Ray Porter (7:02)

Run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

Tim Ferriss (7:05)

Can I answer your personal question now?

Ray Porter (7:07)

It is in a perfect time. I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. Ferris Show 6 the Low Information Diet Cultivating Selective ignorance what information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. Herbert Simon Recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in economics and the a.m. turing Award, the Nobel Prize of Computer Science. Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to organizational decision making. It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision. Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. Albert Einstein I hope you're sitting down. Take that sandwich out of your mouth so you don't choke. Cover the baby's ears. I'm going to tell you something that upsets a lot of people. I never watch the news and have bought one single newspaper in the last five years in Stanstead Airport in London, and only because it gave me a discount on a Diet Pepsi. I would claim to be Amish, but last time I checked, Pepsi wasn't on the menu. How obscene. I call myself an informed and responsible citizen. How do I stay up to date with current affairs? I'll answer all of that. But wait, it gets better. I usually check business email for about an hour each Monday, and I never check voicemail when abroad. Never ever. But what if someone has an emergency? It doesn't happen. My contacts now know that I don't respond to emergencies, so the emergencies somehow don't exist or don't come to me. Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others. Cultivating Selective Ignorance There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882 from this point forward, I'm going to propose that you develop an uncanny ability to be selectively ignorant. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is also practical. It is imperative that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most are all three. The first step is to develop and maintain a low information diet. Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value, information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources. Lifestyle design is based on massive action output. Increased output necessitates decreased input. Most information is time consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals and outside of your influence. I challenge you to look at whatever you read or watched today and tell me that it wasn't at least two of the four. I read the front page headlines through the newspaper machines as I walk to lunch each day and nothing more. In five years, I haven't had a single problem Due to this selective ignorance, it gives you something new to ask the rest of the population. In lieu of small talk, tell me what's new in the world and if it's that important, you'll hear people talking about it. Using my cribnotes approach to world affairs, I also retain more than someone who loses the forest for the trees in a sea of extraneous details. From an actionable information standpoint, I consume a maximum of 1/3 of 1 industry magazine, response magazine, and 1 business magazine per month for a grand total of approximately four hours. That's it for results oriented reading. I read an hour of fiction prior to bed for relaxation. How on earth do I act responsibly? Let me give an example of how I and other NR both consider and obtain information I voted in the Last presidential election, 2004. At the time this was written, despite having been in Berlin, I made my decision in a matter of hours. First, I sent emails to educated friends in the US who share my values and asked them who they were voting for and why. Second, I judge people based on actions and not words. Thus, I asked friends in Berlin who had more perspective outside of US media propaganda how they judged the candidates based on their historical behavior. Last, I watched the presidential debates. That was it. I let other dependable people synthesize hundreds of hours and thousands of pages of media. For me, it was like having dozens of personal information assistants and I didn't have to pay them a single cent. That's a simple example. You say, but what if you needed to learn to do something your friends haven't done? Like, say, sell a book to the world's largest publisher? As a first time author, funny you should ask. There are two approaches I used. One. I picked one book out of dozens based on reader reviews and the fact that the authors had actually done what I wanted to do. If the task is how to in nature, I only read accounts that are how I did it and autobiographical. No speculators or wannabes are worth the time. 2. Using the book to generate intelligent and specific questions, I contacted 10 of the top authors and agents in the world via email and phone with a response rate of 80. I only read the sections of the book that were relevant to immediate next steps, which took less than two hours to develop. A template email and call script took approximately four hours and the actual emails and phone calls took less than an hour. This personal contact approach is not only more effective and more efficient than all you can eat info buffets, it also provided me with the major league alliances and mentors necessary to sell this book rediscover the power of the forgotten skill called talking. It works. Once again, less is more how to read 200% faster in 10 minutes there will be times when it's true you will have to read. Here are four simple tips that will lessen the damage and increase your speed at least 200% in 10 minutes with no comprehension loss. 12 minutes use a pen or finger to trace under each line as you read as fast as possible. Reading is a series of jumping snapshots called saccades and using a visual guide prevents regression. 23 minutes begin each line focusing on the third word in from the first word and end each line focusing on the third word in from the last word. This makes use of peripheral vision that is otherwise wasted on margins. For example, even when the highlighted words in the next line are your beginning and ending focal points, the entire sentence is red just with less eye movement Once upon a time, an information addict decided to detox move in from both sides further and further as it gets easier. 32 minutes Once comfortable indenting three or four words from both sides, attempt to take only two snapshots, also known as fixations per line on the first and last indented words. 