Adam McFarland

A while back a friend of mine asked me “how do you do it all?”  I kind of looked at him perplexed.  “All of the websites, your blog, reading books and blogs, getting to the gym on a routine basis, spending time with friends and family, etc.”  Not knowing how to reply, I just said “Umm.  I watch a lot less crappy network television than most people.”

Really though, I didn’t have an answer for him.  But I thought about it more, and realized that one of my best strengths is getting things done.  We all have the same 24 hours to work with.  How you use those 24 hours is up to you.  You might not think you have more time available to you, but I bet you’re wrong.  There are always opportunities to find time where others cannot.

There needs to be a fundamental change in how you view productivity.  You can get a lot done in a 45 minute pocket of time each night.  A real lot done.  I first realized this in college (see my productive output post), and it changed me from being “just average” when it came to getting things done to having mastered the skill.  With that in mind here are 13 techniques that I use to find more time.  In the context of this blog, most of these techniques are assuming you’re trying to find more time to work on your business, but they really can be applied to anything - getting work done faster in college, spending more time on a new hobby, finding more time to spend with your girlfriend, etc.

Disclaimer: as always, proceed with caution.  Don’t do anything that compromises a good night’s sleep, a healthy diet, plenty of exercise, or some alone time for yourself.  Depriving yourself of those things are a recipe for disaster.

1. Check email twice per day.  You know how much I hate email, our worst distraction and productivity killer.  For almost every business I know, twice per day is plenty.  This means everyone gets a reply within 24 hours, which is more than fair.  Meanwhile you free up all of that time most people spend hitting the Send/Receive button or changing direction mid-thought because that little pop up shows up in the bottom-right of their screen.
2. Filter out unnecessary email.  I auto-filter out emails like newsletters and receipts from our e-commerce stores, and check those folders less frequently than 2x/day.  For the receipts I generally check daily, whereas newsletters I’ll read once per week.  This removes clutter from your inbox so that all you see are the important emails that require action.
3. Don’t check your email when you wake up.  We start shipping around 9 AM.  I have to check my email Monday - Friday prior to that in case any customers need their orders adjusted prior to shipping.  However, if I don’t go to the gym and I’m up at 6 AM (or it’s a weekend) I’ll do an hour’s worth of work before opening my inbox.  No distractions because the work day hasn’t started for most people.  My brain is fresh instead of moving in twenty directions like it is sometimes after checking email  Many times I get my best work done during this time.
4. Limit the media you consume.  Most of the news out there doesn’t impact you at all.  It just serves as a distraction from what you’re trying to accomplish.  I read a lot, but it’s mostly done only once per day via my Google Reader.  I spend 15-20 minutes and I’m all caught up on my business, sports, and technology news.  The beauty of RSS is that you can filter out all of the crap information and just consume what you want to.  I never watch the news. Many days I don’t even turn on the TV unless there is a compelling sports event on or one of the few shows I enjoy.
5. Uninstall AIM.  Or whatever IM program you use to keep in touch with your friends.  Tell them to email or call when they need you.  This will eliminate the pointless “hey what’s up” messages they send when they’re bored and force them to only contact you when they actually need something or want to do something.  I did this after my sophomore year in college and haven’t turned back since.  It’s just as big of a distraction as email, probably worse.  The only instant messaging I do is with my partners via Skype, and we minimize that for the most part.   Announcements are made on our internal micro blog so that they don’t result in 30 minute chat sessions.
6. Ditto for text messaging.  I have one friend who disabled it on his phone.  I find it useful for certain situations where you’re not able to talk, but I don’t send or respond to open ended “how r u?” texts.  Huge distraction, total waste of time.
7. Turn off the tube.  I get my best work done with my tv off and my music blaring.  That’s how I “get in the zone” and drown out distractions.  Let’s face it - if the TV is on it’s going to distract you.  And if you don’t want it to distract you, why would you bother having it on?
8. Compromise tube time.  This is a trick for all of you sports fans out there.  I don’t need to see every second of every game, and neither do you.  Every 30-45 minutes when you get up to take a break, check ESPN.com for the score.  If it’s close and there’s less than 5 minutes left, turn it on.  If not, skip it and catch the highlights later online or on SC.
9. Leave home.  I have been to every single Starbucks and place that offers free internet within an hour of my apartment.  A change of scenery gets me away from the distractions of home.  I tend to throw on my headphones and “get in the zone” when I’m out.  I get some of my best work done during a 2-3 hour stretch at a coffee shop (having a caffeinated drink probably doesn’t hurt my focus either).  Also, this eliminates the feeling of isolation you can have being cramped up in your house working.  The atmosphere is great - you get to see different places you’ve never been, you get some social interaction with the people who work there (coffee shop workers have to be the happiest people on earth), and you get to be around other people who are generally focused on working.   Check out wifi free spot for a list in your area.
10. Utilize uncommon pockets of time. There are certain times each week when most people don’t work or even think about work.  These are the times I prefer to work.  Friday and Saturday nights work, but Saturday and Sunday mornings are my favorite.  I love going to a coffee shop for a few hours and just ripping through work while everyone else is sleeping in.  It’s so calm and peaceful. I can devote my full attention knowing that I’m not going to interrupted with a phone call or be seated next to someone chatting away on their cell phone.  I love working on Saturday mornings from 7 AM - noon.  I get a ton of work done and have the rest of the day to relax.
11. Free up your brain.  I use a pill dispenser so I remember to take my vitamins each day.  I set up recurring tasks on my to-do lists for anything I do on a weekly or monthly basis.  Any other tasks get added to my to-do list as soon as I think of them.  My bills are all set up for auto-pay.  Why?  Each automated task is one less thing I have to think about.  One more time I avoid stopping and thinking “wait, did I pay my credit card bill this month?”
12. Give friends and family a routine.  I have dinner with my parents and sister every Wednesday night.  For the most part, I don’t talk to them the rest of the week.  We have our Wednesdays and that’s our time to catch up. I have friends my age who field five phone calls a day from their parents!  You have to ask yourself, are those really necessary?  Unless it’s an emergency, it can usually wait.
13. Batch process your errands.  I tend to save up all of my errands and do them in one two hour span once per week.  This includes grocery shopping, running to the bank, going to the mall, etc.  I did all of my mall Christmas shopping this year in two hours on a Tuesday morning in early December.  In late November I made a list of things to get.  If I didn’t know, I called the person and asked them what they wanted.  This took about an hour.  I then ordered what I could online, and did the rest that Tuesday, including cards, gift bags, and wrapping paper.  Then I didn’t revisit the stuff until 12/24, when I spent a whole one hour filling out cards and preparing the gifts.  Why stretch your shopping over the course of two months?

