Rashid Zakat

So, I’ve been reading Tim Ferriss’ book “The Four Hour Work Week” and it’s making me rethink my whole life plan.The book is basically about cutting out the fat of what you do, batch certain tasks and processes and be as minimal as humanly possible while still getting everything you need to get done. There are a lot of things in this book that I can implement in my life right now. Some of them are things that you should start in extreme first, and move from there and others are practical things you can do for the rest of your life.

I figured I’d share some of my favorites that I’m going to put in place now…some of which will make me seem crazy to people who don’t know what Im working towards…but I figure since I already seem crazy it won’t make that huge of a difference…right?

The biggest things that will make an immediate difference is batching your workload and limiting your media access. The other huge factor is the WWRD or BHD (Be, Do, Have) list.

1. Batch your workload. There is so much that I do in a day that can be batched, and most of it is communication. In particular (or atleast for me) the cell phone, email, meetings and facebook. I waste so much of my day talking to people, or checking up on my social stature or just surfing the net and posting things I find on facebook. In one sense, it’s really cool to be able to have such great access to people…all of the time, but do you really need it all of the time? Can’t you get the same effects or better by limiting your interactions with people to concentrate on what NEEDS to be done so you can do what you WANT to be doing?

My strategy for the next week is simple. Have 2 set times, probably noon and 4 (they’re the times Tim suggested in his book, but they work for how I’m working too) and take as much time as you need to answer every email (that’s answerable without doing any extra work/research) that comes in. Do the same for facebook, but unless you’re like me and have a decent amount of business that comes from facebook, keep it to 5 minutes. For me, I’m going to re-route any facebook messages about work or anything of the sort to my email. Politely ask people who want to do any business to email me instead of facebooking me. Facebook is an amazing tool for social networking, but it’s built by people smarter than you or me, to be a distraction. Think about what you use facebook for in the most utilitarian terms possible and use it like that for a week. Chances are, even if you’re using it to promote yourself and your ventures, you don’t need more than 5-10 focused minutes on it.

I am a compulsive email checker, so this one is huge. Even while writing this entry, I’ve checked my email 5 times and am fighting to not check it again. It’s a habit. If you can break this habit for a week, you can continue the habit until you don’t think about it anymore.

As far as everything else, I like to do certain things on set days. So I like taking Wednesdays off. New comic books come out then, and I don’t like to rush. As it so happens, Barnes and Nobles is around the corner, so I like to go and read…which makes me look for inspiration. If I’m organized with what I do…then I shouldn’t be rushing around. Unless I have to, I don’t try to take meetings on Wednesdays, and I don’t answer my phone much unless someone wants to meet up to read or walk around the park…and there are very few people who I’ll hang out with on a Wednesday. I like to relax and not talk about anything stressful or unnecessary.

Mondays are good paperwork, planning and follow up days. I usually spend my Sundays with friends having brunch or just goofing off. Mondays I’m a bit more relaxed and have a better attitude towards work, so it makes it mentally easier to plan for the future and check up on the present.

2. Channel as much through to your email as possible. This one is HUGE. I started slowly redirecting people away from my cell phone and to my email, but I don’t do it enough. Most people will take as much time as you let them take, so don’t even give them the chance. Plus, for me anyway, I have to write things down anyway, so the best method I’ve found that I’m going to practice more is

Them: Hey Rashid, whats up?
Me: Not too much, I’m a little busy. What do you need?
Them: I wanted to get you to do some light web stuff. You see, my site is pretty old and I wanted to get it updated with some new designs, and….
Me: Hey, sorry to cut you off, but I don’t have too much time to talk. Can you do me a huge favor, and send me an email with your thoughts and what you need? It’ll make it simpler for you to organize your thoughts and my memory is so terrible that I’d have a hard time trying to remember what you said.
Them: Umm…I guess that’ll work.
Me: Ok great! I’ll be on the look out for that email, and I’ll shoot you something with my thoughts as soon as I can. I’ll talk to you soon!
Them: Ok, bye.

