Nov 7 2011

What does “Working Smart” mean?

Don’t work hard, work smart.

It’s an axiom that’s repeated everywhere. But most people don’t really believe it. Everybody hears it, yes. Everybody repeats it, yes. But most people still don’t truly believe it. When work isn’t finished, the instinctive reaction is to…

…work more hours.

What would you say if someone told you that to finish your work, you should work less hours? Ridiculous! But there you go, sometimes, going against “common” sense is the best thing to do.

Is it really common sense?

They say that Einstein used this quote:

The definition of insane is to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

- Albert Einstein? Rita Mae Brown?

So let’s look at that in the context of work. Boss gives you work. You don’t manage to finish it in time. It extends to the next day. Boss gives you more work. You’re late for the first deadline and now have to juggle 2 projects at once.

Obviously this slows down your work on your 2nd project. This makes you even slower and ensures that you don’t finish your 2nd project on time. By that time, the boss has given you 2 more projects. The cycle continues.

So what’s the solution? Well, if you can’t finish it on time, then obviously you need more time right? So you keep working later hours, and even weekends, in the hope of “catching up” and “getting back on track”.

But as you repeat this again and again, you should notice at some point that doing it isn’t giving you results. So, are you fulfilling the definition of insanity? Doing it over and over and somehow expecting it to be different this time?

Oddly enough, most of us never notice it until it’s pointed out to us. Even now, I’m sure you’re reading this and going, “That can’t be right. So working harder isn’t helping me finish my work?”.

After all, you’re using common sense, right?

Uncommon sense & Parkinson’s Law

Let me tell you Parkinson’s law, in the hope that you haven’t heard it before and now think I’m an absolute genius for saying this:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

-  Cyril Northcote Parkinson

As you give yourself more and more time to complete a job, the job becomes harder and harder to complete! Of course, this isn’t true about the complexity of the job in and of itself. It’s just that as you allow it more time, it psychologically becomes more complex to complete.

It might be that you waste more time in stressing and worrying about it. It might be that you spend an unusual amount of time in the planning stage in order to “make sure that everything runs smoothly later on”.

It might just be that since you know at the back of your mind that you have plenty of time, you allow yourself to relax more and goof off more in checking emails and facebook or following silly youtube links. The amount of work that you do will expand to fill the time you set aside for it.

It’s not just goofing off though. You actually spend more time doing the job itself. You spend time doing things that are job-related that don’t actually help you to finish it. Instead of just finishing it, you start spending time choosing the best font, or formatting the paperwork, or other trivial things. Now, imagine if the deadline was 3 hours ago, would you still spend time on that stuff? No! Because it has nothing to do with getting the job done.

So… what to do! What to do if working longer hours DOESN’T help you finish your job? Here’s an idea… work less.

Working less hours = Finish your job faster?

I know, I know. It sounds like a contradiction. How can working less help you finish your job?

1. Your job doesn’t ever finish

Here’s the first answer. But to understand it, you’ll need a huge shift in thinking. Your job doesn’t “finish“. That’s a concept that floated in from nowhere. Your current project might finish, but your job should be one that you’re going to continue for quite some time. Your job is “finished” when you’re fired or retired. Your job doesn’t “finish“.

In that case, what’s the point of working more hours? I don’t mean there’s no point in working at all, or that there’s no point in making sure a job is done well, or even that working more hours won’t do something to lessen your workload.

But you have to notice that at some point, you’re just working too hard. Your life is imbalanced. You’re spending waaaayyyyy too much time on your job and you’re not spending enough time time taking care of the other details in your life. When this happens, everything else just gets screwed up and goes down the drain. At that point, working more hours won’t help you “finish“ your job. Perhaps working less won’t help you ”finish“ it either. But it will have minimal effect on your workload and will do wonders for the rest of your life and your general well-being.

So the first answer is: It’s not about finishing your job. It’s about what’s best for you.

2. Get enough sleep

The second answer… the second answer is interesting, because it’s based on what I said just now in the first answer. If your job requires even a small amount of thought and creativity (like I’m sure it does), then it the results of your job aren’t tied so much to the quantity of time you put in, but rather the quality of time you put in.