I’ve referenced Tim Ferris’ awesome blog post about Best Buy’s Results-Only-Work-Environment before, but it bears quoting again:

ROWE stands for Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Currently, there are two authentic ROWEs—Fortune 100 retailer Best Buy Co, Inc. and J. A. Counter & Associates, a small brokerage firm in New Richmond, WI. At both organizations, the old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, “face time,” pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results.

In the 4-Hour Workweek, you helped people understand that because of technology, people don’t have to defer living until retirement. They can design their own lifestyle. Now imagine what would happen if the entire culture of a workplace went through the same transformation. That’s what a ROWE is. A ROWE is a work culture that gives people the power to take control of their lives. As long as they get their job done, they’re free.

One of the points I made in my last post about lifestyle was about the difficulty in transitioning from college to a “typical” corporate job:

I think it’s one of the hardest adjustments students have to make when going into the corporate world. All of a sudden you’re not able to decide what you do and when you do it. It’s like you regress back to being in high school.

The more I think about it, college is the ultimate ROWE.  I’m sure it was slightly different for everyone, but here’s how it pretty much worked for me:  you get a syllabus the first day of class that has all of your assignments, projects, and tests in it and it’s your responsibility to get all of it done.  You don’t have to go to class.  If you do, you don’t have to participate.  You don’t have to turn in homework (unless it counts towards your grade).  Your only responsibility is to meet the requirements of the syllabus, which usually entails turning in a few key papers/projects and taking a few important tests.  That’s it.  No one tells you how to do it or when to do it.  You can work an hour each morning a month in advance or do it all the night before.  Whatever works for you so long as you get it done.

Now why the hell aren’t more companies like this?  I know, I know, academia and business are two different things.  But the mentality of the results being what matters, that’s what should translate.  Clearly some companies are starting to make the push.  It just blows my mind that this isn’t more common.  It seems like such common sense.  I mean, at my job, everyone told me to come early and stay late because it “looked good”.  So I’d get all my work done in like 5 hours and then bone around on ESPN.com until 5:30 so I’d look like a hard worker.  Why on earth I couldn’t just take off at 3 was beyond me.  All of my work on all of my projects was up to date.  There’s just no motivation to work fast or efficiently.  You have to be there for 8-9 hours regardless.  It’s such garbage.

Conversely, if you build a company around accomplishing meaningful things, you’ll have employees who are willing to work longer, harder, and smarter because they care.  If they know that they can take advantage of downtime to run errands, spend time with their family, or relax, they’ll be happier and more satisfied with their job.