43 minutes Practice reading too fast for comprehension, but with good technique. The above three techniques for five pages prior to reading at a comfortable speed. This will heighten perception and reset your speed limit, much like how 50 miles per hour normally feels fast but seems like slow motion if you drop down from 70 miles per hour on the freeway. To calculate reading speed in words per minute and thus progress in a given book, add up the number of words in 10 lines and divide by 10 to get the average words per line. Multiply this by the number of lines per page and you have the average words per page. Now it's simple. If you initially read 1.25 pages in one minute, at 330 average words per page, that's 412.5 words per minute. If you then read 3.5 pages after training, it's 1,155 words per minute and and you're in the top 1% of the world's fastest readers. Q and A Questions and Actions Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace. Robert J. Sawyer Calculating God one Go on an immediate one week media fast. The world doesn't even hiccup, much less end when you cut the information umbilical cord. To realize this, it's best to use the band aid approach and do it quickly a one week media fast. Information is too much like ice cream to do otherwise. Oh, I'll just have half a spoonful is about as realistic as I just want to jump online for a minute. Go cold turkey. If you want to go Back to the 15,000 calorie potato chip information diet afterward, fine. But beginning tomorrow and for at least five full days, here are the rules. No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks except for this audiobook or non music radio. Music is permitted at all times. No news websites whatsoever. CNN.com, drudgeReport.com, MSN.com, lOL etc. No television at all except for one hour of pleasure viewing each evening. No reading books except for this book and one hour of fiction. Pleasure reading prior to bed. As someone who read exclusively non fiction for nearly 15 years, I can tell you two it's not productive to read two fact based books at the same time. This is one. And fiction is better than sleeping pills for putting the happenings of the day behind you. No web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day. Necessary means necessary. Not nice to have unnecessary Reading is public enemy number one during this one week fast. What do you do with all the extra time? Replace the newspaper at breakfast with speaking to your spouse, bonding with your children, or learning the principles in this audiobook. Between 9 to 5 complete your top priorities as per the last chapter. If you complete them with time to spare, do the exercises in this audiobook. Recommending this audiobook might seem hypocritical, but it's not. The information in this audiobook is both important and to be applied now, not tomorrow or the day after each day at lunch break and no earlier. Get your five minute news fix. Ask a well informed colleague or a restaurant waiter Anything important happening in the world today? I couldn't get the paper today. Stop this as soon as you realize that the answer doesn't affect your actions at all. Most people won't even remember what they spent one to two hours absorbing that morning. Be strict with yourself. I can prescribe the medicine, but you need to take it. Download the Firefox web browser firefox.com and use Leech Block to block certain sites entirely for set periods. From their site www.proganosco.com leechblock.HTML, you can specify up to six sets of sites to block with different times and days for each set. You can block sites within fixed time periods between 9am and 5pm after a time limit, for example 10 minutes in every hour or with a combination of time periods and time limit. For example 10 minutes in every hour between 9am and 5pm you can also set a password for access to the extension options just to slow you down in moments of weakness. 2. Develop the habit of asking yourself will I definitely use this information for something immediate and important? It's not enough to use information for something it needs to be immediate and important. If no on either count, don't consume it. Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it. I used to have the habit of reading a book or site to prepare for an event weeks or months in the future and I would then need to read reread the same material when the deadline for action was closer. This is stupid and redundant. Follow your to do short list and fill in the information gaps as you go. Focus on what Digirati Cathy Sierra calls just in time information instead of just in case information. 3. Practice the art of non finishing. This is another one that took me a long time to learn. Starting something doesn't automatically justify finishing it. If you are reading an article that sucks, put it down and don't pick it back up. If you go to a movie and it's worse than Matrix 3 get the hell out of there before more neurons die. And if you're full after half a plate of ribs, put the damn fork down and don't order dessert. More is not better and stopping something is often ten times better than finishing it. Develop the habit of non finishing that which is boring or unproductive if a boss isn't demanding it. Comfort Challenge get phone numbers. Being sure to maintain eye contact, ask for the phone numbers of at least two the more you attempt, the less stressful it will be. Attractive members of the opposite sex on each day. Girls. This means you're in the game as well and it doesn't matter if you're 50 plus. Remember that the real goal is not to get numbers, but to get over the fear of asking so the outcome is unimportant. If you're in a relationship, sign up to or pretend to gather information for Greenpeace. Just toss the numbers if you get them. Go to a mall if you want to get some rapid fire. Practice my preference for getting over the discomfort quickly and aim to ask three people in a row within five minutes. Feel free to use some variation of the following Excuse me, I know this is gonna sound strange, but if I don't ask you now, I'll be kicking myself for the rest of the day I'm running to meet a friend that is I have friends and am not a stalker. But I think you're really extremely drop dead cute. Gorgeous Hot. Could I have your phone number? I'm not a psycho, I promise. You can give me a fake one if you're not interested.

Tim Ferriss (24:09)

Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics and whole food source nutrients in a single scoop. AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut and immune system. So take advantage of this exclusive offer for you, my dear podcast listeners, a free one year supply of liquid vitamin D plus five travel packs with your subscription. Simply go to drinkag1.com Tim that's the number one. Drinkag1.com Tim For a free one year supply of liquid Vitamin D plus five travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Learn more at drinkag1.com Tim.

