Observing Skilled Individuals and the Art of Efficient Work

This week, what’s holding you back from becoming better at managing your time and ultimately being more productive?

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Hello, and welcome to episode 295 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.

A lot of getting better with your time management and being more productive is finding ways to do your work more effectively and quicker. I was reminded of that last weekend when the McLaren Formula One team broke the world record for a pit stop. They managed to change four tired in 1.8 seconds. Think about that for a moment. In the time it takes you to pick up your coffee cup, take a sip and put it back on the table, the McLaren pitstop crew will have taken four tires off and put four new ones on. 

How did they do that? Well, it’s more than just practising. Of course, practising will play a large part in it, but it will start with someone breaking down the process and looking for better and faster ways to do each part. 

Now, how much of the work you do is similar in nature? My guess is it will be 80 to 90%. You may not think so, but if you are a salesperson, there is a process to selling. If you are a doctor, there is a process for diagnosing a patient, and if you are a designer, there will be a process you follow to create your designs. 

Now, each customer, patient and design will be different, but how you begin and do your work will be the same steps. 

It’s here where you will discover ways to do your work more efficiently, and that leads to you having more time for other things and giving you a wealth of information you can use to make your processes better and faster. That’s how McLaren broke the world pitstop record, and it’s how you can save yourself a lot more time. 

Now, before I get into the details, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Ryan. Ryan asks, hi Carl, I’ve been following you for a long time now, and I’ve always wanted to ask you, how do you become more efficient at getting your work done?

Hi Ryan, Thank you for your question.

One of the things I’ve always found fascinating is observing how skilled, productive people get their work done. That could be an author, a bricklayer or a Formula One Mechanic. There’s an art to doing our work; it’s how we become better and how we master the skills we have. 

I feel so fortunate that I have been able to work for large and small companies. To watch brilliant people do their work. I remember working in a very fancy restaurant many years ago as the bar manager, and each day, I got to see one of the UK’s top chefs do his work. The food he created was exquisite, and how he created it was simply brilliant. 

I got to see how he chose ingredients, how he experimented with ideas and how he designed the food he served to customers. It was an obsessive attention to detail, breaking down the ingredients, creating the recipes and workflows to cooking the food and ensuring the standards were always maintained. 

Three or four times a year, he would change the menus, and the process (there’s that word again) of changing the menus was followed each time. He learned the process from his mentor, and he passed it on to the chefs he was mentoring. 

One thing I noticed was none of them ever considered it as a project. It was simply a process. When the season began to change, there was a week when the kitchen team disappeared in the afternoons and tested, experimented and appeared to have a lot of fun. It was hard work; these chefs were starting early and finishing late, but at the end of the week, there was a finished new menu. 

Today, I will consume as many videos and articles as I can find on how successful people do their work. These people are successful because of what they do, and I want to know how they do it. How did they learn their skills, and more importantly, what do they do each day to master their skills? 

So, Ryan, a lot of my ideas have come from other people. 

One thing that stands out about highly efficient people is they are incredibly strict about how they use their time. They say “no” far more than “yes”, and rather than accept a meeting request, will challenge the host to justify their presence (even if it’s their boss) Most people will not do that. They are afraid to challenge and question. There seems to be a preference to complain rather than take action. 

This is about knowing the value of your time. This was probably the hardest thing to learn. Once you know the value of your time and that one day, you will no longer have any time left, you start to realise all those yeses need to mean something important. 

The most productive people I have learned about, both historical and contemporary, have something in common. They value their solitude. They will lock themselves away for several hours a day to do their work without distractions. I found it interesting that Jeffrey Archer, the author, will not have a phone or computer in his writing room. He writes by hand. Similarly, John Grisham’s writing room has no internet or telephone. The thinking is writing time is sacred, and nothing should be allowed to interrupt that. 

How could you better protect your time? You don’t have to be extreme. You only need to find an hour or two each day. Could you do that? 

However, one other way I can improve the way I work is not to be afraid to experiment. It’s through experimentation that I learn what works and what does not. 

My email process was developed ten years ago. I was getting thirty to fifty emails a day, and it was becoming overwhelming. I needed a better way to manage it all. So, I did some research, tested a few different approaches, and eventually, Inbox Zero 2.0 was born. It’s simple, fast and has meant email is never overwhelming. Today, I get around 120 to 150 emails a day, and it’s never a problem. 

But that did not happen overnight. It took many months of practice, evolution and adjustments. It also meant I had to stick to a single email app. The only way this would work is the tools I used needed to be consistent. 

Think about it for a moment: would McLaren have been able to break the world record for pitstops if they were constantly changing the equipment? No chance. The wheel gun operator knows their wheel gun intimately. They’ve used it thousands of times, and they have a feel for it. They know how to micro-adjust it so it hits the mark perfectly. 

This is the same thing with your tools. You need to get a “feel” for them. To understand them inside out so when things go wrong, and they will go wrong, you can fix the problem in minutes instead of wasting a whole day searching around on YouTube or Google trying to figure out how to fix the problem. 

Ultimately, it all comes back to processes. As I mentioned earlier, the vast majority of what you day at work will be a process, not a project. The key is to find that process, externalise it by writing out the steps and then looking at each one to see where you can do it better. 

One key part of this is timing. For me, I am at my most creative in the mornings. I’ve tried doing creative work in the afternoons and struggled. I also find I am creative in the evenings too. Armed with this information, has meant I can structure my day to optimise my effectiveness. 

It turns out most people are at their most creative in the mornings; it’s when your brain is at its freshest. So, spending all morning dealing with email and sitting in meetings is such a waste of your creative energy. Far better to push meetings and email writing until the afternoons when that little extra stimulation from other people can help you push through the afternoon slump. 

And then there are the three unsung heroes of productivity—sleep, diet and movement. If you think you are going to be productive on two and a half hours of sleep, you’re fooling yourself. You will not be. Likewise, if your lunches are a feat of carbohydrates, you’ve just destroyed your afternoon. You’ll spend all afternoon struggling to keep your eyes open. And if you rarely move from your seat, all your blood will drain to your feet, and you’ll run out of creative energy. (Not really, but it will feel like that).

You need enough sleep, a low-carbohydrate diet and movement. Even walking up the stairs once or twice between sessions of work will do wonders for your productivity. You don’t need to go to the gym or out for a run. You just need to move. 

And that’s really about it, Ryan. A willingness to experiment, defaulting to finding the process rather than thinking everything is a project. Figuring out where I can make those processes more efficient and making sure I know the tools I use inside out. 

Everything productive people do is doable by you. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. Avoiding distractions, protecting your time and getting very good at saying “no”. 

Plus, understanding your own biorhythms. When are you at your most productive, and when not? Then, structure your day around your most focused times. Make it easy for yourself rather than fighting between wanting to check Instagram and doing the focused work you know you need to do. 

And trust me, if you take a stand on your time and challenge people to justify “stealing” your time, they will fall into line—even your boss!

I hope that helps, Ryan and thank you for your question. 

Thank you to you, too, for listening; it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.