Introduction

So, you’ve decided to undertake this journey to learn how to be more efficient. Kudos to you. There are a multitude of reasons why you might have decided to do this: maybe you find yourself wasting hours upon hours and can’t figure out why or you just want to pick up a few tips and tricks that you can implement to make your time even more useful. Either way, this guide will be helpful to you.

One thing I want to clarify: This guide is in no way comprehensive. The goal of this guide is to initiate the uninitiated, and inspire all of us to learn more about the art of efficiency. As such, this guide is meant as a kickstarter to the world of efficiency — an appetizer plate, if you will.

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Parkinson's Law

Parkinson’s Law states that the task at hand expands to fill the allotted time, which is something that we all have experience with. How many times have you allocated a generous amount of time to work on some project, and at the end of said allotted time, you find that you’ve barely managed to finish? You rationalized this decision by saying that you were being responsible for integrating a generous amount of buffer time — just in case, right? You might feel accomplished, but more often than not, you feel in your gut that the project could have — and should have — been finished in a much shorter amount of time.

People often overestimate the time it takes to complete tasks, and you’d be surprised how quickly you can finish something when you have less time to do it. Case in point: one of my friend’s unofficial motto was simply: “Due tomorrow, do tomorrow.” The point is that with the right motivation and wise time allocation, we can accomplish much more than we think we can (I meant to use his maxim as a mere example, and “Due tomorrow, do tomorrow” should not become a paradigm for your own life, please).

This might sound like a dismal law (isn’t this guide supposed to be teaching us about the glories of efficiencies?), but don’t worry. Hold on to Parkinson’s Law, and we’ll revisit this rule and combine it with schedule blocking to create a powerful tool for efficiency.

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The Pareto Principle

Some time ago, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto found that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people; similarly he found that 80% of the peas produced by his garden were produced by 20% of the plants. The idea is that a few causes are responsible for a disproportionate amount of impact in any given environment, which is why the Pareto Principle is sometimes known as the “law of the vital few.” You’ll also hear the Pareto Principle referred to as the 80/20 Principle, but note that often the ratio is often even more heavily skewed (85/15, 90/10, or even 95/5).

The common reason that the Pareto Principle is cited in reference to efficiency is that it explains how we are able to make incredible leaps and bounds in our learning in relatively short amounts of time. Josh Kaufman’s TED Talk titled “The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything” encapsulates this idea of short, smart, deliberate practice to achieve competency in anything (link here). Watch it yourself, but he basically explains how he breaks down his process of skill-acquisition into a deliberate formula, accomplishing a tremendous amount of progress (in his case, guitar-playing) in a short time span. It truly demonstrates the power of the Pareto Principle, showing that small actions can have disproportionate impact.

However, it’s important to realize the implications of the Pareto Principle. A corollary of the Pareto Principle is a version the Law of Diminishing Returns: every unit of progress is incrementally harder than the previous unit of progress.

We should note this alternative perspective of the Pareto Principle and realize if you truly want to shine in something, it will require a huge time and effort investment. The Law of Diminishing Returns is best understood by using a Pokemon analogy. When you first start out in your Pokemon journey, it requires relatively few experience points to level up your Pokemon. But as your Pokemon get to higher levels, it becomes increasingly harder to make them “level up.” Everyone knows that it is much harder to train your level 99 Swampert to level 100 than to raise a level 5 Torchic one level. In terms of experience point acquisition, it takes 700 times as many points to level up the Swampert than the Torchic.

The same principle holds true for all pursuits, not just Pokemon training. The Pareto Principle is a fundamental building block of efficiency because it reminds us that our time is limited, and we must judiciously allocate our time and resources to the true tasks that require this precious time.

How else should you apply the Pareto Principle to your life? The Pareto Principle can guide you in delving into making significant progress in a multitude of areas (ie. Josh Kaufman), or the Pareto Principle can also show you that to join the top echelon of individuals, you need to work extremely hard.

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Newton's Second Law

Newton’s Second Law (of Efficiency) states that: Work accomplished = intensity x duration. This is pretty straightforward, I believe, but it’s definitely an underrated aspect of efficiency. The “duration” aspect of work accomplished is very defined and easy to understand — if we were to suppose that “work accomplished” was only a function of “duration,” it would mean that results are only dependent on the amount of time spent.

This is a sentiment reflected by the “Ten Thousand Hour Rule” popularized by Geoff Colvin in his book “Talent is Overrated” and Malcolm Gladwell in “Outliers.” The “Ten Thousand Hour Rule” basically states that it requires a minimum of ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. I agree with the overall message of this rule, in that achievement requires a large amount of time and commitment, but I think that it requires a critically important addendum, which leads to the “intensity” portion of the efficiency law.

“Intensity” encapsulates a bevy of different factors. You can increase intensity through a variety of ways — marshalling all your concentration into one task or perhaps training with better techniques. We often marvel at individuals who can accomplish huge amounts of work in minute partitions of time, whereas it might have taken us substantially more time. But it makes complete sense; if this person works for three hours at the highest level of intensity, then he accomplishes just as much as you do in ten hours with a lower intensity level. It’s simple and easily understandable, yet people still “multitask” and think they’re being more productive.