Ray Porter (25:14)

Seven interrupting, interruption and the Art of Refusal do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. Ralph Cherel Meetings are an addictive, highly self indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate. Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize Winning American Humorist Spring 2000 Princeton, NJ 1:35pm I think I understand. Moving on. In the next paragraph it explains that I had detailed notes and didn't want to miss a single point. 3:45pm okay, that makes sense. But if we look at the following example I paused for a moment mid sentence. The teaching assistant had both hands on his face. Tim, let's end here. For now I'll be sure to keep these points in mind. He had had enough. Me too. But I knew I'd only have to do it once. For all four years of school I had a policy. If I received anything less than an A on the first paper or non multiple choice test in a given class, I would bring two to hours of questions to the grader's office hours and not leave until the other had answered them all or stopped out of exhaustion. This served two important purposes. One, I learned exactly how the grader evaluated work, including his or her prejudices and pet peeves. 2. The grader would think long and hard about ever giving me less than an A. He or she would never consider giving me a bad grade without exceptional reasons for doing so, as he or she knew I'd come a knocking for another three hour visit. Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time. Think back to your days on the playground. There was always a big bully and countless victims, but there was also that one small kid who fought like hell, thrashing and swinging for the fences. He or she might not have won, but after one or two exhausting exchanges, the bully chose not to bother him or her. It was easier to find someone else be that kid. Doing the important and ignoring the trivial is hard because so much of the world seems to conspire to force crap upon you. Fortunately, a few simple routine changes make bothering you much more painful than leaving you in peace. It's time to stop taking information Abuse not all evils are created equal. For our purposes, an interruption is anything that prevents the start to finish completion of a critical task. And there are three principal 1. Time wasters those things that can be ignored with little or no consequence. Common time wasters include meetings, discussions, phone calls, web surfing and email that are unimportant. 2. Time consumers repetitive tasks or requests that need to be completed but often interrupt high level work. Here are a few you might know intimately. Reading and responding to email Making and returning phone calls Customer service order Status product assistance, etc. Financial or sales reporting Personal errands All necessary repeated actions and tasks. 3. Empowerment failures instances where someone needs approval to make something small happen. Here are just a Fixing customer problems Lost shipments, damaged shipments, malfunctions, etc. Customer contact cash expenditures of all types. Lets look at the prescriptions for all three in turn. Become an ignoramus. The best defense is a good offense. Dan Gable Olympic gold medalist in wrestling and the most successful coach in history. Personal 299 wins, 6 losses, 3 draws with 182 pins Time wasters are the easiest to eliminate and deflect. It is a matter of limiting access and funneling all communication toward immediate action. First, limit email consumption and production. This is the greatest single interruption in the modern world. 1. Turn off the audible alert if you have one on Outlook or a similar program and turn off automatic Send Receive which delivers email to your inbox as soon as someone sends them two. Check email twice per day, once at 12 noon or just prior to lunch and again at 4pm 12pm and 4pm are times that ensure you will have the most responses from previously sent email. Never check email first thing in the morning. This habit alone can change your life. It seems small, but has an enormous effect. Instead, complete your most important task before 11am to avoid using lunch or reading email as a postponement excuse. Before implementing the twice daily routine, you must create an email autoresponse that will train your boss, coworkers, suppliers and clients to be more effective. I would recommend that you do not ask to implement this. Remember one of our Ten Commandments Beg for forgiveness. Don't ask for permission. If this gives you heart palpitations, speak with your immediate supervisor and propose to trial the approach for one to three days. Cite pending projects and frustration with constant interruptions as the reason. Feel free to blame it on spam or someone outside of the office. Here is a simple email template that can be Greetings, friends or esteemed colleagues. Due to high workload, I am currently checking and responding to email twice daily at 12pm Eastern Time or your time zone and 4pm Eastern Time. If you require urgent assistance, please ensure it's urgent that cannot wait until either 12pm or 4pm Please contact me via phone at 555-555-5555. Thank you for understanding this Move to more efficiency and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish more to serve you better. Sincerely, Tim Ferriss Move to once per day as quickly as possible. Emergencies are seldom that people are poor judges of importance and inflate minutia to fill time and feel important. This autoresponse is a tool that, far from decreasing collective effectiveness, forces people to reevaluate their reason for interrupting you and helps them decrease meaningless and time consuming contact. I was initially terrified of missing important requests and inviting disaster, just as you might be upon reading this recommendation. Nothing happened. Give it a shot and work out the small bumps as you progress. The second step is to screen incoming and limit outgoing phone calls. 