet to complete everything you intended?

There was a time when I could relate to this.  Days would rush by, I would have to work longer hours or take work home, there was no end in sight.

Fortunately a simple change of perspective and better focus and organisation mean that I now do twice as much in half the time.

 

Time is our most precious resource. Once its gone we can't get it back. We need to make the most of our time and use it for the things that really matter, be it work, family, relaxation, education. The biggest thing we should avoid is wasting time. Thats why I like to get things done then move onto my other life passions.

Like most of you I have many things on my plate. I run an ad agency and deal directly with the top 6 clients, manage an online business, write 3 different blogs, spend time with my wife and two young sons, cycle competitively, surf, travel and have a healthy social life. I can manage all of this without feeling stressed or pressured each week. In fact if I wanted to do more, I could easily.

Whats the secret? Well its not rocket science and its probably nothing you haven't heard before, but if you are disciplined enough to follow these rules your working days will be much more productive, and hopefully you will gain plenty of time to do more things you really want to do.