The productivity benefits of doing more things are minuscule compared to the gains of doing the most valuable things first. Someone working with superhuman efficiency on low-value tasks is never going to out perform someone working with normal efficiency on ultra high-value work. Any system you use for organizing your work needs to be centered around the act of prioritization. If your system doesn’t do that, it isn’t going to optimize your productivity.

The funny thing about focusing on prioritization is that it isn’t something you need any fancy tools to do. You don’t need special software or an app for your phone–you just need to be able to make a list and then prioritize the order. If your list of tasks is hard to prioritize, you may find it is easier to write your tasks on sticky notes or cards so you can physically sort them.

Whatever method you use, prioritization gives you the ability to focus the limited resources of your time on things that are truly important. The small amount of time you invest on prioritization has a return on investment higher than just about any other activity.

John knew he could improve their efficiency and bolster their relationship with stores if they could make sure they didn’t ever ship out a box that was missing a tube of toothpaste. A high priced consultant was brought in who studied the assembly line and installed a laser system that would shine on the side of each box as it came down the line. If there was no tube in the box, a faint red glow would show up on the opposite side of the box. A sensor could detect this, stop the line, and set off an alarm to notify workers that the box needed to be removed before it got packed. If a tube was present, the sensor wouldn’t see the glow and the box would continue normally down the line.

The system was expensive and by the time it was all wired into the controls and the consultant was paid it cost over half a million dollars. Still, the CEO was satisfied. It worked well in all their tests and the cost of dealing with even infrequent empty boxes was high enough to justify the investment.

After the system had been running for over a month, John was pleased to see in his monthly report that they had not shipped a single empty box. Happy that everything was working as designed, he continued going through the report but was confused when he got to a new line on the report that indicated how many times the system had detected an empty box. There were a few detections the first week the system was installed, but none in the last few weeks. This was unusual and he assumed that something wasn’t reported correctly, so he went down to the line to take a closer look at the laser sensing equipment.

Everything was still there and each box was correctly illuminated with the laser. Starting up the line to get an empty box to test with, his foot crushed an empty box. Looking around he saw a handful of other boxes strewn randomly across the concrete floor–all empty. Then he noticed a desk fan on the opposite side of the conveyor belt blowing toward him.

About that time, the line manager came over to see what he was doing. “Why are all these boxes on the floor?” asked John.

“Oh sorry about that,” said the line manager, “the new system kept stopping the line and setting off an annoying alarm.” After the first two or three times, Bill had gotten tired of the interruptions and had brought that fan over from his desk and set it up to blow the lighter empty boxes off the line so he didn’t have to deal with taking each one off and restarting the line.  The line manager said, “I guess I should get a bin over here so we can reuse the boxes instead of dumping them on the floor.”

Just like the CEO, your organization or team probably has a lot greater capacity to solve problems than anyone realizes. Collaboration is the act of getting the people with a problem that needs to be fixed together with the people who are close enough to the potential solution that progress can be made.

In the story, once the empty boxes became a problem for Bill, he quickly made the problem go away. Up to the point that the alarm started sounding, Bill was busy with other things. The empty box issue was a problem that someone else was working on–not something he thought about. Our individualistic culture encourages us to focus more on our part of the work rather than the system as a whole. If everyone is doing their work with blinders on and just thinking about their part of things, it is easy to miss the really big gains that come from working together to make improvements.

Creating a culture of teamwork and collaboration isn’t always easy, but the rewards are great. So how do you do it? Here are 3 ways:

1. Talk to each other about problems. Many teams follow a practice where everyone gets together for 15 minutes each day to tell what they did yesterday, what they are doing today, and what obstacles they are facing. Those 15 minutes are an incredible investment in making sure that teams can collaborate and match up someone who is having a problem with someone who may have an idea for a solution.
2. Create feedback systems. In the story, the alarm feedback is what prompted Bill to take action. He wasn’t looking at the monthly report like the CEO was. How many problems could your team find solutions to if they had the feedback indicating where something was going wrong? I’ve created feedback solutions for teams that were as simple as printing out a graph from our data every week and putting it on the door to the team room where everyone could see it. Other feedback systems tied into some automated tests and turned on a red lava lamp if there was a problem that needed immediate attention.
3. Create a culture of systems thinking.  One of the biggest impediments to efficiency is a culture where people say, “that isn’t my job.” There is a meaningful difference in value between someone who feels their job is “sanding a piece of wood” and the person doing the exact same thing that thinks their job is “creating fine pianos.” For your team to collaborate well, they need to be more interested in the outcome of what the team does together than just how quickly they can do their part of it.

Creating a culture of collaboration requires an investment, but the payoff can be very significant.

So, does that mean you should get a college degree in order to get higher income? Does getting a college degree actually help you earn more money? No. It doesn’t.

The real thing that will help you earn more is acquiring valuable skills.  Many people acquire skills in college, so it isn’t surprising that college graduates on average make more money.  However, if you put everyone who has valuable skills in one bucket and everyone without valuable skills in another, you’d find the skilled bucket has a much higher average income than the non-skilled.  Further, you’d find that there were some people with great skills and no degree and others with a degree and no skills.

My point is that focusing on getting a degree is pretty pointless.  I was looking through some old papers with my grandmother a few years ago.  She showed me my great grandfather’s diploma from seminary and his license to practice law in Kansas. I asked about the diploma from his law degree and found that he didn’t have one.  He was in law school and someone dared him to take the bar exam.  He took the dare and passed. He had already acquired the skills necessary to become a lawyer and it was those skills that were important–not how long he spent in college. Interestingly enough, he wouldn’t have been able to do that today. Kansas is one of the states that won’t let you even take the bar exam if you don’t have a law degree. I think this is a problem. We’ve made the focus on getting a degree instead of on acquiring skills.

Our educational institutions have a vital part to play in educating. However, I think it is detrimental to focus so much on whether or not someone gets a degree because it makes the degree what is important instead of the skill set.