1. Use two telephone numbers if possible, one office line and one cellular. This could also be two cell phones or the non urgent line could be an Internet phone number that routes calls to online voicemail. For example, use the cell number in the email autoresponse and answer it at all times unless it is an unknown caller or it is a call you don't want to answer. If in doubt, allow the call to go to voicemail and listen to the voicemail immediately afterward to gauge importance. If it can wait. Let it wait. The offending parties have to learn to wait. The office phone should be put on silent mode and allowed to go to voicemail at all times. The voicemail recording should sound familiar. You've reached the desk of Tim Ferriss. I am currently checking and responding to voicemail twice daily at 12pm Eastern Standard Time or your time zone and 4pm Eastern Time. If you require assistance with a truly urgent matter that cannot wait until either 12pm or 4pm, please contact me on my cell at 555-555-5555. Otherwise, please leave a message and I will return it at the next of those two times. Be sure to leave your email address as I am often able to respond faster that way. Thank you for understanding this Move to more efficiency and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish more to serve you better. Have a wonderful day. 2 if someone does call your cell phone, it is presumably urgent and should be treated as such. Do not allow them to consume time otherwise it's all in the greeting. Compare the Jane hello John, hi, is this Jane? This is Jane. John hi Jane, it's John. Oh hi John, how are you? Or oh hi John, what's going on? John will now digress and lead you into a conversation about nothing from which you will have to recover and then fish out the ultimate purpose of the call. There is a better approach. This is Jane speaking. Hi, it's John. Hi John, I'm right in the middle of something. How can I help you out? Oh, I can call back. No, I have a minute. What can I do for you? Don't encourage people to chit chat and don't let them chit chat. Get them to the point immediately. If they meander or try to postpone for a later undefined call, rather reel them in and get them to come to the point. If they go into a long description of a problem, cut in with Name Sorry to interrupt, but I have a call in five minutes. What can I do to help you out? You might instead say name Sorry to interrupt but I have a call in five minutes. Can you send me an email? The third step is to master the art of refusal and avoiding meetings. The first day our new sales VP arrived at Trusan in 2001, he came into the all company meeting and made an announcement in just about this many words, I am not here to make friends. I have been hired to build a sales team and sell product and that's what I intend to do. Thanks so much for small talk. He proceeded to deliver on his promise. The office socializers disliked him for his no nonsense approach to communication, but everyone respected his time. He wasn't rude without reason, but he was direct and kept the people around him focused. Some didn't consider him charismatic, but no one considered him anything less than spectacularly effective. I remember sitting down in his office for our first one on one meeting. Fresh off four years of rigorous academic training, I immediately jumped into explaining the prospect profiles, elaborate planning. I developed responses to date and so forth and so on. I had spent at least two hours preparing to make this first impression a good one. He listened with a smile on his face for no more than two minutes and then held up a hand. I stopped. He laughed in a kind hearted manner and said, tim, I don't want the story. Just tell me what we need to do. Over the following weeks he trained me to recognize when I was unfocused or focused on the wrong things which meant anything that didn't move the top two or three clients one step closer to signing a purchase order. Our meetings were now no more than five minutes long. From this moment forward, resolve to keep those around you focused and avoid all meetings, whether in person or remote, that do not have clear objectives. It is possible to do this tactfully, but expect that some time wasters will be offended the first few times their advances are rejected. Once it is clear that remaining on task is your policy and not subject to change, they will accept it and move on with life. Hard feelings pass. Don't suffer fools or you'll become one. It is your job to train those around you to be effective and efficient. No one else will do it for you. Here are a few 1. Decide that given the non urgent nature of most issues, you will steer people toward the following means of communication in order of email, phone and in person meetings. If someone proposes a meeting, request an email instead and then use the phone as your fallback offer. If need be, cite other immediately pending work tasks as the reason. 2. Respond to voicemail via email whenever possible. This trains people to be concise, help them develop the habit. Similar to our opening greeting on the phone, email communication should be streamlined to prevent needless back and forth. Thus, an email with can you meet at 4:00pm would become can you meet at 4:00pm? If so, if not, please advise three other times that work for you. This if then structure becomes more important as you check email less often. Since I only check email once a week, it is critical that no one needs a what if answered or other information within seven days of a given email I send if I suspect that a manufacturing order hasn't arrived at the shipping facility. For example, I'll send an email to my shipping facility manager along these lines. Dear Susan, has the new manufacturing shipment arrived? If so, please advise me on. If not, please contact John Doe at 555-5555 or via email@johnoe.com he is also cc'd and advise on delivery date and tracking John if there are any issues with the shipment, please coordinate with Susan Reachable at 555-4444 who has the authority to make decisions up to $500 on my behalf. In case of emergency, call me on my cell phone, but I trust you to thanks. This prevents most follow up questions, avoids two separate dialogues, and takes me out of the problem solving equation. Get into the habit of considering what if? Then actions can be proposed in any email where you ask a question. 3. Meetings should only be held to make decisions about a predefined situation, not to define the problem. If someone proposes that you meet with them or set a time to talk on the phone, ask that person to send you an email with an agenda to define the purpose. That sounds doable so I can best prepare. Can you please send me an email with an agenda that is the topics and questions we'll need to address? That would be great. Thanks in advance. Don't give them a chance to bail out the thanks in advance before a retort increases your chances of getting the email. The email medium forces people to define the desired outcome of a meeting or call. Nine times out of ten a meeting is unnecessary and you can answer the questions once defined via email. Impose this habit on others. I haven't had an in person meeting for my business in more than five years and have had fewer than a dozen conference calls, all lasting less than 30 minutes. 4 Speaking of 30 minutes, if you absolutely cannot stop a meeting or call from happening, define the end time. Do not leave these discussions open ended and keep them short. If things are well defined, decisions should not take more than 30 minutes. Cite other commitments at odd times to make them more believable, eg 320 versus 330 and force people to focus instead of socializing, commiserating and digressing. If you must join a meeting that is scheduled to last a long time or that is open ended, inform the organizer that you would like permission to cover your portion first as you have a commitment in 15 minutes. If you have to feign an urgent phone call, get the hell out of there and have someone else update you later. The other option is to be completely transparent and voice your opinion of how unnecessary the meeting is. If you choose this route, be prepared to face fire and offer alternatives. 