Our work with Dave is still in its infancy, but it is already showing positive returns. Dave has a wealth of knowledge and experience, and it’s a fabulous opportunity for us here at Ambler.

Having Dave onboard also gives me a great opportunity to be a student again. Despite what the tone of my personal blog may suggest, I have very few answers and I enjoy being a beginner whenever possible. The person with the greatest opportunity and potential for growth is the guy or gal in the class with the least knowledge and skill.

Shockingly, not everyone sees it this way.

I make it a habit of collecting a lot of opinions before I make important decisions. I was surprised to find out much later that for some of the people I asked, they concluded that I do that because I have very little experience.

That made me smile. To me, that assumption — and the discomfort they must feel in order to ask their own questions — is a sign of someone who has never really learned anything at more than a superficial level. It reveals a dangerous sad insecurity.

The biggest waste of time in the world is reinventing the wheel. The fastest way to improve something is to re-engineer it, not start from scratch. The best way to do that is to reach out and ask someone who already knows the answer.

The funny thing about learning, I find, is that the more I understand something, the more I realize how much I have yet to learn about that same subject. The wider the door opens, the bigger the room behind it. At times it’s exhausting to think about.

Every answered question leads to ten new questions. Would I rather waste precious time, and protect my fragile ego, by brainstorming the answers myself? Or quickly confirm my suspicions by asking those who have the answers?

Get it done. And move on.

Of course, “finished” never came, the quality of my work decreased as the hours increased, and I was starting to get burnt out. I even started to fantasize about going to a beach.

The main problem was not the number of hours, but with so much time allocated to work, I didn’t have to be selective about which tasks I concentrated on. Without constraints, I wasn’t forced to pick and choose the most important things out from amidst the fluff. The result was that I got a lot of things done, but not the right things.

To combat the situation, I did two things: I stuck to a rigid work schedule and, even more importantly, I kept a work journal. From those two practices came three immediate benefits: increased urgency, much-improved focus and a refined selection of tasks.

Urgency

Reducing the time available immediately increased the pressure to perform. I worked faster because I knew that the clock was ticking and I had to ACT NOW in order to complete what needed to get done before my time ran out.

Focus

I think that 99% of people can’t multi-task and the other 1% lie about it. As a committed mono-tasker, reducing the amount of time I had available each day also forced me to reduce the number of Next Actions that I had on my daily list. Rather than sifting through 200+ actions to decide what’s next, I had to reduce my options to a few of the most important. As a result, my motivation increased and I could stay on task until they were complete.

Refined Selection

The work journal acted as a chaperone for my brain. Knowing that I was keeping track of everything I completed, I easily avoided useless distractions. I didn’t want to log “surfed TED site for 40 minutes” or “hung out watching YouTube”, so I didn’t do it.

Working “X# of hours” has been abused by tens of thousands of time-focused people who think that putting in time is the equivalent of working. This is obviously a repulsive practice, but putting boundaries around your time can be incredibly productive if it’s results-focused.

Just as embracing constraints is the key to great art, I’m starting to think that it is also the key to doing great work.

“Once you realize that changing the mount of money you need to live on can dramatically increase your chances of success, you have an important choice to make: How much are you willing to sacrifice for the business?”

“One surefire way to determine if a bootstrapper is going to succeed or not is to check out how she changes her lifestyle when she starts the business. If everything is first-class — the office, the car, the mortgage, the vacations — then my bet is that the entrepreneur is too focused on taking from the business and not nearly focused enough on building it.”

— Seth Godin, The Bootstrapper’s Bible

Often, we have potential hat and apparel manufacturers contact us trying to solicit business. Here’s a sample:

“We take this opportunity to introduce ourselves as one of the supplier of garments from [COUNTRY]. We have both knit and woven unites. Our production ranges are T-shirts, Polo shirt, Sportswear, Shirts, Jeans, Trousers for Men’s, Women’s and Kids.”

As you can tell, they have no idea who we are or what we do. We make hats; they don’t. DELETE.

This is, unfortunately, all too common. I suspect that the sender must have got our contact info off of a mailing list that we wish we weren’t on. C’est la vie, but what worse way could there be to soliciting business? It’s the equivalent of:

“Hi. I have no idea who you are, what you do, or if I can help you. Neither have I spent even 10 seconds reviewing your website to find out. However, I am hoping that you will overlook that and buy something from me. That would be really great for me, regardless of the lack of value that it has for you. Please add this email to the other 100+ you receive everyday, and try not to be annoyed by the unproductive interruption.”