Right now our colleges are full of kids who are there to get a degree–not necessarily skills. They are focusing on the wrong thing and it is an extreme source of frustration for teachers. How would you like to deal with students all day where a good percentage of them are just trying to do the minimum possible to get a piece of paper that says they graduated?  I wouldn’t like it and I know at least a few teachers who are looking at different careers because they only see things getting worse and worse.

According to the government statistics, the percentage of students graduating with an engineering degree peaked in the mid-80’s and has been on a decline until a recent slight uptick. In fact, the percentage of students graduating in engineering in 2014-2015 is only 65% of what it was in 1985-1986–and that represents an improvement from prior years. Science is facing the same thing with an overall decline from the early 70’s but a very slight uptick in recent years. There has been a steady increase in “other fields” which includes things like journalism, law, communication, architecture, etc.

I’m not trying to say that journalism isn’t worth studying, but when it comes to making a living, the skills you acquire studying journalism for four years are not in high enough demand to pay well. On the other hand, I regularly talk to people who say they can’t find good software engineers and they are willing to hire smart people regardless of whether or not they have a degree.

Google Chromecast

The Chromecast might seem like an odd family gift, but it has a nice little feature that lets you set it up to play a slideshow from a Google Photos album.  If you hook this up to a TV at Grandma’s house and give all of her grandkids access to add photos to the album, she’ll have a very nice picture frame she can leave on when she isn’t watching television. The Chromecast also makes it very easy for people to show their videos (closer to it’s intended use) by anyone on her wifi.

When we take vacations with extended family, I like to set one up on the TV in the main living area and ask everyone to add pictures of the vacation to it. This really helps make sure everyone gets to see the different perspectives of the different families and inspires more conversation than if the TV was playing broadcast television.

Pix-Star Picture Frame

While a bit more expensive. The Pix-Star digital picture frame is another great way to share photos with loved ones. You can hook it up to a Google Photos album (and several other photo sharing services) but it also gives you an email address where you can email pictures. (Your email has to be whitelisted first so you don’t get spam.) New pictures can be displayed or it can notify the user to accept and view the new photos.  I’ve given these to a few family members and I’ve been amazed at just how much they become the focal point of the room. There are 15 inch and 10 inch versions.

One of the biggest advantages of the Pix-Star frames over a Chromecast is that you can set it up on a schedule to turn off at night. Some of the newer models have motion sensing so it turns on when someone is around, but off again when the room is empty.

When you upgrade your cell phone, there is a cost in time. You have to move your contacts over, learn the new features, and you also have to go down to the cell phone store to pick it up. The new phone may or may not be worth this cost in time. The idea of minimal minimalism isn’t to necessarily get rid of your phone, it is about recognizing that the stuff you own also owns you. When you buy something new, you are making a commitment in time to that item. In many cases, you are sacrificing a portion of your life to that item. You must make sure that the cost of the new item is worth the cost in both money and time.

What do you really need?

At least in the US, there tends to be a big overlap and blurred lines between our needs and our wants. I am amazed at how many people in low-income housing who are surviving off of welfare can afford cable television, new toys, and cell phones. You’d think that if you are unable to provide for yourself, you’d only be able to purchase the bare necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. Our idea of poverty in the US is well above what is considered rich in other parts of the world.

It is hard to decide exactly what is a need and what is a want. I don’t think people who are living off my tax dollars should be able to afford cable television, but I’m sure there are people out there who would argue that it is a basic right. I’m sure there are things that I consider basic needs that are really frivolous compared with the way other people survive.

Deciding what you need means deciding what type of lifestyle you want in order to support your other goals. For example, our ideal lifestyle involves having a lot of people at our house. In our previous house, it was rare that we didn’t have at least one other person living with us. It wasn’t too uncommon to have 5 to 15 people spending the night for a few days.

This type of hospitality is a core part of who we are. It is part of our lifestyle–part of who we want to be. We need things that help us support this lifestyle–not for basic survival, but because it is part of our values. We tend to buy things that help support these values. For example, we “need” more towels, beds, wash cloths, bathrooms and square footage than most people. The house we are living in now has five bedrooms. On one hand, that seems frivolous–who needs five bedrooms? On the other, it is a reflection of our values and what is important to us in life–not to just have a big house, but to be able to have people staying in our home.

What can you do without?

Deciding what you need is really about deciding what you can do without. When it comes to the concept of Minimal Minimalism this often means deciding what things are not cost effective. Let say you are looking at getting a swimming pool that you will enjoy swimming in for 3 hours per week but requires 5 hours of maintenance each week. Because it will cost you so much in time in addition to the purchase cost, that is probably something you can do without.

What is cost effective and important for you, may not be for someone else and vice versa. Having a piano in the house is very important to me. I play the piano and plan to teach my kids how to play. A good piano is not inexpensive; they take up quite a bit of space and are extremely inconvenient to move around. Still, it is worth it for our family, but that doesn’t mean a piano would make sense for someone else.

Books are another thing we’ve put a lot of time, money and space into. On the other hand, we don’t have a Wii, XBox or PS3. Playing games isn’t something that we have really invested in as valuable. Recently I found a computer game that the family can play together because I wanted my kids to get a little bit of experience in controlling objects in a 3D environment and some of the spatial reasoning that goes along with that. However, we probably only average 20 minutes a week or so playing it. I’m not putting down playing games; I’m just saying that for us personally, it hasn’t ever been an important part of our lifestyle.

Remember, it isn’t about just trying to get rid of stuff. Your focus needs to be on having the right things, but not wasting time, money, and space on things that aren’t right for you. It is all about understanding the true cost of every item and making sure that the benefits outweigh the cost.