5. The cubicle is your temple. Don't permit casual visitors. Some suggest using a clear do not disturb sign of some type, but I have found that this is ignored unless you have an office. My approach was to put headphones on even if I wasn't listening to anything. If someone approached me despite this discouragement, I would pretend to be on the phone. I'd put a finger to my lips, say something like I hear you and then say into the mic, can you hold on a second? Next I'd turn to the invader and say hi, what can I do for you? I wouldn't let them get back to me, but rather force the person to give me a five second summary and then send me an email if necessary. If headphone games aren't your thing, the reflexive response to an invader should be the same as when answering the cell phone. Hi invader, I'm right in the middle of something. How can I be of help? If it's not clear within 30 seconds, ask the person to send you an email about the chosen issue. Do not offer to send them an email first. I'll be happy to help, but I have to finish this first. Can you send me a quick email to remind me? If you still cannot deflect an invader, give the person a time limit on your availability, which can also be used for phone conversations. Okay, I only have two minutes before a call, but what's the situation and what can I do to help? 6. Use the puppy dog clothes to help your superiors and others develop the no meeting habit. The Puppy Dog Clothes in sales is so named because it is based on the pet store sales approach. If someone likes a puppy but is hesitant to make the life altering purchase, just offer to let them take the pup home and bring it back if they change their minds. Of course, the return seldom happens. The puppy dog close is invaluable whenever you face resistance to permanent changes. Get your foot in the door with a let's just try it once reversible trial. Compare the following I think you'd love this puppy. It will forever add to your responsibilities until he dies 10 years from now, no more carefree vacations and you'll finally get to pick up poop all over the city. What do you think? I think you'd love this puppy. Why don't you just take him home and see what you think you can just Bring him back if you change your mind. Now, imagine walking up to your boss in the hallway and clapping a hand on her shoulder. I'd like to go to the meeting, but I have a better idea. Let's never have another one, since all we do is waste time and not decide anything useful. I'd really like to go to the meeting, but I'm totally overwhelmed and really need to get a few important things done. Can I sit out just for today? I'd be distracted in the meeting otherwise. I promise I'll catch up afterward by reviewing the meeting with Colleague X. Is that okay? The second set of alternatives seem less permanent, and they're intended to appear so. Repeat this routine and ensure that you achieve more outside of the meeting than the attendees do within it. Repeat the disappearing act as often as possible and cite improved productivity to convert this slowly into a permanent routine change. Learn to imitate any good child just this once, please. I promise I'll do X. Parents fall for it because kids help adults to fool themselves. It works with bosses, suppliers, customers, and the rest of the world too. Use it, but don't fall for it. If a boss asks for overtime just this once, he or she will expect it in the future. Time Consumers batch and do not falter A schedule defends from chaos and whim Annie Dillard, winner of Pulitzer Prize in non fiction 1975 if you have never used a commercial printer before, the pricing and lead times could surprise you. Let's assume it costs $310 and takes one week to print 20 customized T shirts with four color logos. How much and how long does it take to print 3 of the same t shirt? $310 in one week? How is that possible? Simple. The setup charges don't change. It costs the printer the same amount in materials for plate preparation and the same in labor to man the press itself. $100. The setup is the real time consumer and thus the job, despite its small size, needs to be scheduled just like the other, resulting in the same one week delivery date. The lower economy of scale picks up the rest. The cost for three shirts is $20 per shirt times three shirts, instead of $3 per shirt times 20 shirts. The cost and time effective solution, therefore, is to wait until you have a larger order, an approach called batching. Batching is also the solution to our distracting but necessary time consumers, those repetitive tasks that interrupt the most important if you check mail and make bill payments five times a week, it might take 30 minutes per instance and you respond to A total of 20 letters in two and a half hours. If you do this once per week instead, it might take 60 minutes total and you still respond to a total of 20 letters. People do the former out of fear of emergencies. First, there are seldom real emergencies. Second, of the urgent communication you will receive. Missing a deadline is usually reversible and otherwise costs a minimum to correct. There is an inescapable setup time for all tasks, large or minuscule in scale. It is often the same for one as it is for a hundred. There is a psychological switching of gears that can require up to 45 minutes to resume a major task that has been interrupted. More than a quarter of each nine to five period is consumed by such interruptions. Jonathan B. Spira and Joshua B. Feintuch the Cost of Not Paying Attention How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity this is true of all recurring tasks and is precisely why we have already decided to check email and phone calls twice per day at specific predetermined times between which we let them accumulate. From mid-2004 to 2007, I checked mail no more than once a week, often not for up to four weeks at a time. Nothing was irreparable and nothing cost more than $300 to fix. This batching has saved me hundreds of hours of redundant work. How much is your time worth? Let's use a hypothetical one. $20 per hour is how much you are paid or value your time. This would be the case, for example, if you are paid $40,000 per year and get two weeks of vacation per year, $40,000 divided by 40 hours per week times 50 equals 2000 equals $20 per hour. Estimate your hourly income by cutting the last three zeros off of your annual income and halving the remaining number. For example, $50,000 a year becomes $25 an hour. 2. Estimate the amount of time you will save by grouping similar tasks together and batching them, and calculate how much you have earned by multiplying this hour number by your per hour rate. $20 here 1 time per week 10 hours equals $200 1 time per two 20 hours equals $400 1 time per month 40 hours equals $800. 