Each of us has 168 hours a week to accomplish our tasks and goals — at work, at home and out in the world. If you feel you spend too much time on things that don’t add value to your life, you’re not alone.
The good news is that it’s easier than ever to generate stronger results, both personally and professionally, with less effort. How? Work smarter, not harder. Take steps that make you more efficient and effective, freeing up precious hours each day that you can put towards living a better life.
Ari Meisel, an American entrepreneur, author, TED speaker, productivity expert and author of books including The Art Of Less Doing: One Entrepreneur's Formula for a Beautiful Life, highlights a three-part framework of optimising, automating and outsourcing to achieve better results — faster.
Step one is optimising, or streamlining how you do your tasks. To do this, break down a task to its bare minimum and eliminate any unnecessary steps. The goal is to have the smallest number of actions that will produce your desired outcome.
Optimising requires you to take two actions. Firstly, identify your current patterns. Start by tracking habitual tasks or behaviours that you’re interested in changing or getting rid of — what you’re working on, how long those tasks take and how many things you are doing at once.
Assigning data to your daily routine shows you where you can improve. Track behaviours and time in a journal or notebook, or use an app.
Secondly, apply the 80:20 rule in all that you do. Also known as the Pareto Principle, this rule asserts that 80 per cent of outcomes (or outputs) result from 20 per cent of all causes (or inputs) for any given event.
Once you identify the steps you take to complete various tasks, you can focus on doing the 20 per cent that really have an impact — and discard or reorganise the other 80 per cent.
Take emails, for example. Consider setting a filter to immediately file any with the word “newsletter” in it to an optional folder. This move makes your inbox a place for productivity. Later, you can whizz through the others much faster and at a time of your choosing.
For business owners, it’s likely that about 20 per cent of your clients account for about 80 per cent of your revenue. Once you know which ones make up that 20 per cent, focus the bulk of your time on them.
Once you’ve streamlined tasks, automate all you possibly can and forget about them (step two from Meisel). Examine all the bite-size tasks left over after step one and determine how they can be accomplished without human interaction.
Tech-enabled appliances can make mundane tasks easy.
Automating tasks not only frees up time and mental energy but also reduces mistakes, like forgetting an important bill.
Finally, consider outsourcing things you cannot automate. Warning — delegating can require a mental shift if you believe you’re the only person capable of performing certain tasks in your company or family.
There are many similar smart ways to build a moat around your wealth, declutter and keep things on the straight and narrow. All are similarly simple as the above, but not easy.
Remember, you want to focus on the 20 per cent of your actions that yield 80 per cent of the results.
Start small on tasks you feel aren’t mission critical. A few good outsourcing experiences may encourage you to delegate bigger tasks that free up serious extra time and energy.
Your time is the only non-renewable resource. Optimising, automating and outsourcing (or eliminating) can leave you with more time to focus on building a great life for yourself and the people you care about most.
Ultimately it is about aligning your capital, be it time, attention, energy or financial, with whatever is important to you.
Sam Instone is co-chief executive of wealth management company AES
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In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
UAE v Gibraltar
What: International friendly
When: 7pm kick off
Where: Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
Admission: Free
Online: The match will be broadcast live on Dubai Exiles’ Facebook page
UAE squad: Lucas Waddington (Dubai Exiles), Gio Fourie (Exiles), Craig Nutt (Abu Dhabi Harlequins), Phil Brady (Harlequins), Daniel Perry (Dubai Hurricanes), Esekaia Dranibota (Harlequins), Matt Mills (Exiles), Jaen Botes (Exiles), Kristian Stinson (Exiles), Murray Reason (Abu Dhabi Saracens), Dave Knight (Hurricanes), Ross Samson (Jebel Ali Dragons), DuRandt Gerber (Exiles), Saki Naisau (Dragons), Andrew Powell (Hurricanes), Emosi Vacanau (Harlequins), Niko Volavola (Dragons), Matt Richards (Dragons), Luke Stevenson (Harlequins), Josh Ives (Dubai Sports City Eagles), Sean Stevens (Saracens), Thinus Steyn (Exiles)
White hydrogen: Naturally occurring hydrogen
Chromite: Hard, metallic mineral containing iron oxide and chromium oxide
Ultramafic rocks: Dark-coloured rocks rich in magnesium or iron with very low silica content
Ophiolite: A section of the earth’s crust, which is oceanic in nature that has since been uplifted and exposed on land
Olivine: A commonly occurring magnesium iron silicate mineral that derives its name for its olive-green yellow-green colour
The five new places of worship
Church of South Indian Parish
St Andrew's Church Mussaffah branch
St Andrew's Church Al Ain branch
St John's Baptist Church, Ruwais
Church of the Virgin Mary and St Paul the Apostle, Ruwais
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The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 201hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 320Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 8.7L/100km
Price: Dh133,900
On sale: now
UK’s AI plan
- AI ambassadors such as MIT economist Simon Johnson, Monzo cofounder Tom Blomfield and Google DeepMind’s Raia Hadsell
- £10bn AI growth zone in South Wales to create 5,000 jobs
- £100m of government support for startups building AI hardware products
- £250m to train new AI models
Jetour T1 specs
Engine: 2-litre turbocharged
Power: 254hp
Torque: 390Nm
Price: From Dh126,000
Available: Now
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
Desert Warrior
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Rating: 3/5
INFO
What: DP World Tour Championship
When: November 21-24
Where: Jumeirah Golf Estates, Dubai
Tickets: www.ticketmaster.ae.
Silent Hill f
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Rating: 4.5/5
$1,000 award for 1,000 days on madrasa portal
Daily cash awards of $1,000 dollars will sweeten the Madrasa e-learning project by tempting more pupils to an education portal to deepen their understanding of math and sciences.
School children are required to watch an educational video each day and answer a question related to it. They then enter into a raffle draw for the $1,000 prize.
“We are targeting everyone who wants to learn. This will be $1,000 for 1,000 days so there will be a winner every day for 1,000 days,” said Sara Al Nuaimi, project manager of the Madrasa e-learning platform that was launched on Tuesday by the Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, to reach Arab pupils from kindergarten to grade 12 with educational videos.
“The objective of the Madrasa is to become the number one reference for all Arab students in the world. The 5,000 videos we have online is just the beginning, we have big ambitions. Today in the Arab world there are 50 million students. We want to reach everyone who is willing to learn.”
