Is It Really Your Fault For What You Don't Know?
It's not your fault.Well, wait that's not true.It wasn't your fault at first, but it's slowly becoming your fault.
You weren't given the right skill set in school.
You didn't learn how to use a spreadsheet or to balance an operating budget or how to negotiate the scope of a project.It's not your fault that you didn't learn, then.It's just that now, now that you're out there in the real world, it's your fault for not knowing.
Of course, this isn't fair--but it's the way it is.
You have to deal with the pain of not knowing these things and so does your employer.
Here's an example:
Let's just say that by not being good at Excel, you lose 1 hour per week of time.That's not a lot out of a typical 40-hour week. It's 2.5% of your total work week.But now let's just say that the same is true for most people.There are about 3 billion workers in the global workforce.Multiply that times a typical hourly rate like $10/hr.1-hour x 4 weeks x 12 months x $10 rate x 3 billion workers = $1.4 Trillion
Let's look at that with all the zeros.
$1,440,000,000,000Yeah. That's a lot of work waste.
2 Minute Action
You're not responsible for what happened, but you ARE responsible for what happens next.Your expectations and standards are up to you, but consider that you might not be the only one paying for them.
- Take 2 minutes to watch a YouTube video on something that could improve your work.
- Take 2 minutes to read a Harvard Business Review article that could give you a new perspective.
- Take 2 minutes to schedule time with a mentor or expert in your field and present them with the biggest problem you're facing.
It won't take 2 minutes to be a different person so don't expect that.
It takes thousands of minutes, and you can only clock thousands of minutes if you're doing it consistently day after day.Today is no exception.It's another Wednesday.Let's make it a good one.
How To Actually Do Less Stuff And Get More Done
Productivity is not about doing more work.
It’s not about turning gears faster in a gearbox.And it’s not about the hours you put in.
In fact, it’s just the opposite.
It’s about figuring out how to do less work.It’s about shifting gears to apply better leverage.It’s about reducing the time and resources required to get the job done by deadline.
2 Minute Action
Where do you spend 80% of your day or effort?What causes 80% of the headaches, pain points, or dollar drainage?If you can take 2 minutes to identify it, you can measure it.If you can measure it, you can alleviate it.Don’t try to fix everything at once, just focus on one big problem at a time.
How To See Into The Future And Reduce Work Waste
New York City has 3 days of food supplied.Outside of that, there's little food storage in the Big Apple.Toyota, Dell, and McDonald's use a similar system to get their products to consumers.This is called Just In Time inventory and it's saving a lot of time, dollars, and headache.The caveat is that you do have to know a bit about the demands that may or may not hit--but it's a very effective way to reduce waste.So New York City has enough "user data" to know that 3 days supply of food is a pretty good operating budget. It knows that it can ship food just as it's consumed and if they have 3 days of food in storage, they can also accommodate the fluctuations of the market demand.So what does this mean for your task load?
2 Minute Action
You probably need to know a little bit about what tasks are pending or incoming--but you probably don't need to see as far as you think into the future.The more you can honor a culture of "adapting to reality" instead of "sticking to the plan," the more likely you'll be resilient in uncertain environments.Of course, if you're working on a fixed scope project, this isn't as useful, but it does help protect against unforeseen events or abrupt crises.Take 2 minutes right now to plan out your 3 day supply of food for your team.The point isn't to get it perfect, it's just to get started. You don't need more than 2 minutes to get a rough draft.