Some people see that as an an absolute dickface way of working, but it’s been my own experience that if you don’t limit communication and coddling early on, it can turn into a really time consuming process for anything that you do. Plus, this forces them to think out and organize their ideas that they’re probably really passionate about and can waste your time talking about. Plus, people are forgiving. If they know that this is the way you do business, then as your relationship grows (provided you deliver on time) they’re appreciate this efficient process.

My career path is inherently time consuming. It takes a while to design great interfaces, it take a while to plan video and photo shoots. As streamlined as you can get these processes, they still consume a decent amount of time. Don’t waste time then on other peoples disorganization. It’ll effect you and since time is finite, you can’t waste a lot of it unnecessarily. Train the people around you…they’ll eventually get it. If not, then is that someone who you wanted to waste time with anyway?

3. Go on a Media Consumption Diet. Take this week to limit your facebook activity, limit your tv watching to one hour a day, or a movie per day. That’s it. Don’t read the news or watch CNN unless it particularly interests you. Instead use this time to plan your life out (number 4) or to interact with people. People are such an amazing source of information, that you don’t really need to read the paper or keep up with the news to know whats going on. Everyone has one expert friend in everything pop-cultural or societal. Use them to keep up if you need to, but you probably don’t need to. You need to take this week to work on your 5 things list.

4. Make your life plan list. This is the most important aspect of it all. Your life plan list is a list of things you want to do with your life, not matter how abstract it is. For our purposes, we’re going to do a list of 5 things you want to do, 5 things you want to be, and 5 things you want to have in the next 6 months. Keep this list short-term. Next we need to take each thing and come up with 5 actionable steps towards it. They should be some first step things you can do in 5 minutes. For example, I want to buy a $4,200 camera, so I need to find places that have it for cheap and figure out how much I need to save per month to get it in 6, or if I can buy it on credit and pay it off in 6 months. I’m not saying my example is the best…but it’s a start. Im going to post my WWRD (What Would Rashid Do) list in my next entry.

5. Avoid Meetings! Ok, so I can’t do this as much as I’d like. In my line of work, meetings can be very critical to brainstorming ideas and collaborating on projects, but this isn’t the best solution all of the time. With the exception of people that I’m already friends with (and even them sometimes) I hate meetings.

Honestly.

90% of the meetings I’ve been to in the past are completely unnecessary and it’s just an excuse for someone to verbally masturbate to you. I go out of my way not to talk to much a lot of the time, not that I expect that from anyone else, but you have to be mindful of your time.

I vote to destroy as many meetings as possible. It makes people feel better, yes, but are the productive? Rarely. Now, I’m not saying don’t meet. It works to meet with people sometimes to just have a dialog. Since I’m doing creative work, if you work with creative people a face to face interaction gets the ideas flowing a lot better. With that said, if you allow time for yourself and people to drag their feet, they will. One entry I wanna write is about the 23rd hour rule. Its basically about how you can get anything you need to get done (and probably already do) in the 23rd hour. I can’t begin to tell you how many papers I’ve written the night before class (Well actually I can…all of them). And while I’m not the best example to follow academically, chances are, you’re the same way.

You can get everything you need to get done in any reasonable amount of time allocated to it. If you only have an hour to meet, then you can easily get everything done in that hour meeting…since you’re only going to have that one. You have to remove the option of having more time and other meetings. That’s incentive for you and the person you’re meeting with to come prepared with ideas that can be worked out. A good practice is to limit the time that can be spent in that meeting. You can only meet for an hour because you have to help Dr. Wilson out with someone important at 4. It doesn’t matter if Dr. Wilson is really Snuggles…your cat. If you give people the option to waste time…chances are, they will. I know I do. And I usually waste time out of politeness (Imagine that).

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of simplifying your life and increasing productivity. I’ll let you know how this week turns out!