Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned...

Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been 3 days since my last blog! I started reading "The 4-Hour Workweek" and am in the midst of a major values melt down. I have always been addicted to time management, and this book has basically told me to throw time management out the window. Ouch! I think I will hold off until I have finished the book and digest the content for a while. I do like the concepts that are being presented. A combination of the Pareto principle and Parkinson's law. If you aren't familiar with the Pareto principle, it basically says that you can apply the rule of 80/20 to almost anything. What does that mean? It means that 20% of the work that you do creates 80% of the value, or 80% of the money in the world is in the pockets of 20% of the people, or 80% of the smog is caused by 20% of the businesses. You can apply it to almost anything. Parkinson's law says that if you must work 8 hours per day, you will find activities to fill the 8 hours. Even if the activities are not essential, you will do them to fill up the time. The point made in the book is that if you set aggressive time limits for tasks that you must complete, you will finish them quicker without filling up the time with non value added activities.

Combining the Pareto principle and Parkinson's law, will allow you to focus on the 20% of the work that you are getting 80% of the value out of and get that work done without a lot of wasted time. It sound simple enough. If I apply this recommendation to the work I need to complete before I can retire, I should be ready next week. Oh wait, the author, Timothy Ferriss, says that retirement as I know it is a bad idea. I guess I am going to have to finish the book before I can make any rash decisions.