Disclaimer: In case you were wondering, I do see the irony in talking about eliminating distractions and being productive with a blog post, that will be read in an RSS feed, that links to a hour-long podcast, that could ultimately distract you from your work and become part of the problem. So, just make sure you read this on your free-time.

I am always interested in hearing about people who embrace No Bullshit principles at work (and in life), and one of those people is Timothy Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week. I had heard about him before in passing, but after reading this post by Ramit at I Will Teach You To Be Rich, I decided to take a closer look.

The overall message of his book (check out his talk from SXSW to get a good understanding) is that you are not your job. Your identity shouldn't be derived from what you do from 9-5 (or whenever it is that you work). A job is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. So Tim has structured his work/life balance to serve the latter. And some of the main principles he follows to achieve this are to:

Avoid the temptation of constant connection.

We all feel like we need to be in constant contact at all times. Whether it means checking our email 100 times a day, reading RSS feeds 50 times a day, or social networking, twittering, IMing, etc. It really is an addiction, and furthermore, it's a planned distraction. Do we really need to access these things so frequently? I don't think so. They just allow us to act like we are doing something while we instead avoid actually doing anything. Ferriss recommends checking email twice a day, once before lunch and once before you go home. Set an auto-responder explaining this if you need. And also, he says the worst thing you can do is check your email first thing in the morning. This just jumbles your thoughts and shuffles the tasks that you sat down to accomplish.

Side note: Ferriss also states that you should never sit down at your computer unless you have a list of tasks to complete. If you don't have a list of tasks to accomplish, you will find a way to fill that time with fluff in order to convince yourself that you did something. It's best to move on to if you don't have a clear objective.

Find the 20% of tasks that deliver 80% of the benefits and ignore the rest.

This is the famed 80/20 (or Pareto) principle. Basically it means that in most instances, 20% of something yields 80% of the benefits. This could be 20% or your clients bringing in 80% of your revenue, or 20% of your time creating 80% of your results. The key is to find that 20%, focus on it, and ignore the rest. If you succeed at this, you can cut down on the amount of work you do while increasing your returns.

Give yourself very limited amount of time to complete tasks.

The idea here is that your tasks will take as long as you allow them to. If you give yourself 8 hours to finish something, it will take at least 8 hours. And if you have no constraint on your time, basically saying "Oh well, I'll just stay later if I need to," you can be sure that you will be staying later. This is also known as Parkinson's Law and it is something that I can totally identify with. It is one of the hardest things to deal with when you start your own company and set your own hours.

Be honest with yourself about whether you are being productive, or just keeping busy.

This point is kind of the key to the whole process, and it basically amounts to being your own reality-check. If you really look at your day, how many of those hours are productive? I know the answer to this question really scared me. I would say that, on a good day, 50% of my hours are productive. The rest is filled with bullshit tasks that either I have created for myself, or that I have allowed others to create for me. It is entirely possible to cut out the fluff if you are disciplined (definitely easier said than done). It is entirely possible to work 4 hours a day, and then use the rest of your time to develop other projects, or to develop a new skill, or to relax.

Now, speaking of cutting out the bullshit, there is really nothing new here and I'm sure most of us have heard this before in a million different ways. But Ferriss is an interesting guy and it's great to hear about someone who has followed through on these ideas to great success. Plus it can't hurt to be reminded of these things every now and then.

Will I incorporate all of these principles into my life? Probably not. Will any of you read this and completely change how you run your life? Maybe, but probably not. These things are great to read, but most of us don't have to will or desire to follow through. And Tim's main work responsibilities are very administrative in nature, so this may not even apply to the types of people who are probably reading this blog. But pieces of his message can definitely be appropriated.

Here's the way I look at it. Since many of us are small business owners who need to juggle many different tasks, both administrative and creative, these principles can help us limit the time spent on the former so that we can work on the latter. It is a way for us to minimize the amount of "work" we do so that we can actually get something done. It can help us to find time to work on some of the ideas that are bouncing around in our heads, which is something almost everyone can identify with.