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Brick No130: At Last, Five Ways To Do Less
By Matt Weston, Friday 28 January 2005 Friday's Brick -- AKA If You Want To Get Ahead, Make Time Out In Jan, Feb and March -- went down like Kleenex at a wedding. I guess you're always going to be a popular guy when you tell people to sit back and take it easy, chicken. Do less, not more. But, despite the fan mail, it still strikes me that people are mostly interested in doing more, not less. To get a gauge, I plugged into Google. The phrase "do less" scores about 390,000 results, but "do more" pulls about 11,600,000. If you work for somebody else, the name of the game is cramming more work into the same time. You won't have the autonomy to follow many of my suggestions below. The New Scientist cover story this week was "How to get an infinite number of things done before breakfast". And if you're not your own boss, maybe you should read it. But for the rest of us, consider this line: "It is the lazy person, using his or her creativity to avoid work, that drives all progress in society," Fred Gratzon, co-author of The Lazy Way to Success. I'm not mad about the language -- as Bill Jenson puts it in The Simplicity Survival Handbook: 32 Ways To Do Less and Accomplish More -- "Doing less and laziness are not the same thing". But Gratzon's sentiment is on the money. Mostly, as small business owners, we think the only way to progress is by working out ways to do more jobs, take on more clients, liberate dead-time, and get more done. We never work backwards. If you take on less work, and make a better fist of it, what happens? What if, instead of trying to do more, you spent your energy figuring out ways to do less? If you read Seth Godin's "Do Less" PDF, you'll understand why this doesn't mean less reward. Five more what ifs What would happen if . . . (1) You sacked all your "Type C" customers? See Brick No125. (2) You cut your to-do list to three items a day? See Brick No95. (3) You killed all your darling projects? See Brick No89. (4) You did less research, and made more gut decisions? Read Malcolm Gladwell's latest, "Blink". (5) You did less advertising, and spent more time with your "Type A" customers? Over to you . . . Bric-A-Brac A couple of Desperately Seeking Susans: 1. Long-time reader Jo Moulds (she came to our first London meet-up) is writing a piece on "Career Kids" for a national newspaper this week. JM is seeking teen entrepreneurs with ideas they're already making money from. Know anyone? Drop Jo a line at jomoulds@email.com 2. James Christie-Miller called me yesterday. He's a producer at Ricochet Films (they made Channel 4's business series "Risking It All"). J C-M is making a documentary for Channel 5 on eBay entrepreneurs. He's seeking people about to start trading full-time. Call James on 020 7251 6966 or email him at james.christiemiller@ricochet.co.uk Remember to sign up: back to top |
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