The takeaway is that you can accomplish more work by focusing on intensity rather than duration. The old adage holds true: “Work smarter, not harder.”

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Schedule Blocking

I promised that we’d return to Parkinson’s Law and here we are. Parkinsons’ Law is an integral building block of schedule blocking (pun intended, of course). Parkinson’s Law as you might recall, states that a project expands to fill the time allotted to it.

Schedule blocking combats this phenomenon. It means slicing your day into individual blocks of time, and assigning tasks to each individual block. I like to divide my blocks into one to two hour blocks, which allows ample time to immerse into a task. The power of blocking is at play here: by creating finite divisions of time, it sets a soft deadline by which I must be done with the task and adds an extra psychological motivator. The presence of the soft deadline also prevents time creep, when a short project stretches into an unproductive work marathon.

Without schedule blocking, you will have a difficult time realistically figuring out how much you can accomplish. The twelve hours of a working day might seem like a lot of time, but once you factor in the time you spend with other miscellaneous tasks peppered through your day, it’s much less time than you initially perceived. If you don’t keep track of all your commitments, it will likely overwhelm you and lead to poor performance.

I like to use the Cal Newport scheduling system, where you keep track of daily events on a calendar (I use Google Calendar) and then record all your tasks for the day onto a piece of plain paper, separating them into their own distinct time blocks. It’s super easy, efficient, and highly recommended.

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Rule of Three

Three is a very powerful number that shows up everywhere. It seems that at one point in time, people can only focus on three main things at once, which is something that you should consider in your planning.

If you have ever listed down your goals for the next three months (fantastic exercise I’d recommend), I’d hazard a guess that most people have around five to ten aspirations in a three-month time frame. That’s absolutely fine, but if you try and accomplish more than three significant goals, you probably won’t accomplish all of them (if you do, kudos to you, but I’m betting that it won’t be sustainable). What you should do is pare down this list of goals until there are only three of the most pressing goals remaining, and attack these goals furiously.

The Rule of Three is the reason that I created Three Iron Laws of Efficiency, and not any more.

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Inertia

This module is dedicated to the art of inertia. A simplified definition of inertia is that it’s a property of matter in which an object continues in its existing state — be it rest or continuous motion. Basically, it’s hard to get started, and it’s easy to keep moving.

Utilize this principle in your life: start with the hardest task first, and the rest of your day will be a success. If you wake up and start the day by finishing that huge, intimidating project, you will reap the rewards of that labor; the rest of the day will seem easy by comparison, as you’ve already gathered the momentum (another physics analogy!) to crush all obstacles in your way. If you wake up and spend your entire morning watching random videos on YouTube, then you’ve already lost the war.

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Focus

The popular Lean Startup method features rapid scientific experimentation and short product development cycles, which allows great flexibility in pivoting direction. In the same vein, efficiency requires a flexible outlook, which means that you must adopt a learning mindset. To practice efficiency, you must take the original efficiency tools presented to you, and apply and tweak them as necessary. Successful implementation of efficiency requires constant innovation and experimentation.

How does one foster this learning mindset? Mindfulness. Mindfulness is the aggregate of physical, mental, and emotional stability. There are a variety of ways to exercise and expand these three areas of health, such as lifting weights for physical fitness, striving to internalize knowledge, and practicing meditation. But know that without the proper balance of these three domains, it will be impossible to perform to your full potential.

However, the ultimate weapon for pursuing efficiency is focus. The road to efficiency will be fraught with obstacles and setbacks. It’s far too easy to encounter a rough patch, find out that your efficiency tools aren’t working as well as anticipated, and completely abandon all hope and spiral into productivity oblivion. Focus is critically important in the pursuit of efficiency (and everything else for that matter). It takes willpower to adhere to these principles, to avoid falling back into the cycle of procrastination and laziness (somewhat) inherent in human nature. It takes a motivating goal, a driving passion to sustain efficiency. You need to ask yourself: Why? Why am I pursuing efficiency? Once you have your answer, focus on it and let it serve as the driving fire behind your intentions.

“Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can pick ourselves back up again.” — Batman Begins

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Tips and Tools

Wunderlist is a great application that allows you to keep a list of your tasks. It has a clean and intuitive interface, which is why it’s my task manager of choice. You can use whatever one you like best, but I just find Wunderlist the most convenient and elegant. To-do lists are necessary because they allow you to keep in mind the important events and duties that you have. If you had to keep them all in your head, it would consume valuable mental effort and slow you down. Whenever you have a deadline or task pop-up, just jot it down in your task manager and forget about it. Then, each morning, spend five to ten minutes designating each task into its corresponding block of time, and then forget about it again. Task managers like Wunderlist allow you to keep your mind free and focused on the more important things in life.