Seems like common sense…doesn’t it?

George and I often remark to each other that we wouldn’t trade our lifestyle for any amount of money.  It happens pretty often because we’re often reminded of how lucky we are to do what we do everyday.

I think that’s often lost in the decision of whether or not to become an entrepreneur, particularly for young entrepreneurs.  Yes - you should want to change the world.  Yes - you should want to make a ton of money.  But starting a business should also be about creating a great lifestyle for yourself.  Luckily, since businesses are a reflection of their owners and there are infinite shapes a business can be molded into, you have an opportunity to grow and develop your company around the life that you want to live.  Like to work from your bedroom?  Like to have every Tuesday and Thursday off?  Like to communicate only via email?  Those things can be arranged if you start the business and establish a culture that allows for those things.  As long as the money is coming in and everyone’s happy (employees, owners, & customers) you can pretty much do whatever you want.

My corporate experience was just the opposite.  They were molding me into what they wanted me to be.  It didn’t feel right.  Corporate culture is often overlooked when choosing a company, but it damn may be the most important thing for prospective employees to inquire about.  If you constantly feel like you don’t fit in, the most exciting work in the world isn’t going to keep you happy.

Some people are great workers but crave structure and guidance.  That’s fine.  Starting a business probably isn’t for them.  It’s not for everyone…hell, it’s not for most people.  BUT if you have a desire to live a lifestyle that most jobs don’t offer, it’s worth at least considering starting a biz.  Even if it’s just a 1 person business that supports just the owner.  It provides you the opportunity to live a lifestyle that you otherwise couldn’t.  That alone is worth starting a company in my opinion.

Entrepreneurs are lucky because we don’t need to worry about any of that.  My partners and I have established a culture that allows for us to have maximum freedom while still meeting the requirements of the business.  We each work about 18 hours/week in the warehouse. The rest of the time we’re free to do whatever we want.  Everyone has their own way of getting shit done, but I prefer to spend about half of that time working from home and the other half at a coffee shop.  I tend to turn off all distractions and zone in on my work so that I have plenty of free time to recharge.  I pretty much am still hitting all of the goals outlined in my productive output post.

I feel like I have the same amount of “freedom” that I had when I was in college. I hated having that taken away from me at my engineering job. It’s like between the hours of 8 and 5 I was jailed and forced to remain in one spot regardless of how much work I had to get done or what was going on with the rest of my life.  I like being able to run errands on a Tuesday morning and then go do work at night.  As long as I’m getting my work done, it doesn’t matter when I do it, much like writing a paper or studying in college.  I like being able to go to the gym early in the morning some days, and mid afternoon other days.  I like being able to take breaks to eat every 2-3 hours without having people ask me if I missed lunch.  This is huge to me.  There’s no way I could give it back.  In fact, I think it’s one of the hardest adjustments students have to make when going into the corporate world.  All of a sudden you’re not able to decide what you do and when you do it.  It’s like you regress back to being in high school.  

We also have our company pay for nights out at least once a month - we consider those opportunities to celebrate our accomplishments very important to the future success of our company.   We work hard to minimize phone calls because we have deemed the majority of them to be time-wasters, but we still put a huge emphasis on customer service.  We spend time and money giving back to our community because we think it’s important for small businesses to do that.   We recently switched to biodegradable packing materials and recycled paper in an effort to push towards being a “green e-commerce” company.  We are buying our lawyer, accountant, FedEx driver, and best customers presents for the holidays because we want to thank them for helping us have a great year.

That’s what works for us.  Four other twenty-somethings running an e-commerce company would undoubtedly do it different.  The beauty of starting a company is that you can define what works for you.

As any college student will tell you, scheduling classes is an art form. My first semester I didn’t have much choice and had to take whatever was available. My second semester I loaded up on Monday and Thursday and had the rest of the week off. It sucked - Mondays and Thursdays wore me out and the rest of the week I had to spend 10 hours doing homework. My third semester I put large gaps between my classes so I’d have time to get work done during the day, but all I did was bone around on ESPN.com and AIM.

My fourth semester I finally got it right: 1 - 3 hour breaks between classes, equally spread out throughout the week. I got the same amount of work done in a 2 hour break that I’d get done in a 5 hour break the previous semester. I didn’t mess around and waste time because I was under a time crunch. A 2 hour break really means like 70 minutes of work when you factor travel time and setup time into the equation. You don’t have any time to mess around with 70 minutes: you’re always under a bit of pressure and that’s why you get so much done. You’re focused. This one lesson has stuck with me ever since.

Read the following excerpts and stop and think for a few minutes before continuing the post.

