The Myth of 9-5
It is easy to buy into the myth of the 9-5 work day. Since the 1920’s, when Henry Ford popularized it,, this is what we have been told is normal and real. The myth has been useful for companies in need of some metric to determine productivity. This 8-hour window provides defined parameters for units produced per hour. For companies, a Key Performance Indicator is a necessary tool to evaluate what is “normal.” For employees, it is not so gratifying, but, nonetheless, very “real.” It is nothing more than a matter of focus and time management.
Let’s look at the “9-5” paradigm as it relates to the “80-20”rule.
Tim Ferris, author of “The 4 Hour Work Week” speaks of the “Pareto Principle”, or the “80-20” rule. The rule maintains that 80% of consequences originate from 20% of the causes. Like 9-5, it sounds interesting, but what does it actually mean, and how do we leverage this knowledge? The Pareto Principle is widely represented in economic studies. Pareto’s own economic study shows that the richest 20% of the world population has accounted for 80% of the world income. The tech giant Microsoft reports this trend also relates to computing, that 20% of program bugs cause 80% of bug-related errors and crashes. And then there are human applications.
Look Inward
Think about how you spend your time.
When you work, 9-5, do you spend all 8 hours effectively? The author of the best-selling book “The 4 Hour Work Week” says no. Productivity is about “cutting the fat.” Do you really need to organize your emails 5 times a day? Do you really need to go to the coffee machine and chit-chat every 45 minutes and stop your workflow? Most likely not.
“Doing something unimportant well does not make it important” says Tim Ferriss. Instead of completing micro tasks with little impact and lots of time spent – focus on the key drivers of your work that will cause the biggest progress in your firm.
Magnifying the Sun
With this shift in perspective, imagine you’re the Sun, and your rays are your focus. Your focus is dispersed everywhere. It is all over the place. From the Sun’s perspective, nothing is truly important or urgent because everything is. There is no focus if everything is treated equally. Now imagine you’re at the crossroads of “What to do now?”
What would the effect be if you were to pick up a magnifying glass and focus all of your rays on one specific activity. The risk is, of course, burning through everything with maximum efficiency. But, there is no longer a focus on disturbances or irrelevant tasks. Would you be able to achieve more if all of your energy was focused only on the important things?
This exercise in absolute focus can be applied to work or life studies, it can also be a great principle when practicing human relations. Imagine one really charismatic person you know and what they could achieve if they were encouraged and rewarded to be themselves, to use their abilities to their fullest. Interactions could be maximized and productivity could be increased. The time allotted overall would fall and the goal of the 4-hour work week might very well be realized.
Learn to Focus
The sun ray principle can be applied everywhere, including the lesser tasks that just take up a lot of time. Applications for this could be applied everywhere: automated tasks, working online when you are most productive, etc. Tailoring your own work day means trusting the employees to do the right thing, so be part of the 20%.
It’s all about managing your time, and focusing on the tasks which are most important to you, so you don’t spend time on things that aren’t of value and just take up your energy. So be creative and be efficient. Find out what tasks are most important to you, and manage your time and begin to work smarter, and not harder, on the things which actually matter.