Re-use and Longevity

It was many years before we purchased a brand new automobile. Most of the furniture in our house is not new to us. Our dining room table was something my grandfather made in a shop class and our kitchen table was something used by my great grandmother. There is a lot to be said for using things that already exist instead of buying something new. However, this comes with some interesting problems.

First, when you buy something used, it is often cheaper and this makes it harder to understand the full cost. If you are thinking of getting a piece of exercise equipment that normally sells for $2,000, but you can get it used for $500, it sounds like a great deal. However, the lower cost can make you underestimate how much time will be involved in picking it up and trying to move it into your house.

Second, if you are so focused on buying used, you can miss out on situations where used is more expensive. For example, when I was buying a riding lawnmower, I found a used one for about half the price of a new one. A few years later I realized that given the expected life of that mower and the number of hours on it, the cost per hour of usage was about the same as if I had bought it new.

Third, if you like to take care of your stuff, you may find yourself fixing something beyond when you should continue to be investing in it. We had a VW Passat that kept running for a long time by putting in additional repairs every year. I didn’t want to buy a new car because I knew I could keep the VW running. Finally, a wreck forced us to get another vehicle. After looking carefully at the prices of new vs. used low mileage, we found it was cheaper to purchase a new vehicle. Since we do a lot of long distance driving, the new vehicle provided significantly better peace of mind and dramatically increased our chances of reaching our destination without car trouble. In retrospect, we probably would have been better off to sell or trade in the VW much sooner.

Fourth, not everything is economical to repair. I really like the idea of getting a good pair of dress shoes and just having them repaired. But so far, the cost of resoling has always been high enough that I’ve been better off simply replacing the shoes.

Fifth, if much of your stuff has sentimental value, it can be much harder to get rid of when you don’t need it. I wonder how many families have those old sewing machines that belonged to a grandparent that no one is ever going to use and doesn’t even function very well as a piece of furniture taking up space in their house.

Reusing stuff, keeping it for a long time, and buying used things can all be good ways to stay simple, but you have to make sure you are being holistic in your approach. Otherwise, you can make poor decisions by focusing on one area without seeing the value and cost in context.

Getting Rid of Stuff You Don’t Need

For most people, this is a struggle. If you were raised to be frugal, it may be hard to get rid of stuff because you might need it in the future. I grew up on a farm. It is hard for me to get rid of old T-shirts because I’m always thinking that I may need one the next time we have to paint the barn, burn off the field, or do something else that tends to destroy clothing.

Here are a few strategies that have helped me.

1. Switch between keep-what-you-need and remove-what-you-don’t. Taking everything out of your closet and only returning what you think you really need can be a good strategy, but sometimes it just doesn’t work very well because everything looks like something you need. If you find yourself in that situation, turn it around and take out the things that you are 98% sure you can do without. Switching around your approach can help you prioritize more clearly by evaluating things from the other direction.
2. Fill a box with stuff you don’t need anymore. Alternatively set a goal for a number of things you are going to give away or recycle. Setting some goal of a quantity (either volume or number) of things to get rid of can be a lot easier than trying to decide “yes” or “no” on each item you own.
3. If you are unsure, store it. If you have items that you think you can get rid of but aren’t sure, box them up and put them in your garage or a closet with a note saying to take the box to Salvation Army after a year. If you desperately need something in the next 12 months, it will be there. After that, it should be easier to get rid of because you’ve proven to yourself that you haven’t needed it for the last year.
4. Practice one-in-two-out. When you are buying a new item, decide what two items it is going to replace. You can use whatever numbers make the most sense for you, but when bringing new things into your house means selecting some things that leave you will create a good habit to work your way down to less stuff.

Being the Owner vs. Being Owned

Our relationship with our stuff is complex. I’m not trying to convince you to give away everything just to keep your life simple or so you can say you are being minimalistic. Yet there is value in recognizing that our stuff comes at a cost and we need to be intentional about balancing the value that possessions bring to our lives with the cost of ownership.

That infrastructure can now be used by most people to get images of the pieces of mail that are going to be delivered to your mailbox each day. This service is called Informed Delivery and if it is available in your area, you can sign up for it here.

Every day you’ll get an email showing you the mail that will be delivered. It doesn’t seem to include some of the local items that are delivered directly from the post office. For example, I don’t get a scan of the front page of my newspaper that comes in the mail, but most of the mail does seem to show up. Especially things like bills.

In addition to the email there is an app that will let you browse through the mail that you were sent for the last few days. It also shows upcoming deliveries for packages.

The app is available for Windows, Android, and iOS.

For me, the notifications are most useful when I’m on the road. If a bill comes I can see the envelope and remember I need to make sure it gets paid.  It is also useful to see if I have something important that I need to ask a friend or relative to get out of my mailbox or off my front porch and put inside if I’m not going to be home for awhile.

Now all those things require starting, but if you have work in progress, the most valuable thing you can do is to pick something and finish it. Finishing is where you start benefiting from the value you’ve created. I’ve noticed that many successful people aren’t the ones who are the smartest or have the best ideas. They are often the ones who do the best job of taking an idea and completing it. A good idea fully executed is better than a great idea that never gets completed.

Does this mean you need to finish everything you start? Not necessarily, but if you don’t think something is worth finishing, be honest with yourself and terminate the project. Don’t leave hundreds of half finished efforts lying around physically or mentally acting like you are going to come back and pick them up. If you need to drop something, do so strategically and intentionally. If you’ve put significant effort into a project, you may still benefit from finishing it even if you wouldn’t start it again based on changed circumstances. For example, if you are in your last few months before graduating from college and realize you don’t want a career in what you are majoring in, you probably should go ahead and graduate. Even if you would choose a different path if you were starting college again, there is significant value in having the degree–even if you don’t intend to actually work in that field. If the cost of finishing is much less than the value you will forgo by just stopping, it is probably a better investment to finish.

