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Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Low Information Diet
Hi. I’m Terry Frazier and I am an information junkie.
One of the principles of Tim Ferris’ 4–hour Workweek is the low information diet. Ferris’ opinion is that success requires massive output – massive action – rather than the constant intake of information. Information that is not immediately useful is nothing more than a distraction. And distractions equal low output.
I don’t know about you, but I am easily distracted. I use this distraction to procrastinate – to avoid the things I ought to be doing but don’t want to do. I cannot count the times in a week that I check e-mail “just one more time” as an excuse to avoid doing something else. The same can be said for reading the RSS feeds in my reader, perusing newsgroups, etc.
Sure, I am up on all the latest chit-chat and brainstorming and minutiae, but very little (most often none) of that contributes to my completing a given task. It usually just sucks time away. So I work longer hours to get the important stuff done. I sit at the computer for hours, typically squeezing in 10–12 hours of time even though I am only billing for 8 (at the most.) Add in phone calls, sorting through spam, and the recalibration time I lose every time I leave a project and go back to it and it could easily add up to an extra day or three per month. I do get an occasional chuckle, or learn some tidbit that is helpful, but nowhere near enough to justify the time.
This is, in a word, stupid.
For the past few days I have been revamping my info-diet. I have unsubscribed from dozens of mail lists that I no longer read. I have dropped out of all but a handful of internet groups, leaving only those that are immediately applicable to a current project. I have reduced the number of feeds in my reader from 97 to 11 – the very few people who I actually know in some way plus two sites that are applicable to a current project.
I have long ago given up watching the news or reading newspapers or news magazines – if there is a serious need I can buy a back issue. I don’t care about the elections. Any candidate the Democrats pick will be a nut-case. And I will intensely dislike whoever the Republicans pick.
That’s the easy stuff. The hard part is stopping myself from watching TV and reading stuff that doesn’t matter. I have hundreds of books. They sit on shelves, calling to me. I want to read them. But most of them don’t make me more productive or effective.
As a practical matter, Ferris suggests checking e-mail and voice mail 2x per day – at noon and 4pm – responding to it and being done.
Ferris is not the first to suggest this. I have read a dozen “productivity” books on time management, getting things done, project management, organization, etc. None of them helped. This is the first time its really sunk in that I should just stop all of it. Just stop.
There are still tasks that must be done that I don’t want to do. This is where outsourcing comes in. I’m working on that. But at the same time I’m going to lose about 20 lbs of excess information fat. I’m going to stop watching my “favorite” TV shows – there aren’t that many and they aren’t any good after one season anyway. But it’s going to be tough eating breakfast without Mike & Mike in the Morning. And leaving the TV off during all that hotel room time I have every week will be tough. But I’m a man. I can change. If I have to. I guess.
Terry Frazier at 4:29 PM
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Thursday, January 10, 2008
Paying For Outsourcing
Outsourcing my burdensome tasks is very appealing, and I have already begun to make inquiries about a couple of specific tasks I want done. But even though the Indo-Asian outsource firms tend to have lower labor rates than comparable US firms, they still don't work for free. So I need money to pay for them.I don't yet have products or services that generate regular, dependable income that can pay for these projects, and I don't want a net add to my monthly expenses. The idea is to make things better, not worse. So what to do?
I started with a review of the monthly charges for business services I already use. There was plenty of fat in there. I immediately called Sprint and knocked $90 off my monthly cellular bill. I contacted my shopping cart service (for another site I run) and downgraded the service to a Basic package for a savings of $40 per month.
That $130 will get me a Basic-10 package at GetFriday.com, which includes 10 hours of labor per month for whatever tasks I need. I've identified another $99 monthly fee that I can probably eliminate outright, but I'm not sure just yet. And I think I can move a couple of small loans to one of those 0-interest-for-a-year credit card deals to free another $40-$50 per month,
With about an hour of effort I've freed $130 and identified another $140. That's enough to get me 20-25 hours of labor per month for various projects. That's a good start.
Terry Frazier at 5:10 PM
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Wednesday, January 9, 2008
The 4-Hour Work Week
Got a new book over the holidays - "The 4-hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferris. One of my consulting colleagues recommended it a few weeks ago as being a good source for tips and ideas for some of the areas I've been investigating as a sideline the past few years. I love the book. I read most of it on a 2-hour flight from Atlanta to San Antonio, so it's clearly a fast read. But it's also a practical book, containing specific and usable ideas and recommendations in the areas of personal automation, personal outsourcing, product development, and removing yourself as a bottleneck.
This is what I call a "connector" or gap-filling book. I think you have to be at a certain point in your thinking on these areas in order for it to resonate with you. I've spent more time than I care to admit thinking about and poking around the edges of this stuff and made very little progress. I've read numerous books on time management and internet marketing and product development and PPC advertising and such. I've conducted a few of my own experiments. I've tried to find assistants and sources for doing tasks that are necessary but burdensome and low priority for me. But it just never worked like I wanted. There was never a serviceable "big picture" I could latch onto and I never got that mental "click" that happens when a concept gels in your mind and you can begin to make it your own. I don't know why this is so hard in some things and so easy in others, but I've learned to keep striving for that "click" and I know it when I feel it.
“4-hour Workweek” was a constant stream of little connections and examples that fit together to form a proper big picture, such that things which previously seemed isolated and disconnected are now linked in an overall vision. This is important for me as I have no energy for pursuing small things, no matter their potential, when I can't see a clear contribution to a the bigger goal.
I don't have any interest in copying Ferris' global vagabond lifestyle. But his approach to creating a low-pressure, low-risk, low-involvement business structure is compelling - especially if you have already been struggling to do many of the things he discusses. If you haven't, Ferris' claims may seem like just so much additional BS in a world already filled with it. But I don't think they are. My goal for 2008 is to implement as many of Ferris' strategies as possible, starting with the identification and outsourcing of my "boat-anchor" tasks and moving up to higher-level functions such as product design, marketing, etc. I will outsource as much of this as possible, and catalog my progress and failures here. It will be nice to have a theme for blog entries again.
Terry Frazier at 11:58 PM
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