3. Test each of the above batching frequencies and determine how much problems cost to fix in each period. If the cost is less than the above dollar amounts, batch even further apart. For example, using our above math, if I check email once per week and that results in an average loss of two sales per week totaling $80 in lost profit, I will continue checking once per week because $210 hours of time minus $80 is still a $120 net gain. Not to mention the enormous benefits of completing other main tasks in those 10 hours. If you calculate the financial and emotional benefit of completing just one main task, such as landing a major client or completing a life changing trip, the value of batching is much more than the per hour savings. If the problems cost more than hours saved, scale back to the next less frequent batch schedule. In this case, I would drop from once per week to twice per week, not daily, and attempt to fix the system so that I can return to once per week. Do not work harder when the solution is working smarter. I have batched both personal and business tasks further and further apart as I've realized just how few real problems come up. Some of my Scheduled batches in 2007 were email Mondays 10am phone completely eliminated laundry every other Sunday at 10pm credit cards and bills. Most are on automatic payment, but I check balances every second Monday after email strength training every fourth day for 30 minutes, etc. Empowerment failure rules and Readjustment the vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what's going on so they can do a lot more than they've done in the past. Bill Gates, Co Founder of Microsoft Richest man in the World Empowerment failure refers to being unable to accomplish a task without first obtaining permission or information. It is often a case of being micromanaged or micromanaging someone else, both of which consume your time. For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision making ability to employees or contractors as possible. Customer service is often the epitome of of empowerment failure and a personal example from Brain Quicken illustrates just how serious but easily solved the problem can be. In 2002 I had outsourced customer service for order tracking and returns, but still handled product related questions myself. The result? I received more than 200 emails per day, spending all hours between 9 to 5 responding to them and the volume was growing at a rate of more than 10% per week. I had to cancel advertising and limit shipments as additional customer service would have been the final nail in the coffin. It wasn't a scalable model. Remember this word as it will be important later. It wasn't scalable because there was an information and decision bottleneck. Me the clincher the bulk of the email that landed in my inbox was not product related at all, but requests from the outsourced customer service reps Seeking permission for different actions. The customer claims he didn't receive the shipment. What should we do? The customer had a bottle held at Customs. Can we reship to a U.S. address? The customer needs the product for a competition in two days. Can we ship overnight? And if so, how much should we charge? It was endless. Hundreds upon hundreds of different situations made it impractical to write a manual. And I didn't have the time or experience to do so regardless. Fortunately, someone did have the experience. The outsourced reps themselves. I sent one single email to all the supervisors that immediately turned 200 emails per day into fewer than 20 emails per week. Hi all. I would like to establish a new policy for my account that overrides all. Keep the customer happy. If it is a problem that takes less than $100 to fix, use your judgment and fix it yourself. This is official written permission and a request to fix all problems that cost under $100. Without contacting me, I am no longer your customer. My customers are your customer. Don't ask me for permission. Do what you think is right and we'll make adjustments as we go along. Thank you, Tim. Upon close analysis, it became clear that more than 90% of the issues that prompted email could be resolved for less than $20. I reviewed the financial results of their independent decision making on a weekly basis for four weeks, then a monthly basis and then on a quarterly basis. It's amazing how someone's IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them. The first month cost perhaps $200 more than if I had been micromanaging. In the meantime, I saved more than 100 hours of my own time per month. Customers received faster service, returns dropped to less than 3%, the industry average is 10 to 15% and outsourcers spent less time on my account. All of which resulted in rapid growth, higher profit margins and happier people on all sides. People are smarter than you think. Give them a chance to prove themselves. If you are a micromanaged employee, have a heart to heart with your boss and explain that you want to be more productive and interrupt him or her less. I hate that I have to interrupt you so much and pull you away from more important things I know you have on your plate. I was doing some reading and had some thoughts on how I might be more productive. Do you have a second before this conversation? Develop a number of rules like the previous example that would allow you to work more autonomously with less approval seeking. The boss can review the outcome of your decisions on a daily or weekly basis. In the initial stages, suggest a one week trial and end with I'd like to try it. Does that sound like something we could try for a week? Or My personal favorite, is that reasonable? It's hard for people to label things unreasonable. Realize that bosses are supervisors, not slave masters. Establish yourself as a consistent challenger of the status quo and most people will learn to avoid challenging you, particularly if it is in the interest of higher per hour productivity. If you are a micromanaging entrepreneur, realize that even if you can do something better than the rest of the world, it doesn't mean that's what you should be doing if it's part of the minutia. Empower others to act without interrupting you, set the rules in your favor, limit access to your time, force people to define their requests before spending time with them, and batch routine menial tasks to prevent postponement of more important projects. Do not let people interrupt you. Find your focus and you'll find your lifestyle. The bottom line is that you have only the rights you fight for. In the next section, automation, we'll see how the new rich create management, free money and eliminate the largest remaining obstacle of all, themselves. Q and A Questions and Actions People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world. Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes Blaming idiots for interruptions is like blaming clowns for scaring children. They can't help it, it's their nature. Then again, I had who am I kidding? And have on occasion been known to create interruptions out of thin air. If you're anything like me, that makes us both occasional idiots. Learn to recognize and fight the interruption impulse. This is infinitely easier when you have a set of rules, responses, and routines to follow. It is your job to prevent yourself and others from letting the unnecessary and unimportant prevent the start to finish completion of the important this chapter differs from the previous in that the necessary actions due to the inclusion of examples and templates have been presented throughout from start to finish. This Q and A will thus be a summary rather than a repetition. The devil is in the details, so be sure to re listen to this chapter for the specifics. The 50,000 foot review is as 1. Create systems to limit your availability via email and phone and deflect inappropriate contact. Get the autoresponse and voicemail script in place now and master the various methods of evasion. Replace the habit of how are you with how can I help you get specific and remember no stories. Focus on immediate actions. Set and practice interruption killing policies. Avoid meetings whenever possible. Use email instead of face to face meetings to solve problems. Beg off going. This can be accomplished through the puppy dog close if meetings are unavoidable. Keep the following in Go in with a clear set of objectives. Set an end time or leave early. 2. Batch activities to limit setup cost and provide more time for Dreamline milestones what can I routinize by batching? That is what tasks, whether laundry, groceries, mail payments or sales reporting, for example, can I allot to a specific time each day, week, month, quarter or year so that I don't squander time repeating them more often than is absolutely necessary. 3. Set or request autonomous rules and guidelines with occasional review of results. Eliminate the decision bottleneck for all things that are non fatal if misperformed. If an employee, believe in yourself enough to ask for more independence on a trial basis. Have practical rules prepared and ask the boss for the sale after surprising him or her with an impromptu presentation. Remember the puppy dog clothes. Make it a one time trial and reversible for the entrepreneur or manager. Give others the chance to prove themselves. The likelihood of irreversible or expensive problems is minimal and the time savings are guaranteed. Remember, profit is only profitable to the extent that you can use it. For that you need time, tools and tricks Eliminating Paper Distractions Capturing everything Evernote Evernote.com this is perhaps the most impressive tool I've found in the last year. Introduced to me by some of the most productive technologists in the world, Evernote has eliminated more than 90% of the paper in my life and eliminated nearly all of the multiple tabs I used to leave open in web browsers, both of which distracted me to no end. It can clear out your entire office clutter in one to three hours. Evernote allows you to easily capture information from anywhere using whatever device is at hand, and everything is then searchable, read findable from anywhere. I use it to take photographs of everything I might want to remember or find later. Business cards, handwritten notes, wine labels, receipts, whiteboard sessions, and more. Evernote identifies the text in all of these pictures automatically, so it's all searchable whether from an iPhone, your laptop, or the web. Just as one example, I can store and find the contact information from any business card in seconds, often using the built in Eyesight camera on Mac to capture it, rather than spending hours inputting it all into contacts or searching through email for that lost phone number. It's mind numbing how much time this saves Scan all agreements, paper articles, etc. That would otherwise sit in file folders or on my desk. I use the Mac Fujitsu ScanSnap mini scanner HTTP bit ly ScanSnapMac, the best I've found, which scans all of it directly to Evernote in seconds with one button. Take snapshots of websites, capturing all text and links so that I can read them offline. When traveling or doing later research, get rid of all those scattered bookmarks, favorites and open tabs. Screening and Avoiding Unwanted calls Grand Central, Grand Central.com and Umail In a world where your physical address will change more often than your cell phone number and email, it can be disastrous if your number becomes public or gets in the wrong hands. Enter Grand Central, which will give you a number with the area code of your choosing that then forwards to your own phone. I now give a Grand Central number to anyone besides family and close friends. Some of the benefits Identify any incoming number as unwanted and that caller will then hear a number not in service message when attempting to call you. Customize your voicemail message to individual callers spouse, boss, colleague, client, etc. And listen in on messages as they're being left so you can pick up if the message is worth the interruption. Call recording is also an option. Use an area code outside of your hometown to prevent people and companies from finding and misusing addresses you'd prefer to keep private. Establish do not disturb hours when calls are routed directly to voicemail with no ring. Have voicemail sent to your cell phone as sms. Another option can also transcribe voicemails and send them to your phone as text messages. Getting calls while stuck in a time wasting meeting? No problem. Respond to voicemails via SMS during the meeting so you're not stuck returning calls afterward. One shot one Kill Scheduling without email back and forth Few things are as time consuming as scheduling via email. Person A How about Tuesday at 3pm? Person B I can make it Person C I have a meeting. How about Thursday? Person D I'm on a con call. How about 10am on Friday? Use these tools to make scheduling simple and fast instead of another part time job. Doodle Doodle.com the best free tool I've found for herding cats. Multiple people for scheduling without excessive email, Create and poll in 30 seconds with the proposed options and forward a link to everyone invited. Check back a few hours later and you'll have the best time for the most people. Time driver timedriver.com let colleagues and clients self schedule with you based on your availability, which is determined by integration with Outlook or Google Calendar. Embed a Schedule now button in email messages and you'll never have to tell people when you can make a call or meeting. Let them see what's open and choose Choosing the Best Email batching