When you plan your efforts with a focus on finishing, it influences how you manage your work. Someone focused on finishing will look for ways to get value along the way to their final goal. For example, a community college degree as a step toward a four-year degree locks in some value from your education in two years that you can leverage for your four-year degree. Some master’s degrees offer options where you can earn a certificate after 3 or 4 classes that all count toward your degree. People who are writing a book will sometimes use the chapters as blog posts so they get value out of what they are writing immediately but can leverage it toward the bigger goal they are working toward.

What projects do you have that are currently in progress? Can you find something and finish it?

The other big thing I ran into with some of the other headsets was limited battery life. I have never run out of power while using it. When the battery has gone dead it is because I left it on overnight. It says it can last up to 7 hours of use. When I turn mine on from a full charge it says it should last for 6 hours and while I haven’t stress tested it to find out, I haven’t ever run out of power while using it.

The Legend is supposed to be able to connect to multiple devices and switch between them automatically. I liked the idea of being able to be connected to my computer for Hangouts, Skype, and video conferencing while being connected to my cell phone for calls. It does connect two two my Google Pixel phone and my Apple Macbook Air at the same time and seems to switch between them ok, but there is a weird static problem when I connect it like this. I’ve talked to support, gotten a replacement device, tried different phones, etc. but I can’t get rid of the static. I have friends who use it with two phones and said they don’t have any problems, but I couldn’t get it to work for me. Ultimately I found it wasn’t too inconvenient to just disconnect it from the device I wasn’t using. They sell a USB Bluetooth connector that might have solved the problem but my current solution works well enough that I didn’t ever feel the need to pursue that.

The noise cancellation seems to work adequately. It uses 3 mics to help figure out what sound is coming from your voice and what is coming from your environment. I don’t typically use it to talk in noisy environments and when I do it seems that I have more trouble hearing than the person I’m calling.

In addition to the mute button mentioned above there is a switch for power and one to turn the volume up and down. These both feel the same and I can’t ever remember which one is on the top and which one is on the bottom so I’ve turned the ear piece off a few times when trying to turn it down. My current approach is to first try to turn it up and if that works then turn it down. That way if I happen to be on the power switch I don’t turn it off in the middle of a conversation. There is also a button that will trigger an assistant on your phone. So basically the equivalent of saying OK Google on Android. It also usually seems to work fine just saying Ok Google, but I’m not clear if it is just the phone responding or if it is hearing it through bluetooth. This button can also be used to start and stop calls and redial. The mute button also allows you to put it into a mode to recognize some voice commands that let it tell you how much battery is left and redial the last number. When a call comes in you can also choose to answer or not using voice commands.

Beyond just making calls, the other significant way I use it is to listen to podcasts using PocketCasts. It works well for this and I can listen to podcasts while still being able to hear what is going on around me. Sometimes I feel like I can’t get the volume loud enough to hear it well if I’m in a noisy environment.

The ear piece uses a proprietary connector. You can’t just charge it by plugging in a standard usb charger and if you lose the little pigtail adapter you can’t charge the Legend. This hasn’t been much of an issue for me because I got the carrying case that does let you hook it up to a standard phone charger. The case includes a battery that charges the earpiece back up and helps keep it clean. It also has a place to hold the USB Bluetooth dongle mentioned previously.

The Voyager Legend has been around for quite a few years and there is a newer version available called the Plantronics Voyager 5200. This version looks like it has fixed a few problems. For one the earpiece uses a standard micro USB charger rather than the proprietary connector. Also, the button placement is different and it looks like it would fix the issue where I keep turning the device off when trying to turn down the volume.

A few weeks ago I lost my Voyager Legend and was almost ready to order a replacement. I was trying to decide between the $113 Voyager 5200 and the $62 Voyager Legend (prices at the time I was looking). After looking at the reviews I was about to go ahead and get another Legend because it didn’t sound like it was worth the extra cost. Fortunately, I found the earpiece before ordering a replacement so I’m back to using the one that has served me well for the past two years.

If you are really focused on expanding your capabilities, your salary is probably a secondary motivation when it comes to employment. Your major motivation is going to be your learning and growth opportunities. The graph below shows how learning opportunities change over time.

At the beginning of any job, you will have many opportunities to learn because everything is new.  This section is marked by the green zone. Every day will involve new experiences and learning new things. As time goes on, this tends to level out, as shown by the yellow zone. Sometimes the yellow zone is only temporary and you will be given new responsibilities that will have new learning opportunities–you’ll basically start the cycle over again.

If this doesn’t happen and you remain at a reduced learning rate for a period of time, you’ll move into the red zone. The red zone is particularly dangerous because it means you are becoming accustomed to a lack of personal growth and a lack of challenges. If you stay in this zone for too long, you will actually reduce your capabilities to take on challenging assignments.

So when should you look for a new job? While you are in the green zone, you will be facing a lot of challenges. Some of these will be difficult and sometimes you might even fail. This is not an indication that you should move on. It means you are still growing. One mistake I see people make is leaving jobs where they are still learning just because it isn’t easy.

When you get into the yellow zone, it is time to start re-evaluating things. You need to honestly access the chances of  getting different responsibilities that would move you back into the green zone. You also must consider your potential for salary growth. If you are at the high end of the pay scale, continued growth may not translated into growth in pay. When you get to the yellow zone, you may need to sit down with your employer and talk about your future at the company to get a feel for what opportunities might become available if you stick around.

Even if your employer doesn’t have any new or challenging projects, the yellow zone can be a good place to try to take advantage of any educational opportunities. If your employer offers tuition reimbursement, you might look at working on an advanced degree.  Sometimes additional education will help give you a new way of looking at your current job and open your eyes to opportunities for improvement that your employer may not think to ask for.