When your life is imbalanced, there’s a good chance that you’re not getting enough rest and that your mind is worrying over a hundred tiny details that you haven’t had time to resolve yet. This definitely affects the rest that you get. Less work equals to quality rest.

By working less and getting better rest, you can then think straight and finish your work properly. You get to do quality work. As in, work that you do right the first time around and that you don’t have to go back and fix later on. I’ve found that if you do it rushed the first time around, you’ll only have to go back later and spend even more time to fix it.

So sleep is important. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of super achievers like Benjamin Franklin who supposedly only slept 2 hours a day. I don’t believe those stories. Sleep is important. But these people worked smart. They knew the right thing to do.

Go to work with a sharp mind.

80/20 : The Pareto Rule

Here’s another fancy rule from those people who make observations about life. 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

It’s a simple rule. It’s based on the idea that when you start from 0%, it’s very easy to improve. It needs just a little bit of effort to go to 40%. And going from 40% to 60% needs double the effort. Going from 60% to 70% requires double the effort again. In economics you call it the theory of diminishing returns.

So the question is, how much time should you spend on your work?

Based on the Pareto rule, it follows that if you spend only 20% of your time and effort on your job, you can still get 80% of it done.

HOW???!!!!! I can hear you shouting it from across the room. The idea is that most of what we do isn’t central to our work. We waste time researching when we have enough info, checking emails (yes, checking emails too much is a waste of time), formatting our work to “make it look nice for the boss”, and so on.

Cut away that wasted effort. Focus only on the core part of your job. Ever heard your boss talk about the “core business” of your company? Focus on the core business of your job.

Be the best in your field

Now, all this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t put any effort into work. In fact, you need to put a lot of effort into it. You need to learn everything about your field of work. You need to study it so well that you know every little shortcut and loophole. You need to learn how to use the software at work so that you can use it effortlessly, whether it be Word & Excel or something as complicated as MATLAB.

You need to put so much effort into your job, that when actual work comes around, you don’t have to put in any effort at all.

This is how you put in 20% effort and still get 80% of your results. It’s the people who have no idea how to do their job who work hard instead of work smart.

Most of us, after doing our work, learn to get by with “just enough” skills. If your work deals with Excel everyday, do you go out of your way to learn excel tips and tricks online including new ways to program systems? Do you challenge your skills so that you can solve ever more complicated problems?

But of course, you’ll never have the time to do this unless you work less hours.

Learn how to do your job better. There’s always new things to learn.

It’s all about doing the right thing

Working hard is just doing more. It could be doing more of the wrong thing. In fact, it usually is.

Working smart is when you do the right thing. Because so few do it, it’s enough to do just a little bit. The most successful people know the right thing to do. Then… They worked hard. They did more and more of the right thing. Who can compete with that?

We usually use the terms talent (knowing the right thing to do) and hard work (doing more of it). Hard work can best talent sometimes. But a talent who also works hard?

That’s who you need to be.

By Lutfi Torla • Life Hacks • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Oct 31 2011

What’s love? And what’s desire? Can they be the same?

We had a brilliant discussion, the 4 of us. Peppered with stories of fasting in restaurants and the Loch Ness monster (and a little bit of icecream, but that never leaves the table), we tried to find out if love and desire could be the same. Many words were spoken, but maybe this sums up best what my thoughts were at the end.

‘Desire’ is to want. The purest meaning there is. It is what you want and it is blind to the idea of whether it is good or bad for you. Desire for wealth, desire for success, desire for happiness, desire to kill, desire to be respected, desire to take what others have. They are all desires, and can be good or bad for you. Following your desire is for the purpose of making your ego and self feel more fulfilled.

