Having said that, I have found it more beneficial over the years to start improving efficiency and then work on effectiveness principles. I found it works better to put the house in order and then discuss long-term goals and focus.
I have found that people are much more receptive to taking a 10,000 feet high helicopter view of their role and goals once they feel in control of their day-to-day activities. Hence my logic in starting with the efficiency principles before the effectiveness ones.
Reading is easy, changing habits is hard
At this point it would be useful for you to be clear on why you are reading this book and what are you expecting from it. Are you reading it for leisure or do you want to see some real changes? Do you want to challenge some of your work habits?
Being clear on your goals will give you the fuel and energy to act. If you want to be successful and achieve your dreams, the most important thing is not the ‘how’, it’s the ‘why’.
Throughout this book I would like to share some principles that are important to perform if you are to be successful. Rather than settle for just showing you, I would like to take you through a journey and challenge some of your work habits, some of those things you are doing every day and that you have probably been doing for many years. The principles are simple, but changing them into habits is hard.
If you do not have strong reasons to change, what I will suggest in this book will be very challenging, and you will struggle to find the motivation and drive to apply these principles.
Let me ask you: Why are you reading this book? What are some of the challenges you are facing in the area of efficiency and effectiveness?
Does your filing system need a good review?
Are you crawling under a ton of emails in your inbox?
Do you wonder every day what to focus on?
Do you struggle to manage your time effectively?
Are you frustrated at the end of every day, wondering where your time went?
Do you have to take some important work at home or stay late in the evening when everyone else is gone so that you can finish it?
And beyond these challenges, what outcomes are you expecting? What do you want to change? What will be the business benefits and pay-offs of working more efficiently and effectively? Will you reach your targets, achieve your KPIs, be promoted to new responsibilities?
As importantly, what will be the personal benefits and pay-offs of working smarter? Will you spend fewer hours in the office and more time at home? Will you be less stressed? Will you feel more in control, able to enjoy your job again?
Reflect on this. Are you ready to take a journey which could transform your life? As mentioned earlier, my ambition whenever I coach someone is ‘to change life.’ I hope I can reach the same goal with everyone reading this book. To achieve this goal, I will need your help. If you want to be challenged and change some of your work habits, reading this book alone will not be enough. You will need to bring two things to the party: practice and persistence.
Practising is learning
Confucius is credited as saying: ‘I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.’
Reading this book alone is not enough. You need to read it carefully and you need to be ready to practise the principles explained. You need to read it as if you want to teach these principles to someone else.
Only then will you start to see some changes.
I suggest reading this book with a pen and a highlighter close by. Underline what resonates; what you want to remember. The action of underlining key phrases will fix them better in your mind and enable you to come back to the principles, materials and tools which resonated with you.
Once back at your desk, review the sections you have highlighted and the things you have decided to apply, and just do it!
Don’t be a perfectionist. I used to be one, and nothing gets done because perfection is not achievable. Do not put off trying a new way of doing something just because now is not the perfect time. There will never be a perfect time. Try new skills as best as you can. Practise, persevere, and little by little you will improve.
I once read about some research done in the US by a psychiatrist who specialises in education, Doctor William Glasser. What he found out is very important in any learning process. Glasser demonstrated that we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 80% of what we practise and 95% of what we teach someone else.
If the only thing you do is read this book and that’s it, you are likely to remember only 10% of it. In a one or two day training session where you hear a lot of good principles, you are likely to remember only 20% of it.
You can see the huge gap between only reading the material as opposed to hearing and practising the ideas. Your learning jumps from less than 20% to 80%. This is why simply reading a book or doing a training course often does not produce the results it should.
I heard once that on average we retain 12% to 15% of the learning from a simple training course. And this does not surprise me. However I find it amazing that we accept this from training. Imagine you buy a brand new car for $50,000 and on the day you are supposed to get it, you are given only four wheels — 10% of the value. No one would accept this. Why should we accept it from learning?
Whatever you find of value and relevance for you in this book, practise it back at your desk or in your workspace straight away.
If you want to see real change in your work habits, if you want to be more in control of your workloads, to work smarter and not harder, you need to read this book as if you were going to teach it to someone else and you need to practise the principles until they become new habits.
Persist to change the new learning into habits
My role will be to suggest some simple principles and challenge some of your work habits. Your role if you want to progress will be to do two things: practise and persist. You understand the importance of practising. Let me explain why I mean by persisting.
There is a joke which says, ‘Do you know the difference between a hassle and a habit? … two weeks.’ For two weeks, doing something differently is a hassle. After two weeks of practice, it becomes a habit. There is a lot of truth in it. Changing some of your work habits will feel awkward to start with. You will be tempted to come back to your old work habits which are easier and more comfortable.
Just be aware of it. Changing your work habits will be hard for about two weeks. Studies on habits show it takes about twenty-one days to change a habit. If you are to persist every day with a new work principle, within twenty-one days it will have become a habit.
Be persistent. The rewards, which I see so often in the lives of those I coach, are clearly worth it.
Read, practise, persist and celebrate with me
My ambition is for you to take away something valuable from this book. I hope you will enjoy this book, learn a few things from it, apply those things and change some of your work habits.
Once you have made some progress, write to me and share what you have learnt and how you feel. Take a photo of your desk before and after practising new habits and send it to me. Let me know the number of emails in your inbox (read and unread) before and after. Share with me the impact these new habits have had on your performance, your stress level and your