Wait, let me get my cheque book…

I’ve got a crazy idea. Why not:

1. Research your leads;
2. Look at their websites for 30 seconds each;
3. Qualify your lead list by removing anyone you can’t superbly serve; then
4. Craft a targeted introduction that will appeal to your target market.

YA THINK?

Initially, I thought the question was ludicrous. Especially when posed to another person. Can’t he answer that himself? My gut-level response last week was, “As many as it takes.”

However, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for over six months now, and it’s starting to suck. 

Often enough, working until a task or project is complete is a necessary and beneficial experience, sometimes mandatory. And there’s a lot to be learned from a mandatory-to-completion environment.

But most workplace tasks and projects, admittedly, do not fall into that category unless horribly planned or pathetically procrastinated.

The question still remains: “How many hours should I work?”

Two approaches: 1) the one already mentioned, “until it’s finished”; and 2)  ”X hours per day/week/month.”

“Until It’s Finished”

The problem with “‘Til Finished” is that it becomes a habit. Started, perhaps, in order to catch up, but long after you’re caught up, it’ll continue. This is my problem right now at 10pm on a Tuesday.

You’re never behind and that feels good. Working all the time can compensate for being disorganized, or feed the rats of being too type-A. But even that “bonus” is short-lived when you start burning out.

“X Hours Per Day/Week/Month”

The problem with an “X Hours” approach is how we, society, have been conditioned to think about work. Most jobs focus on punch-in, punch-out and “putting in your time”. Big problem: no one pays us for our time; they pay us for what we put into our time.

But “X Hours” can make sense if we approach it properly. It’s similar to picking your backpack before you start packing any other gear. If it don’t fit in; it don’t go in.

The unforeseen benefit is that once you’ve defined the limits of your day, or the limits of your backpack, you think hard about what to put into each, and what you don’t put in, which is often the more important choice. We must separate the wheat from the chaff, and that choice, above all, determines if we succeed.

Tomorrow, I hope, I’m gonna try it.

But today’s the day that I give it a pragmatic, grown-up name. I call it “Working on the F.A.R.M.”

“Why ‘working on the F.A.R.M.’?” Because a successful farm is practical. Because a successful farm focuses on the farm’s needs, and then indirectly, all the farmers benefit. If the farm does well, the farmers do well. If the animals are fed and the crops are seeded, fertilized and watered, then there’s no need for make-work projects. And if the work is done, then it’s fine to do other things. Work first, play later.

Most importantly, a successful farm is based on nurturing natural principles. You can’t harvest (i.e. benefit) if you miss the weather window to get the seed in the ground. You can’t harvest if you don’t fertilize the seeds. Your crop will be ruined if you don’t harvest it at the right time. You reap what you sow; you can’t harvest lentils if you plant wheat.

“Working on the F.A.R.M.” encompasses five elements, “Working” being the first… The remaining four are:

• Freedom of choice;
• Accountability for choices;
• Results as the only measuring stick; and enjoying the
• Motivation that comes from focusing on freedom, accountability and results.

Freedom of Choice

Everyone at our company decides when they come to work and when they go home. They decide what to work on and when to work on it. They decide when they’re accessible to their co-workers. If they’re going on vacation, they decide to either be accessible or have all the necessary information available for others to successfully work in their absence.

Accountability for Choices

Every choice has a consequence. So all choices should be made in light of those consequences. In our work environment, are my choices in line with the owners of the company? Am I working on prescribed priorities? Am I meeting deadlines and budgets? If I’m falling behind, am I compensating in order to catch up? If not, it’s up to me to make it happen.

Results as the Only Measuring Stick

To focus on a number of hours worked or on face-time or on playing office politics are all a waste of time. Such people are the first to go in an economic downturn. Just like on the farm, it doesn’t matter what I intended — God’s not gonna bail me out because I really wanted to plant those seeds… — it only matters what I accomplished. Successful farms only pay for results; they don’t pay for effort.

Motivation

The reality is that “working on the F.A.R.M.” is a more honest acknowledgement of real life. In the 21st century, business and personal lives are a fluid combination; trying to separate them is an outdated, ineffective and unproductive idea. Work, play and family can’t be neatly canned into specific time slots. We all need focused time for each area, but most of our lives are spent blending from one into the other. Ignoring that reality short-changes all of them.

For many people, their business lives started blending into their home lives decades ago. As long as the work is still getting done superbly well, why shouldn’t our personal lives be allowed to blend into work?

The result that comes from acknowledging the business-personal reality is not a reduction in productivity, but an increase in it. Suddenly people are motivated to do things faster. Work becomes effective. Most importantly, work becomes fun.

Working on the F.A.R.M.

It’s worked for 10,000 years. Why wouldn’t it work now?