But love! ‘Love’ is to want what is good for another, to want to please them. “Ah!“, you say. “Isn’t that a want as well?“. It is, but here is where love differs from desire. First, it is only to want something good for another. If you loved someone, you would want their life to be good, you would want to please them and make them happy. If you loved yourself, you would want what is good for yourself (believe me, there are people who want the worst for themselves. Those people DON’T love themselves). If you loved Allah, you would want to please Him. Do you see a theme here? The purpose of love isn’t to fulfill your own self, but to fulfill another’s. It is for them, not for yourself.

What’s ‘good’?

If you look back above, the word ‘good’ is mentioned a thousand times (ok, I might be exaggerating… a little). But what does good mean? Because there are probably a thousand ways to define what is good and bad, depending on situation and context. Again, I’d like to take the simplest meaning, because I don’t like complicated words. Good here, is defined by Islam. It’s defined by what Allah passed down to us, it’s defined by what the prophet said to us, it’s defined by what the Qur’an has shown us. ‘Good’ is what Allah says is good.

So then, to love someone, is to want to bring them closer to God, because we want what is best for them.

The story of man

All the above is especially troubling for man, because we have a nature in ourselves, a nature to want to sacrifice and give and give to make another person’s life better. We want to love. We need to love. We need to love. When we don’t look further than ourselves, and only care about our inner desires, something dies within us. We become smaller beings for it. It’s only when we look further out that we can become part of something bigger than ourselves, and this is where we grow.

And it’s troubling because when we love, we care. We care about something other than ourselves now. And we have no way of knowing what the other is thinking, what the other really wants (which is different when it’s only about yourself. At least we think we know what we want). And it stays like that unless the other party tells us what they want.

//The following is stolen from my dad (the purpose of prophets):

So what happens when man, in his nature, looks for God? We always have. We want and need something to worship. From idols to nature (pagan religions) to science, these are all gods that man has had to fulfill his need to believe in a higher power. What? Science is a god? Yes it is, the god of the atheists. *gets sidetracked* Just because science is a god of the atheists doesn’t mean that Islam doesn’t accept science. Rather, science is still the creation of Allah. In the same way that the sun and moon are creations too that other people have worshipped before. *end sidetrack*

When we find God, the ultimate being, we are… lost. Lost! After following the signs in nature, and understanding that there is an ultimate being that created everything, we then decide to worship him and do what He asks of us. But we don’t know what He is asking of us now, do we?

Well, we wouldn’t unless Allah told us how to worship him. And that’s why the prophets were sent down, to be the link to humanity. To bring the message of how to worship Him and do what He asks. He tells us, explicitly!, what is good and bad, what He wants and doesn’t want, what we need to do to worship and give thanks to Him. Without this conduit, the prophets, we wouldn’t know what He wants. Even if we loved Him, we wouldn’t know how to love Him.

//End stolen from dad.

And that’s part of the beauty of Islam, to me. That by giving us prophets, we are given all these ways to worship him. Those rules aren’t to restrict, they are to give opportunity to repay His love and mercy.

Love and desire can come together

When you love someone, you also desire them. That desire has a selfish component. Even when that desire is to make them happy, by making them happy you feed your ‘self’ by thinking, “I’m good at making this person happy“. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Desire is an integral part of humans and should be there. But as Khair says, when the desire overpowers the love, that’s when the problems creep up slowly, unnoticed. Whatever you do then becomes a process of me, me, me. I’m good at making you feel better, I’m good at doing this for you, I’m good at sacrificing for you.

This shift of focus makes you more and more detached. You forget to check for feedback from that very same person. You forget to ask if she/he really is happier with what you are doing more of. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. But as the mentality becomes about yourself, you forget reality. You focus on those few things and your whole world then revolves around your few desires. Those are the only things you desire, and therefore they’re the only things important to you.

So it’s important to check back once in a while. The other person might like what you’re doing, but are you doing this for them? Or are you actually doing it for yourself? Be honest. The answer might surprise you. I know it’s surprised me sometimes.

Not just for mere mortals

It’s not just for mortal relationships. It’s also true for your relationship with God. When your desires overpower your love for Allah, you start doing things for your own sake. Praying to feel more religious, wearing a kopiah (kufi) to feel more pious. It’s to make you feel better. I’m not saying that everyone is like this, but some of us are, and sometimes, I’m afraid I might be too.