At a previous employer, I had been in the yellow zone for about a year. I had already used the educational benefits to do most of the coursework I needed for a second master’s degree. Finally I sat down with my boss and asked, “What are the new challenges I’m going to get to experience in the next 6 months?” He told me that there wasn’t really anything they wanted me to do other than just keep things running the way they were. A few days later, I submitted my resignation. For me, the challenge was getting things to the point where my department was running smoothly. Simply maintaining the status quo would have been easy. The organization was pretty flexible with work schedules as long as things were getting done, so simply maintaining things would have translated into a lot of free time for me. The idea of not having new challenges scared me because I looked around and saw a number of other employees who were basically on cruise control. They had nice non-stressful jobs, but it had been years since they had ever attempted anything challenging. My fear was that I would become like that.

I took a job with another company where I figured I had about a 60% chance of being able to be successful and a 40% chance of failing horribly. The first few months were extremely difficult, but I learned a tremendous amount. More importantly, I raised the bar on what I was capable of doing. This experience has served me well. There are many small and large successes I’ve had in life that I can directly trace back to the decision to leave the easy job and take one that would challenge me.

What work zone are you in?  How long are you comfortable staying there?

Whether we admit it or not, our ideas about what we can accomplish are very much related to the capabilities of the people we are around.  It is as if we have an internal bell curve that we use to compare our performance with our peers.  If you outperform everyone around you in a certain area, it is going to be difficult to reach your full potential.

I’ve been in classes where I was the top student.  I don’t mean I was in the top 10%. I mean I was hands down the best student in the class.  It would take me 15 minutes to complete the tests that were scheduled for 60 minutes, where most of the other students would run out of time. In one of these classes, I had earned an A for the entire class after the first two weeks. The professor told me I didn’t need to show up anymore if I didn’t feel like it.

In another class I was not the best student.  In fact, I had serious doubts as to whether or not I could even pass the class. I loved the material, but everyone else seemed so much further ahead than me.  They could grasp the concepts easily that required so much effort for me. Halfway through the class, I dropped it because I was having such a hard time and took it again the next year. I studied very hard and still ended up with a “B”, with which I was absolutely thrilled.

Of these two classes, the second one pushed me closer to the limits of my potential than the first.  That push resulted in greater growth, not only in that area of study, but in my general abilities. Obviously, I did better in the first class from a grade standpoint, but from a personal development standpoint the second class made me push myself further than I had ever been required before.

To really challenge ourselves, we must be surrounded with people who are better.  It is said that your salary is usually equal to the average the salaries of your 10 closest friends.  This is a good general rule for everything–not just finances.  The capabilities of our friends average together to create a social glass ceiling.  Even if you work hard and break through the ceiling, it will still exert constraints on your progress.  If you want to truly push the limits of your potential, the people with whom you interact must be people who significantly challenge you in the areas where you want to excel.

The first version of this post was originally published October 20th, 2005

Back in 2005 we wrote about the September/October 2005 issue of The Futurist where they examined Americans’ use of time. According to the article, the common perception that there just isn’t enough time isn’t supported by the stats from a national study using time-diaries.  Basically, the findings show that Americans average 35 hours per week of work time and 35 hours per week of free time.  So how does that compare to today? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics people spent an average of 35.91 hours each week on leisure activities in 2016. The average time spent working was closer to 40 hours, but it isn’t clear that the methodology is the same.

Regardless of the exact numbers, it is clear that most people don’t feel like they have 35 hours of free time each week.

One of the reasons people feel like they have no time is because of marketing.  There are many businesses who make money if you don’t feel like you have enough time.  Everything from self-help books to prepared foods to delivery services depend on people who feel like they are too busy.

So where does all the free time go?  The 2005 study showed over half of that time is spent watching television which was about what it had been in 1990. BLS is showing people spent 2.73 hours per day watching Television in 2016 which pretty close to half of their free time.

When people say that they don’t have enough time, it says more about how they spend their time than the actual quantity.  After all, no one really has more time, we all just spend it in different ways.  When people feel like their time is being spent on very valuable things, they may still run out of time, but there is a completely different level of fulfillment involved.

The trick to having enough time is making sure that it is spent on things that you feel are important.  This means setting priorities and deciding what is actually valuable to you ahead of time.

By spending your free time on things that you feel are truly valuable, you won’t have actually ended up with more time, but you can increase your satisfaction with how your time is spent.

This funny quote from the article in The Futurist seems to sum up many Americans’ feelings about why they don’t have any free time. “Of course I don’t have any free time, because I spend so much of my time watching TV.”

Originally published November 17th, 2005 and updated with current statistics in 2017.

I started looking for other options that provide concierge/travel booking/executive assistant type services thinking that when we are spending a lot of time on the road, such a service might be able to pay for itself by focusing on leveraging our status in various programs to get us into upgraded accommodations. I looked at a few places and decided to try Red Butler. My goal was for them to have a complete view of everything about how my family travels and be able to make our hectic schedule a lot more pleasant by thinking through all the different options and finding the ones that would work best for us–especially when it came to getting hotels.

Right about the time I was getting setup with Red Butler, we got an apartment in Manhattan which meant I wasn’t needing to find a hotel room every week. Since travel was only part of what RedButler offered I decided to go ahead and try them out and see if they would be helpful in other areas as well. This review covers my experience so far.

How Red Butlers Works

Red Butler has plans with as few as 5 hours per month all the way up to plans with 75 hours per month. At the 15 hour and higher level, you are assigned a “Dedicated Account Manager” to handle your interactions with Red Butler, but your actual requests are handled from a pool of virtual assistants and travel planners.  According to this page, the Dedicated Account Manager will learn your preferences, then take your requests and assign them to the best person for the job from the pool. This sounds good because it seems like you’d get the benefits of a dedicated assistant with the ability to scale up quickly and have multiple people working on various tasks if necessary. In actual practice, it doesn’t work this way though and the people from the pool simply select tasks that they think they are good at. Unfortunately, it means that each task somewhat starts from scratch as the person doing the work doesn’t really have any context about you. They have access to a list of your preferences, but that isn’t always a great replacement for actually knowing someone. You’ll see what I mean in some of the examples later.

