Transcription
Have you ever thought about how some people get all their work done before lunch and still accomplish a lot? Well, you end up wondering where your day went. It's not magic. Effective people follow certain rules.
In this video, I'll explain five of those rules from Peter Drucker's book, "The Effective Executive." Drucker is considered the father of modern management. Bill Gates called him the best management expert of the last century. He coached influential business leaders at famous companies such as Proctor and Gamble, IBM, General Electric, and Intel. In 1966, he wrote this book, combining all his knowledge about effectiveness, time management, and peak performance. I recently read the book to increase my own effectiveness, and here is a summary of the five key lessons.
Number one: Focus on your strength, ignore your weaknesses. Strong people always have strong weaknesses. Where there are mountains, there are also valleys. No one is strong in many areas. But here's the thing: if you want results, ignore your weaknesses. Trying to improve them is foolish and a waste of time. Instead, focus on your strengths because only strengths produce results. This advice goes against what most of us have heard. For example, as a kid, I always heard things like, "You're not good at math? Go to your room and do more math." Years later, even as an adult, I always felt like I should work on my weaknesses and improve them. However, according to Drucker, this is foolish. Instead, you should find your strength and make it more productive. You should only improve your weaknesses if it's related to character. Besides that, focus on your strengths, he says. Make your strengths so strong that your weaknesses become irrelevant. To put it simply, your strengths are gold, your weaknesses dust. Focus on the gold. You got it. You really did good. Let's move on.
Now, you know that your strengths matter, but how can you find yours? The first step is to observe yourself. Look at your performance and results and find a pattern. You can start with simple things. For example, do I work well alone or in a team? Do I learn better by listening or reading? Do I work well in the morning or in the evening? What are the things I seem to be able to do with ease while they seem difficult for other people? Effective people try to be themselves. They don't pretend to be someone else. They examine their own patterns to understand their true strengths.
Effective people also help those around them to focus on their strengths. Make no mistake, they're fully aware that everyone has weaknesses. But what do effective people do when they see someone with a weakness? They don't try to improve it. They create an environment where the person can use his strengths. For example, John is a skilled accountant, but he doesn't get along with people. An effective entrepreneur or manager doesn't try to improve his weak people skills. Instead, he finds a private space where John can do what he is great at.
Number two: Managing your time. If you're like me, time management means looking at your to-do list and planning how to complete those tasks in the coming days or weeks. Effective people don't start with their tasks. They start with their time, not planning it, but by tracking where it actually goes. Here's why: humans are terrible at keeping track of time. This means you can't rely on your memory to tell you how you've spent the last 24 hours accurately. The only reliable method is to keep a record. The author says, "I sometimes ask executives who are proud of their memory to estimate how they spend their time. Then I set these estimates aside while they track their time. There's almost no similarity between the record and what they say." For example, one company chairman was convinced his time was evenly split among three areas: meetings with senior staff, interactions with key customers, and community activities. However, a six-week time record revealed that he almost never engaged in these priorities. Instead, he mostly functioned as a dispatcher, managing orders from familiar customers. When he saw the results, he was in disbelief. It took three time records to convince him that only records can be trusted, not the memory.
Another key reason for time recording is that time is the most scarce resource. Every passing day, you have less of it. When a resource is scarce, you only have one option: find a way to squeeze the most out of it. And what does tracking your time have to do with it? You've probably heard the saying, "What gets measured gets improved." This is the reason. Okay, let's say you tracked your time for one week. The list of tasks you spend your time on is in front of you. What's next? The next step is to manage your time. Managing your time means looking at your list and eliminating unproductive ones. To do this, ask three questions: One, if I stopped doing this, what would happen? If nothing, then stop. Two, can someone else do this task as well or better? If yes, delegate it. Three, ask others, "What do I do that wastes your time?"
After tracking your time and eliminating time wasters, the final step is to consolidate your time into large blocks. Drucker says that having small bits of time here and there, even if they add up to a significant number of hours, isn't effective. Working for four hours straight is more effective than working for 15 hours if those 15 hours are only available as 15 minutes here and 10 minutes there. According to Drucker, an optimal time block ranges from half a day to two weeks. Yes, you heard it right, up to two weeks. If you think about it, who does that? I mean, who focuses on one thing for two weeks and says no to everybody and everything? I admit it's not easy. This is probably why only a few people become effective.
Number three: Do the most important task first. Don't touch the second one. Drucker says, "First things first." How about the second thing? Don't touch it. If there is one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective people always ask, "What is the one thing I should do now?" Then they concentrate all their effort on that and nothing else. People who try to hurry and do several things only put themselves further behind. Even the master juggler can keep several balls in the air for 10 minutes or so. If he tries longer, he will soon drop all the balls.