times zobni zobni.com Special Xobni is a free program for putting Outlook on steroids. It offers many features, but the most relevant to this chapter is its ability to identify hotspots or periods of time when you receive the bulk of email from your most important contacts. These hotspots are batching times that will enable you to keep critical contacts, clients, bosses, etc. Smiling even while you reduce checking email to one to three times per day. It will also populate your contacts automatically by pulling phone numbers, addresses, etc. From separate email buried in the inbox. Emailing without entering the black hole of the inbox don't enter the black hole of the inbox off hours because you're afraid you'll forget something. Use these services instead to keep focused, whether on completing a critical project or simply enjoying the weekend. Jot j o t t.com capture thoughts, create to DOS, and set reminders with a simple toll free phone call. The service Transcribes your message 15 to 30 seconds and emails it to whomever you want, including yourself or to your Google Calendar for automatic scheduling. JOT also enables you to post voice message links to Twitter, Facebook, and other services that tend to consume hours. If you visit the sites themselves, copy talk copytalk.com dictate any message up to four minutes and have the transcription emailed to you within hours. Excellent for brainstorming and the accuracy is astounding. Preventing Web browsing completely freedom ibiblio.org Fred Freedom Freedom is a free application that disables networking on an Apple computer for one to 480 minutes, up to eight hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the Internet, allowing you the focus to get real work done. Freedom Enforces Freedom A reboot is the only method for turning Freedom off before the time limit you've set for yourself. The hassle of rebooting means you're less likely to cheat and you'll be more productive. Experiment with the software for short periods of time at first 30 to 60 minutes. Comfort Challenge Revisit the terrible twos 2 days for the next 2 days, do as all good 2 year olds do and say no to all requests. Don't be selective. Refuse to do all things that won't get you immediately fired. Be selfish as with the last exercise, the objective isn't an outcome, in this case eliminating just those things that waste time, but the process Getting comfortable with saying no. Potential questions to decline include the following do you have a minute? Do you want to see a movie tonight or tomorrow? Can you help me with X? No should be your default answer to all requests. Don't make up elaborate lies or you'll get called on them. A simple I really can't. Sorry, I've got too much on my plate right now. Will do as a catch all response Lifestyle Design in Action Batching Tool this might be stating the obvious, but one easy way to encourage batching of your mail is to use a P.O. box versus getting mail delivered to your house. We got our P.O. box to limit access to our physical address online, but it also encourages you to get the mail less and deal with it in batch. Our post office has recycling bins so at least 60% of the mail doesn't even come home with us. For a while I was only getting and managing the mail once a week and I found not only did it take less time, overall I did a better job managing it and getting it out of the way versus looking at it and setting it aside for future follow up. Laura Turner for families, the four hour work week doesn't have to mean four months on a sailboat in the Caribbean unless that's their dream. But even the simple ideal of having time to take a walk in the park every evening or spending weekends together makes taking actions to implement this program worthwhile. There are many different approaches for making this work. Kids have to promise they won't bother mommy in the evening while she works on the computer. The husband watches the kids in the evening. Both parents make plans once a week to have someone take care of the kids, etc. Then close with the huge payoff for the family of having more time to spend with each other. Adrian Jenkins why not combine a mini retirement with dentistry or medical geo arbitrage and finance your trip with the savings? I lived in Thailand for four months and got root canal treatment and a crown for 1/3 of the price that it costs. In Australia there are many upmarket clinics set up for expats and health travelers in Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Goa, etc. With English speaking dentists. And in Europe many people go to Poland or Hungary to research. Just Google Dentist and the country and you will come across practices advertising to foreigners. Talk to expats when you're in the country or on online chat forums for recommendations. Now I'm in Australia I still combine my travels with annual dentist check ups and the savings often finance my airfare. Even between developed countries, there are significant cost differences. For example, France is far cheaper than the UK and Australia is cheaper than the us. Note from Tim Learn more about the incredible world of medical tourism and Geo arbitrage@en.wikipedia.org wikimedicaltourism Even large insurers like Aetna often cover overseas treatments and surgeries Anonymous.

Tim Ferriss (75:07)

Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim Blog Friday. Type that into your browser. Tim Blog Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. I am always on the hunt for protein sources that don't require sacrifices in taste or nutrition. I don't want to eat sawdust. I also don't want a candy bar that's disguised as a protein bar. And that's why I love the protein bars from today's sponsor, David. They are my go to protein source on the run. I throw them in my bag whenever I am in doubt that I might be able to get a good source of protein. And with David protein bars you get the fewest calories for the most protein ever. David has 28 grams of protein, 150 calories and 0 grams of sugar. I was actually first introduced to them by my friend Peter Attia, MD, who is their Chief Science Officer. Many of you know of Peter and he really does his due diligence on everything. And on top of that, David tastes great. 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It replaces a lot of other things for searing, for eggs, for anything you can imagine and the design is really clever. It does combine the best qualities of stainless steel, cast iron and nonstick into one product and now our place is expanding this first of its kind technology to their Titanium Pro cookware sets which are made in limited quantities. So if you're looking for non toxic long lasting pots and pans that outperform everything else in your kitchen just head to fromourplace.com tim and use code TIM for 10% off of your order. You can enjoy a 100 day risk free trial, free shipping and free returns. Check it out fromourplace.com Tim.