If you’re an employee, spending time on nonsense is, to some extent, not your fault. There is often no incentive to use time well unless you are paid on commission. The world has agreed to shuffle papers between 9 and 5, and since you’re trapped in the office for that period of servitude, you are compelled to create activities to fill the time. Time is wasted because there is so much time available. It’s understandable.

Most entrepreneurs were once employees and come from the 9-5 culture. Thus they adopt the same schedule, whether or not they function at 9 AM or need 8 hours to generate their target income. This schedule is a collective social agreement and a dinosaur legacy of the results-by-volume approach. How is it possible that all the people in the world need exactly 8 hours to accomplish their work? It isn’t. 9-5 is arbitrary.

Since we have 8 hours, we fill 8 hours. If we had 15, we would fill 15. If we have an emergency and suddenly need to leave work in 2 hours, we miraculously complete those assignments in 2 hours.

Tim Ferriss - The Four Hour Workweek, pages 73-74

ROWE stands for Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Currently, there are two authentic ROWEs—Fortune 100 retailer Best Buy Co, Inc. and J. A. Counter & Associates, a small brokerage firm in New Richmond, WI. At both organizations, the old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, “face time,” pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results.

In the 4-Hour Workweek, you helped people understand that because of technology, people don’t have to defer living until retirement. They can design their own lifestyle. Now imagine what would happen if the entire culture of a workplace went through the same transformation. That’s what a ROWE is. A ROWE is a work culture that gives people the power to take control of their lives. As long as they get their job done, they’re free.

One of the misconceptions about ROWE is that it’s a work-from-home program. It’s not. If you want to work in a cube, that’s great. If you want to work from a coffee shop, then that’s great, too. The question in a ROWE is not “where is everybody?” but “is the work getting done?”

Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson in an interview with Tim Ferriss

The United States leads the world in two categories: work and waste. American employees put in more hours and take fewer vacations than just about anyone else in the industrialized world, and our individual ecological “footprints” are much larger.

Coincidence? I think not. The way we work drives our habits of consumption and waste. The more we work, the more we drive, the more energy we burn, the more styrofoam to-go containers we use. At the end of the day, we’re so tired, we devour more takeout and TV, often falling asleep in front of the latter. If we want to accelerate the recent trend of reducing waste, it may be time to consider the radical step of, well, relaxing more, consuming less, and living fuller lives. May the Wall Street Journal editorial board strike me down.

Naturally, most businesses blanch at the notion of giving up any competitive edge in a globalized economy. But it’s not as if moving to a four-day (or 32-hour) workweek would simply lop 20% off the economy. Cutting hours may actually raise per-hour productivity. France, home of the 35-hour week, creates more GDP per work hour than the United States ($37 versus $34, as of 2003). Norway spanks us too ($39), and Norwegians work 26% fewer hours a year than Americans. It’s a myth of modern hypercapitalism that an overworked, sleep-deprived, stressed-out workforce is a necessity. Studies have consistently shown that longer workweeks increase productivity only in the very short term. In a recent survey by Salary.com, workers copped to wasting about 20% of the average day Web surfing and gossiping. Sound familiar?

Companies can take the first step by reinventing the workweek. Then it’s up to us to devote our increased leisure hours to activities with low environmental impact — and not to driving around gas-guzzling cars or booting up power-hungry electronics. Then we could enjoy both continued wealth and improved planetary health.

David Roberts - Reinventing the Workweek, Green Business Practices - Fast Company: May 2008

OK, soak those in for a second…got it? Here’s what I think when I read excerpts like that:

The Logical Thought

So if I’m not an employee, and we’re in long term growth mode (past the start-up phase), and 9-5 is completely arbitrary, and it’s shown that less time working will make me more productive per hour spent, and if I’ll be healthier/happier by spending more time on things outside of work, and it’s better for the environment, why the f*ck am I working so many hours?

In the startup phase there’s a “cavalier” attitude that you have to have. Life = work and work = life, and that’s OK. But I’ve been doing that for two years and I don’t want to become that guy who works 24×7 for their entire life and misses out on everything else. I enjoy new experiences and new people. I enjoy experiencing life. A large part of that is being an entrepreneur, but there’s also a lot that has nothing to do with running a business.

I spent a lot of my engineering days in college, on internships, and in the work force working on Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing projects and always thought to myself “why can’t these principles be applied to areas in business outside of manufacturing?” What 4HWW did for me was validate that increasing effectiveness and efficiency not only can be applied to all areas of a business, but in all areas of life too. Like everyone else I have become conditioned to 9 -5 and needed a little push to realize that I didn’t have to stay a part of it.