As a result, they need much less time than the rest of us. They set a slow pace and always allocate extra time for unexpected events. Most people underestimate the time it takes to complete a task. They always expect that everything will go right. Yet, nothing ever goes right. The unexpected is the only thing you can confidently expect. Effective people therefore allow a fair margin of time beyond what is actually needed. At this point, you might say, "Okay, I heard enough. Do one thing at a time, go slow, and leave some time for unexpected events." But how? How do I do it when I have so much work on my to-do list? Here is how effective people do it.
Effective people are masters at creating a "stop doing" list, which you can also call a "not to do" list. They are merciless at identifying and removing tasks that no longer produce results. Drucker says, "Deciding what you shouldn't do is more important than deciding what you should do." Effective people understand that yesterday's tasks and decisions, no matter how wise they may have been, inevitably become today's problems and stupidities. You have to cut them off so that you can dedicate today's resources to tomorrow. This is necessary in order to keep organizational weight control. Without it, the company or the person soon loses shape and becomes overweight. You need to stay lean and muscular. Regularly deleting tasks is the only way. Effective People periodically review their work and ask, "If I did not already do this, would I do it now? Is this still worth doing?" And if it isn't, he gets rid of it. And here is the most important thing about deleting tasks or projects: you don't need intelligence for it, you need courage. The task that is no longer important to you is probably someone else's top priority. So it takes courage to face the other person and say, "You know what? This isn't working anymore, and we're going to stop doing it."
Number four: Focus on contribution, not the effort. Effective people always focus on contribution. They ask, "What can I contribute that will significantly improve the results?" Many people focus on the effort they put in rather than the results. Drucker says that if you focus on just doing your tasks, you're a follower, no matter how high your title is. But if you aim to make a difference and focus on results, you're a leader, no matter how low your title is. People who don't ask themselves, "What can I contribute?" are likely to aim too low and at the wrong things.
Now, you might wonder what truly separates result-oriented actions from effort-oriented ones. So let me give you an example. I've been trying to hire someone to help me write scripts for these videos so that I can summarize more books. Most candidates I come across talk about these three things: what's the job, how many hours will I need to work, and how much is the payment. Recently, I came across a candidate who was also interested in the job. But here's the thing: unlike others, he didn't ask the above questions. He said, "Let's start with the trial at no cost to you. I want to see if you really like the results of my work. If my work saves you time and doubles your views, then we'll talk about the rest." Long story short, he understood that the result is what matters. Nobody on the internet watches a video simply because someone spent 100 hours making it. Just ask yourself right now, do you honestly care how much effort went into making this video? No, you don't. In my opinion, the candidate's approach is what focusing on results looks like. And yes, you are right, when you focus on results, results, you will work more than the average guy who focuses on effort, but you will also earn many, many times more.
Number five: Focus on making effective decisions. Effective people do not make many decisions. They concentrate on a few important ones. They stand back, look at the big picture, and then make one strategic decision that automatically takes care of 10 or 15 small decisions. Here are a few simple examples: cooking every Sunday for the whole week so that you don't have to cook, clean, and shop every day. Hiring someone to take care of all small administrative tasks instead of you doing them.
Here's another thing about effective people and their decision-making process: they don't start with facts. They start with the opinions and ideas of others. Why? Because they know that the right decision grows out of disagreement, out of the clash of different opinions. Effective people therefore organize disagreement for two reasons: One, it gives them all the possible alternatives, helping them pick the best one. Two, it provides backup plans in case the first choice doesn't work out. A decision without a plan B is a decision destined for failure, no matter how well planned it seems. Having alternatives means you're never stuck when things go bad. It's tough to start from scratch and make a new plan when your original plan fails. Having a plan B makes it easier to keep going.
At the end, let's together summarize the five lessons we've just discussed. I know you like the quick recaps, so here it is:
Number one: Ignore your weakness. It's a waste of time to improve them. Identify your strengths and make them productive. Help the people around you focus on their strengths.
Number two: First, track your time regularly so that you can identify the time wasters. Second, eliminate the time wasters and delegate as much as you can. Third, consolidate and create large time blocks for tasks that really matter.
Number three: First things first. Ignore the second thing. Concentrate on the first thing and get it done well. Go slow and have a margin of safety. Regularly clean your to-do list to make space for new tasks and opportunities. Choose the future, not the past.
Number four: If you want to be effective in your business or at your job, ask yourself, "What can I contribute that will significantly affect the results?" Without asking, "What can I contribute?" there's a risk of targeting low-impact or incorrect tasks. Remember, the value lies in the results achieved, not the amount of effort you put in.
Number five: Make few but strategic decisions that take care of many of the small decisions. Whenever possible, argue your decisions with others and get their opinions as well.
In lesson number two, we briefly discussed time management. If you want to go deeper and improve your time management skills, then check out the video on your screen. I hope this video helped you just a little bit. Thanks for watching.