Time is tracked in “points.” A point is basically 20 minutes. So at the 15-hour plan you have 45 points per month. If you run out of points in a particular month you can buy more.

Your requests are handled through a dashboard where you basically create a ticket or issue for what you want to be done. You can also call or text your Dedicated Account Manager and they will create a ticket for you. Early on my experience was that while you can call or text them directly, they kind of made it clear that they are doing you a favor and would prefer you use the web dashboard to type in requests. More recently that seems to have changed and the Dedicated Account Managers seem a lot more aligned with trying to help make the process work smoothly.

The dashboard shows you how many points you have left and also shows how many calls and emails have been made on your behalf. It shows you how many hours have been worked on your behalf under the label “Hours Saved.” The Productivity graph is supposed to show how much time Red Butler has saved you compared to the national average hours that employees waste each month.

It seems as if they are kind of repositioning themselves to be a perk that companies can offer to their employees. So you can basically give everyone access to a certain number of points per month that they can use to do things that will make their lives easier. For example, an employee could use it to set up a doctors appointment or deal with a problem with the cable company without needing to wait on hold. Unfortunately if their service switches to trying to handle a very large number of people with just a few requests each month, they become a bit less useful to someone wanting more personalized help.

Red Butler In Practice

So how does Red Butler work in practice? I think they have some great potential if you can get the right people working your task. The example they give on their website is that your task will be assigned to someone named Karen who they describe as:

Karen has been an executive assistant for over 8 years and is based out of New York, NY. As a vetted and trained RBA, Karen is ready to apply her professional experience and skill set to get hands-on, accelerating your productivity. A great all-around admin and graduate of NYU, Karen also has special expertise in online research, Excel and PowerPoint.

After using them for over a year and a half, I have tasks that go amazingly well–enough that they might have been done by someone who had experience as an executive assistant for 8 years. Most of the tasks are done adequately enough that they save me time. Occasionally we have some that take a lot more work or clarification than I think should be necessary.  Overall though, my experience seemed to be getting better through 2016. Part of this is probably me learning more what types of things are a good fit for Red Butler and part of it is probably Red Butler learning better how to do what I need and improving their processes.

Beginning in 2017, Red Butler changed some of the staff and a large number of my tasks have started being done by new people. It was a bit rougher than I would have liked, but my account manager started taking a more proactive approach that seemed to be really helping–until my account manager left the company.  Some of the new RBAs aren’t as familiar with how to look up the history of previous tasks. While this was inconvenient, it sounds like they have implemented some better training programs for new people and it seems to have helped.

With that background, I’ll finish this post by listing a number of tasks they have done for me along with the results

Soccer Team

I coached my son’s soccer team and used Red Butler to call the parents to remind them of games, snack schedules, practice, pictures, etc. Once I got the list of the team, I scanned it and emailed it with my original request to call and tell everyone the practice time. Once that was done I could simply send in a request that said something like, “Please confirm with the rec center that our game is at 10:30 Saturday and then call the team to remind them Friday afternoon.”  Friday afternoon I’d get an email listing each parent and the status of whether RedButler had spoken with them or left a message. When a new kid joined the team, it was just a matter of emailing Red Butler and saying to include the new child/phone number on the call list going forward.

Dealing with Southwest Outage

We were scheduled to fly back to our home in Kansas from NYC for a weekend the day after Southwest had a big computer glitch. Between the 4 of us, we had 7 large pieces of luggage checked of stuff that needed to get back to our house in Kansas.  Our plane was there on time, but unfortunately, the crew wasn’t and the flight was canceled.  With thousands of flights canceled, there were huge lines at the airport and very long wait times on the phone. Since we weren’t going to make it home for the event we had planned, we decided just to stay in NYC that weekend.  I wasn’t sure how we could get our luggage even if we had wanted it, and everything we checked needed to go back to Kansas anyway. I texted my Dedicated Account Manager at RedButler and told her our preference would be for them to send the luggage to Kansas so it would be where we needed it–even though we weren’t flying that weekend. We headed back into the city to get some sleep. After she had waited on hold for about an hour I suggested that it might be better to deal with in the morning. The next day, Red Butler had arranged for Southwest to take the luggage to the Kansas City airport and then drive it 100 miles to my parents who live near our Kansas home. I didn’t have to spend any time dealing with the airline and RedButler just made everything work perfectly. For me, this was a very big win. Even though our plans had been messed up, I was able to focus on my time on my work and being with my family and not on spending hours on the phone trying to get luggage from one place to another.

Cancel Extended Warranty

We had traded in our car and purchased another one. The deal I had worked out was to include Honda Care, but when I got to the dealer they sold me something else. I was under a time crunch to get back home so I made sure I could cancel it and went ahead and purchased it anyway.

I submitted a request along with the bill of sale asking them to cancel the extended warranty and look into the cost of getting Honda Care and Honda Prepaid Maintenance from a third party. The Red Butler Admin (RBA) did a good job of getting the paperwork started for the cancellation. She also got a quote for the Honda Care and found out that if I want it, I should get it in the first 6,000 miles. She didn’t get the Honda Prepaid Maintenance quote saying that she had been told that our car will indicate when it needs maintenance. (This seemed to indicate she didn’t understand what I was asking for, but I didn’t pursue it.)

She was able to get the paperwork I needed and sent it to me as a PDF to sign with instructions to fax it back to the car dealer. Things got a bit confusing from there. I was able to sign it, but I wasn’t really set up to fax and was just getting ready to get on a plane, so I sent it back to her to ask her to fax it. The next email I got gave me an email address to send it to, so I went ahead and sent it. Of course, I would have preferred that she go ahead and email it on instead of putting it back on me. I think this may have just been a matter of crossed communication though. The dashboard does a good job of showing your interactions, but the RBAs also will email you directly. So between the two chains of communication, I think we just got things mixed up.

