Tim Ferriss – The 4-Hour Workweek

I’ve just come across this very interesting video interview with Tim Ferris. He says that in order to be productive in this very demanding world, we need to “unplug and reset” – and I fully agree. There is also something called the Slowness Movement which has a similar theme – see the Wikipedia article here.

I’ve been trying to slow down myself. For example, I used to try to be “on top of things” and always available to clients and collegues – so when I was in meetings or busy training, I’d put my mobile phone on vibrate mode. My thinking was that once I felt the vibration I’d know someone was looking for me, and then I could check who it was as soon as I had a free moment. I thought this was “productive” – but it actually proved to be the total opposite. Everytime my mobile phone would vibrate it would totally distract my attention from what I was doing – either listening or speaking. My attentions was particularly skewed when the vibration would persist, meaning someone was calling continously, which meant it was urgent. Then my mind would wonder…What is so urgent?

Time says in the video to check email twice per day. I realised the wisdom in this long before seeing this video. As a result of that, I set my Outlook’s automated Send/Receive to check for new email every 30 minutes. At the start of it all it worked, but I’ve become so “hungry” for email that every 2 minutes I do a manual Send/Receive. Time to relook at this!

Watch this video and think about how you conduct your life…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX3eJRwJqlc[/youtube]