When you do it for your own sake, instead of for Allah, then you start to pick and choose. You don’t do everything that He tells you to. You do the ones that you feel are worthwhile, because the story is all about you now, isn’t it? When the focus is truly Allah, then you do everything He tells you to. He’s already told you which ones are worthwhile (wajib), why are you overruling Him?

Listen closely

And that’s what I mean for human relationships. When the focus is yourself, you stop listening to the other side. And you mess it up. If you really love the other person, listen to them. Listen closely. Perhaps they love you back.

P.S. Thanks to @syazwinasaw, @khairhamzah,  @lubnaaa for the info in this post. And of course, my dad.

By Lutfi Torla • Featured, Reflections • 2 • Tags: , , ,

Oct 23 2011

I have read and agreed to the terms and conditions…

The world is fast-paced nowadays. There’s barely enough time to get everything done, much less enough time to double-check everything and make sure that you know what you’re getting into. It’s a world of do, do, do.

Step back and smell the roses

You hear them say it, and you know you’d like to, but you just don’t have enough time. The next big project is just around the corner, and there’s another debate this weekend, and you already have 3 deadlines on the horizon and on and on and on… And so, when decisions come around, we sometimes don’t research them properly.

We feel smart. We feel like we know what we’re stepping into. Changing jobs? Buying a house? Furthering your studies? Getting married? Most people I know will research how to do it. I believe very few ever try to find out how it is to live in the shoes of someone who woks in that company. Or is a house owner at that location. Or is doing his post-graduate studies. Or is married. You get the picture.

I know the facts. I’ve got Wikipedia.

We’ve turned into a society of

I have read and agreed to the terms and conditions…

because with all the world at our fingertips, with all the articles and expertise of the world on the internet, we’ve started to feel like we know it all. Wikipedia has given us data and facts about every possible subject, and we’ve confused having the facts with being  smart and knowledgeable. We don’t bother reading the fine print to understand the consequences of our choices. Rather, we just press ‘NEXT’ and expect the world to have prepared a way for us. Newsflash: sometimes… there isn’t a way.

Sometimes, you step into your decision and only then realize what you’ve gotten yourself into. Well then, too late. You already agreed to them, didn’t you? The terms and conditions of making that decision in the first place.

It’s a wide world out there. Before I graduated and stepped into that wide, unforgiving world, I was lucky enough to have a sister who was candid enough to tell me how the world really was. Specifically, the working life. I’d heard stories before of people going back from the office late and having to work weekends, but they never really bothered me. After all, they were stories.

Thank God for my sister

But my sister made me understand what those stories really meant. It meant late nights pleasing a boss who couldn’t care less about you (seriously, if you were fired, do you think he’d keep your position empty in protest? Hah, good luck with that), weekends spent in a cold office, far away from the light of the sun, and 2 hours of commuting back and forth daily (that’s 2 hours out of 18 waking hours, thankyouverymuch. More than 10% of my valuable time). Lucky for her, she didn’t have to go through all that, but she told me stories of those who did. It’s a miserable existence, when the whole purpose of getting a job is to help you live a happier life in the first place.

So the question was, before I entered the workforce, did I read all the terms and conditions of my choice? Or would I join the industry expecting an ideal job, only to be rudely awakened by the harsh realities of life? I did my research. I didn’t ask about salaries and how fast I could get promoted (although that was important too). I asked about working hours and commuting distances and whether I could ever live with myself doing that job. It wasn’t for me. I read the terms and I didn’t like them. I just couldn’t see myself as a salesperson selling technical things or as a technician installing products at the client’s offices. I wanted to be an engineer dammit! I wanted to do research and make new inventions, I wanted to find problems in society and find new ways of solving them, I wanted to be an engineer!

Facing a decision

So, facing a decision, I made my choice. And it’s a choice I’m happy with so far. It let’s me do what makes me happy. And I’m glad for that.

By Lutfi Torla • Making Plans • 2 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

« 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 »