I think someone with a little more experience would have gotten the quote for Honda Prepaid Maintenance the first time since I explicitly asked for it. A really good RBA would have also included a quick analysis of the cost of the prepaid maintenance vs. the as-you-go cost even though I didn’t explicitly ask for that.

Overall I think it went well and consider this one to be one of the better successes. It saved me a lot of telephone calls which was very convenient since I was on a plane and working with a client. This actually highlights what I think is one of the biggest strengths of Red Butler–the ability to give you an interface to things that require waiting on the phone when you don’t have time to sit and wait on hold or track people down and wait for a callback.

Send a Cell Phone to India

I needed to buy a Blackberry and send it to a friend in India. So I sent the following request:

Please purchase and send a Blackberry Q5 or Q10 to XXXXX as a gift. His address is in my wallet and so is my Amex Number. Ideally I want an unlocked phone, but a locked phone would be ok if it were significantly cheaper. New or used is fine. You can source it from the US or from India. An new unlocked Q5 from Amazon will usually cost $129 so it should be somewhere in that price range.

I just need to send him the phone. Extra packaging and accessories will only add to the weight so they aren’t needed if there is a way to ship without them.

Experience has been than simply sending through US mail has a very high chance of getting there within a week. Since UPS can easily exceed the cost of the item, I usually send through postal service and just plan to send another one if it doesn’t show up for some reason.

If you can do this for less than $200, proceed without checking with me again.

My “wallet” is a secure area in your dashboard where they keep your data. I tried to give an expected price range, suggesting of the best shipping method, and a budget of $200 that they could act within without needing my input again.

The RBA checked and found that she could not ship directly to the address in India from Best Buy or Amazon. It doesn’t appear that she checked on sourcing it from India. She suggested that they ship the phone to RedButler headquarters and then reship it from there. Two days later I forwarded her a text saying that the phone had been delivered. She confirmed. Four days later she said that they couldn’t ship because the address was wrong. I said it was correct and confirmed that it was the same I address I normally use and asked her what she felt was wrong with that address. She thanked me (but called me Mike) and said she’d have them try shipping it again.

The next day I got a message saying:

Upon confirming with Red Butler’s Headquarters, unfortunately they are unable to delivery your package to India due to the address not complying with any acceptable UPS, FEDEX or USPS mailing destinations.

She went on to say she would ship it back to my house. I quickly replied that she shouldn’t send it back to my house since I wasn’t there and wouldn’t be for a few weeks. I reconfirmed that the address was correct, provided the GPS coordinates and my friend’s email address in case she wanted to verify the address with him directly. I also asked again if she could tell me what part of the address she felt wasn’t right.

The next email I got had a custom’s form to fill out from UPS–even though I had highly recommended using USPS and had given them the info they should have needed to fill it out themselves. I eventually got an email back saying that she had tried to use UPS and they were complaining about the country code and suggested using a different code. I typed the number they suggested into Google and it came up as an area code–in a different country. I also searched for the number I had originally given her and it came up with the exact area where my friend lives and where we needed to send the phone. I also showed her how to search for the area in Google Maps.

Somewhere in here I emailed my Dedicated Account Manager and asked her if she could help. She sent me a form to put the address in line by line. I did and sent it back to her, but that still didn’t seem to help.

Finally I got on a call with my Dedicated Account Manger and Red Butler’s Business Development Manager and told them I give up on this task and to just send the phone back to me. They said that Red Butler doesn’t typically deal with physical tasks, but they tried taking it on for me and probably shouldn’t have. I explained that I was more concerned that I was needing to instruct the RBA on how to type postal codes into Google to see what area they represented and suggested that this should have been their first step. Further I questioned whether the Dedicated Account Manager was actually assigning my tasks to the best possible person to complete them as their website indicates. I was told that no, the dedicated account manager doesn’t assign the tasks and the RBAs actually select their tasks themselves. I tried to find out more about the role of the Dedicated Account Manager because it seemed to me that they should have been able to get involved earlier when it became clear that the task was not progressing. I was basically told that the DAM had responded to every email I had sent her. I agreed to try some more tasks and see if we could find a better way to work together.

So basically my takeaway on this one was that the Dedicated Account Manager gives you a point of contact, but isn’t really acting in a proactive way to make sure things are getting completed correctly. If you have concerns, you are going to need to contact them early on and not expect them to jump in on their own.

Basically, this is the only task that I’ve felt was a complete and utter failure.

Itinerary for Visitors

We had some friends coming to visit us while I was on a project in New York, so I gave Red Butler a list of things we absolutely wanted to see with them, a list of things we might want to see with them, a list of our kids ages, and asked them to put together a schedule we could follow that would have us hit the places to take them along with suggested restaurants. I also asked them to see if there were package deals that we should consider that would cover many of the places we wanted to see. I also said I especially wanted options that would avoid lines either through going when things weren’t busy or with passes to skip the lines.

The first result was basically a list of places copied from the web. For example, I had said we wanted to go to FAO Swartz if they had opened up in a new location. The RBA simply gave me the address of the current store which they had announced would be closed by the time our friends were coming. The list also included a Mars-themed restaurant that had been closed since January 2012.

I contacted my Dedicated Account Manager and asked if my request was unclear or if I was asking for too much. She said everything looked good on my end and spoke to the RBA. The edit I got was much better. It mapped out a daily plan for seeing the things on our list and some recommended restaurants near those attractions. She also noted when certain museums were free and noted the ones that offer reciprocal entry via ASTC where both of our families have memberships.

Other than needing to ask them to go back and re-read my original request, this one was great and they provided a lot more information than I probably would have located on my own.

