Welcome to the fixth and final part of the Hermes Technologies Ltd. Business 2.0 series, where we explain this new philosophy for doing business. In this post I’ll explain how a Business 2.0 company must ensure its employees have a lifelong commitment to increasing theirproductivity and improving their work processes.
Lifehacking – an obsession with improving productivity
A movement, known as “Lifehacking”, has sprung up across the Internet over the last decade. Disciples, known as “life hackers” (or more playfully, “ninjas”) have a near fanatical obsession with increasing their own productivity, organisation and work processes. The core idea is to get more done in less time. In my experience, the difference between the output of a worker who practices life hacking versus one who doesn’t can be the equivalent of the difference between a mini cooper and an actual car.
The most common topics for life hackers are inbox management systems, ways to maximise attention span, ways to eliminate procrastination, ways to beat writer’s block, which is to stay organised, and ways to automate and you repeated process. In this blog you can read about my ideas as a dedicated live hacker.
The advantage of creating a culture of lifehacking: efficiency
In business, the company which uses it resources most effectively will win the competitive process. If one company is filled with life hackers, working at five times the efficiency of normal workers (a realistic expectation in my experience) then a normal Business 1.0 company will have a very hard time competing.
Reusable systems for getting stuff done
Like hackers like to reusable build systems for getting various things done. For any task which they do with regularity life hackers analyse what has worked for them in the past and what hasn’t and then use this experience to build a system to apply to the task in future. In designing these systems inspiration can often taken from other life hackers who share their experiences.There are many blogs across the Internet dedicated to sharing lifehacking tips and techniques, the two best being 43 folders.com, lifehacker.org
A Lifehacker’s system can always be improved
A lifehacker never feels that they have found the perfect system — they always are on the lookout for ways to tweak the current system either by learning from past experience, experimenting or incorporating new ideas or technology.
Example of a lifehacking system: Inbox Zero
A good example of a lifehack I use is Inbox zero, a philosophy from dealing with bulging e-mail inboxes. Many modern information workers find their e-mail inboxes to be sources of great consternation. Dealing with e-mail takes more and more time out of the working day, leaving less time to actually get work done. In addition it can be a source of great guilt as many friendly e-mails from friends or co-workers are left without response for days, months or even years
The Inbox Zero philosophy for dealing with email says:
1.E-mail should only be checked manually once an hour, rather than automatically every minute with on screen alerts and sounds signally new email arrival. The reasoning for only manually checking once an hour is that instantaneous e-mail alerts disrupts your work process slowing you down, most often over something trivial. The cost to your momentum and attention span is not worth the value in having the information an hour earlier and so instead email is checked efficiently, once an hour.
2. Despite our use of the word “check” in the previous paragraph, you actually should never just “check” your e-mail – you should always process it instead. It is a waste of time to just read an e-mail and then go back to work. You should instead take one of five actions:
- Delete the email, getting it out of your life and conscience straight away (the preferred action), Respond to it in (under 5 lines if possible),
- Delegate it to another worker,
- Defer is to a time when information you need to deal with it properly;or
- Act on it right away (e.g. an e-mail asking you to do a certain project right now).
The reasoning behind this is that “checking” email is a form of procrastination. In reality there is always a decision to be made about what action to take. With Inbox Zero you take this action right away instead of leaving it until later, allowing your inbox to overflow
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