What I Want us to Become

I badly want us to become a model of efficiency and effectiveness. I want it because it makes us a more valuable company. I want it because removing the mundane and repetitive improves the quality of our lives.

In my head, all of this starts with our business processes. Unless you’ve got a ton of money (we don’t) you need to do the equivalent of hiring people by automating anything that is repetitive and can be done without human input. It started with our shopping cart software that automates inventory and shipping (side note: we had the owners of a large e-commerce store that’s been running for twelve years come visit us recently. The founder turned to George and said “I could fire two employees if I had that technology”. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside). It continued by moving all of our data to the web and automating backups and with George automating his accounting. In the future we’ll automate more of our marketing - while things like Google Base submission are automatic, niche newsletters based on customer behavior aren’t quite there yet…but they will be.

Once the business processes are set we can move on to us. We all want to work less hours. Some tasks - like packing and shipping - cannot reasonably be automated with technology so the way you “automate” them is to hire employees. I feel that by the end of ‘09 we’ll have the 2-3 people in place that we need to allow us to work 20 hour workweeks. That’s my personal goal for each of us - the other guys might be thinking less or more, but that’s what I’m pushing for.

How did I come up with 20 hours? In 4HWW Tim Ferriss asks the question “If you had a heart attack and had to work 2 hours per day, what would you do?” He asks the question to challenge you to think about what you really need to do to successfully complete your job. However, he bases this on the premise that you don’t like your job and want to work as little as possible. That’s not me/us. I love this stuff. One of the things I really want to do a lot this summer is white water rafting - I’ve been twice and it was fun as hell so I want to officially make it one of my hobbies. I’m pumped. But I equally want to expand upon an email marketing system that we recently launched (right now we send follow-up emails to everyone who makes a purchase asking them to review their products on the DI blog or TD forum, but there’s a ton of growth potential there). I also equally want to hike every state park in the Albany area. Of course I also equally want to bulk up my AJAX skills and improve the user experience on our cart.

Clearly I love our company as much as I love non-work related things. It’s a good place to be in life. 20 hours limits you just enough so that you get excited to work. If I can only work 20 hours the intensity in which I work will be multiplied many times over. I’ll also really look forward to those few hours a day instead of letting my mind drift to things that I might rather be doing.

What I’m Doing About it

I realize that this all starts with me. I’m the one usually “proposing” these wacky things to my partners so I have to prove the concept before I can expect them to get on board. 20 hours isn’t realistic right now because we don’t have an employee and won’t for a while. However, I’m always looking to make progress and prove my point so I’ve decided to limit myself to 35 hours of work each week. After a few months, I’m going to make it 30. Then I’ll stay at 30 until we have our 2-3 employees in place and trained.

What counts as “work” you ask? Good question. I’m counting everything that is related to running Pure Adapt with the exception of:

• Commuting time
• Blog posts on this blog
• Time spent reading business books or business magazines
• Time spent learning (for example, I have a few AJAX books that will take a lot of time to work through…those don’t count)

Everything else is fair game. I purposely waited until the end of Thursday to do this post because I wanted to test my limitation this week. This week is the perfect test week - if I can do it this week I can do it 95%+ of the time. Being that I got NOTHING done last week with our server mess, my to-do list was backed up a ton. On Sunday night I took all 20 action items and split them up equally among the days of the week. In my head I said to myself “you’re only going to have 6 or 7 hours to do all of this, so you better be focused”. It has worked. Every day I knocked each item off. I am getting at least as much work done in far less time. Some days I worked right up to the last second and others - like today - I was done early. Thus far here are the hours I’ve worked:

• Monday - 7 AM - 2:30 PM (7.5 hrs)
• Tuesday - 7:30 AM - 4 PM (8.5 hrs)
• Wednesday - 7:30 AM - 1:30 PM (6 hrs)
• Thursday - 7:30 AM - 1 PM (5.5 hrs)

That puts me at 27.5 hrs through Thursday. We each have four days at the warehouse and one “off”. My off day is Friday, so I generally do the most work Monday - Thursday. 7.5 hours for Friday - Sunday sounds just about right. I’ll probably work about 4 hours tomorrow, 3 hours on Saturday, and just check email on Sunday (Indy 500 baby….anyone else pumped!?!?!).

This past four days has been the best of my life in terms of work-life balance. There’s nothing outside of work that I wanted to do that I didn’t. That’s huge for me. I’ve also stopped doing work at home - I do most of my work at the warehouse and the rest at Starbucks/other local coffee shops, which helps me mentally unwind when I walk through the door of my apartment. Continuing this schedule will go a long way to ensuring I get the fulfillment I’m looking for out of both work AND life.

I’ll definitely continue to post updates as this unfolds…should be interesting.