Toggl is an application that allows you to track the time you spend on everything. Essentially, you log your daily activities and the time you spend for each, and Toggl returns a formatted and clean spreadsheet which allows you to visualize your time usage. I recommend to everyone to try Toggl for one week and then analyze the resulting timesheets to identify time sinks and correct them; you will get a much better understanding of the best times that you should be working in order to calibrate your schedule. However, do not use Toggl for any longer than a few weeks, as it is extremely mentally and psychologically draining to have to keep logging all of your activities.

Batch processing: Clumping a variety of small tasks into one “batch,” and then completing the “batch” all at once is a recipe for success. It’s helpful to think of the brain as a “pseudo-computer” for this example. Your brain only has so much RAM (random-access memory), and switching in between tasks consumes a large amount of mental RAM. The best way to solve this is to “batch” all small tasks and finish them all at once, instead of spacing them throughout the day and causing more worry. Your brain has to reconfigure itself to optimally perform a task. If you practice batch processing, you’ll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted, which allows you to focus more during the more-important tasks, thus allowing you to accomplish more.

Sunk cost fallacy: You might think that you’re a completely rational human being, but you probably aren’t — but don’t worry, most of us are just like you. Sunk cost fallacy is when you continue pursuing a cause because you falsely believe that you must continue with the cause, since you have already invested your time into it. An example is when you refuse to quit a commitment because you’ve already spent the past six months on it, or if you continue eating a terrible food item because you already paid for it. The better thing to do is to find the appropriate moment and then cut your losses (if you’re involved in something, make sure you’ve completed your prior commitments before quitting, as that is your duty and responsibility).

Be on the lookout: One critical component of being efficient is being on the lookout for all available resources and seizing opportunity. If you’re doing something, find some way to leverage other people and resources to make completing the task faster. Talk with people, look up information on the internet, constantly be asking questions. Some day, these interactions and attempt at compiling information will reward you handsomely in the form of expedited results. (Side note: this is why I love learning — in addition to it being so fun, it has so many potential payoffs in the most random of future scenarios). Be open minded and always explore.

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People to check out

Cal Newport is the author of a myriad of books on student learning and advice (How to Become a Straight-A Student being one of them). He’s a CS professor at Georgetown University, and his website has an extensive amount of efficient tactics people can implement in their daily routines.

Scott Young is an efficiency guru, but mostly leans towards learning efficiency. This is a guy who undertook his own self-created “MIT Challenge,” in which he tried to learn MIT’s four-year undergraduate computer science curriculum in twelve months using MIT’s online course materials. He was successful in passing all his courses, and you can read more about the challenge here.

You can’t really talk about efficiency without mentioning Tim Ferriss. The man who coined the term “lifestyle design” epitomizes efficiency in his pursuits; he’s someone who really practices what he preaches. I don’t agree with all his methods, but it’s impossible to argue with his impact on the “efficiency” community.

Chris Guillebeau is a writer dedicated to spreading his social movement, “The Art of Non-Conformity.” He writes a bunch about his traveling adventures (he’s visited all 193 countries in the world) and how to live a remarkable life. Check out his books here (they’re all fantastic and digestible) and his life manifestos here.

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Why Efficiency?

Why should you pursue efficiency? Everyone has their own reasons, and I’ll give you one of my reasons: efficiency allows me to make the most out of my time. As a result, I have extra time to pursue learning projects and time to relax (downtime allows for relaxation, which I believe triggers moments of pure brilliance). As Peter Drucker (look him up) put it, "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."

This previous point is important: being efficient does not mean cramming work into every single one of your waking moments — that is called stupidity. Humans need moments of relaxation and rejuvenation in order to maintain their highest levels of ability. If you try to follow such a foolhardy course, you will run headfirst into Stein’s Law: “If something can not go on forever, it will stop.” You can not go at full-speed indefinitely. Efficiency is about picking your moments of intensity and focus. Don’t run yourself into the ground.

Finally, let me tell you one way how efficiency should not be used: efficiency should never be used to justify laziness. You should never use efficiency principles to explain why you only put in minimal effort, explaining that the Pareto Principle demonstrates that the results-to-effort ratio is markedly higher in the beginning of starting a task. While it might be attractive to use basic optimization models to justify what really is your lack of will and drive, life doesn’t work that way. No one is impressed with your results-to-effort ratio; people only care about your results. Using “efficiency principles” to attempt to justify mediocrity makes a mockery of the discipline.

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Afterword

A friend once asked me why I’m obsessed with efficiency and learning (thanks Joe). And while I replied to him with some rambling, slightly incoherent response (but it was from my deepest self), I’m still pondering that question, for my true answer differs slightly from that presented in the previous module. Where does this desire come from? I suppose you can say my desire to learn comes from my desire to create a meaningful impact on the world. I firmly believe that the more I learn — cold hard facts, the mechanisms that run the world, or about other people and their perspectives — the more it empowers me to make a difference in the future.

And what exactly does a meaningful impact mean? I’ll refer you to US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and his famous quote: “I know it when I see it.” That is what a meaningful impact to me is, where people can instantly recognize it. Too many have tried to create complex formulas and definitions to encompass or quantify impact; I’d much rather stick with this “definition," which is tidy, simple, and — most importantly — efficient.

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