Ordering Books

Barnes and Noble prints some nice classics in a simulated leather binding that I like. They aren’t particularly expensive and the selection changes over time. I previously had ordered a number of these books but wanted to get any new ones that were available now. I gave RedButler access to my account and they figured out what I had and what I hadn’t and then ordered the ones I didn’t have. Every few months I have them check for new books in this binding that are available. Most of the time it works ok although there was some confusion at one point and they ended up getting some books in different bindings.

In one incredible case, a participant in an antidepressant clinical trial tried to commit suicide by overdosing on the trial pills. The test subject didn’t know it, but their pills were the placebos from the control group so they should have been harmless. Even though the pills themselves had no effect on their body, their blood pressure dropped dangerously low. They had dropped their blood pressure using their mind alone. Through some mental process, they were able to create the effects that the medicine would have had if it were real.

This obviously has all kinds of implications for the way our bodies work, but on an everyday level, it really points out the power of our expectations. If you expect to have a negative interaction with a coworker, your expectation may very well make you respond in a way to get exactly what you expect. The individual who has a difficult time with mathematics may face an uphill battle with the subject hampered mostly by their expectations.

The nocebo effect is a great reminder that if we aren’t getting the results we want, it is worth making sure we aren’t just getting what we expect.  Otherwise, you may be trying to achieve one thing on a conscious level only to be thwarted by your unconscious trying to create the situation you expect.

Expectations are a difficult thing to change and while you can try to “think positive” or maybe “expect positive” you may need to actually do something to give yourself a reason to expect different results. For example, maybe you can’t expect a good interaction with a particular coworker, but what if you try to do something different yourself that will help create a better result? It may not matter so much what you do as it matters that now you will be looking for a positive interaction.

This may explain why people who consistently take small steps toward their goals often get much better results than you’d assume based on the size of their investment toward those goals. They are trying to improve X so they do something small with the expectation that it will improve X. By having the expectation, their subconscious participates in many ways to help get the results they are expecting. Maybe this means they try just a little harder. Maybe it means their brain spends more time working on a particular problem while they are sleeping. Maybe it means their brain instructs their body to regulate certain processes differently.

The point is that what you expect does in some way influence what type of results you get. If your expectations are low in a certain area, then you are going to be working against yourself unless you can find some way to make improvements that also involves raising your expectations.

Buy (yet more) software to make you more productive

Software needs to enable your system.  Just buying a piece of software won’t make you any more productive.  Sometimes when you buy software you are also buying the system and procedure that comes with it.  This isn’t bad, but if you don’t understand that the real thing of value is the system you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

I know people whose first reaction to something they don’t want to do, or something that is taking up some of their time is to go out and buy a multi-thousand dollar piece of software.  Their past is littered with software that isn’t being used for one reason or another but has still consumed a tremendous amount of finances and time.

Hire someone else to manage your finances

Managing your finances is one of those things that you have a bigger interest in than just about anyone else.  Make sure you always stay engaged in the areas where your expertise and interest are likely to be valuable.  That doesn’t mean you can’t hire help–just make sure you understand what is going on and aren’t simply deferring important decisions to someone else who doesn’t have the same vested interest as you.  This goes for a lot of areas–not just managing your finances.

Get a new tablet, phone or computer

Sometimes getting a faster computer can help you save time, but for most people, their bottleneck isn’t the speed of their computer.  Before you run out and spend a bunch of money, make sure your computer processing speed is actually slowing you down and make sure your processes are designed to make you efficient.  If there is one particular task that takes your computer 60 minutes to complete, it might be much more effective to just let it run over lunch or in the evening.  If you buy a new computer to cut that task down to 30 minutes you still have a big slot of time where you are waiting on the PC. (Now if it cuts a 60-minute task down to 3 minutes, there might be some good reasons to upgrade.)

Also keep in mind that if your computer seems to be getting progressively slower, doing a re-installation of the operating system (after you get a good backup) may give you a much faster computer without the expense of purchasing a new one. Many computers come with a disk, hidden partition or program that will let you reset everything to the factory settings.  This will usually get you back to the same speed you had when it was originally purchased.

Buy (yet another) smart phone or tablet

Once again, these can be useful tools, but only if they are part of a good process.  A smart phone or tablet can help enhance your process, but they won’t make you more productive in and of themselves.  Also be aware that you will probably greatly over-estimate the benefits of these gadgets and greatly under-estimate the amount of time they take to learn.

When I ran an IT department, I saw some pretty amazing justifications for buying new gadgets that didn’t make any sense at all.  People found something they wanted and then came up with reasons why it would help them.  Start with how you want to change your work process and then find a tool that will help you implement those changes.

Optimizing first

It doesn’t matter how efficient you are if you are doing the wrong things.  People get caught up in trying to be more efficient by writing down huge to-do lists of things that don’t really need to be done.  If you aren’t working on things that are important, it doesn’t really matter how quickly you can do it.  Make sure you are doing things that are important before you try to optimize your work.

Password Manager

Tools like LastPass and 1Password are great ways to handle logging into the hundreds of websites we all deal with. Last time I checked, I have over 300 passwords I have to keep track of. There is no way I could do that without some software to help me.

Learn Excel

Excel is a very powerful tool and I regularly use it instead of writing a piece of software when I need to do something. Investing some time in really learning how to use Excel is a very good way to boost your productivity. TIP: If you want a place to start, read the help files on Pivot Tables. They are a feature many people don’t know about that will save you hours and days.

Phone Camera

I’ve been surprised at how handy it is to have a phone with a decent camera. I can take a picture of a receipt and attach it to an expense report (using Expensify). I can take a picture of a list of names to make sure I have them later. I’ve even used it to take pictures of a microfiche display when the printer was broken so I could document my research.

Put Notes In The Computer

Years ago, I took the Franklin Covey training. One of the things that helped me the most was simply having a single place to write down everything. If I met someone, their name got written down in the planner. Telephone numbers were written in the planner instead of on sticky tabs. The price I was quoted for repairing my windshield was written in the planner. I don’t carry my planner any more, but the idea of keeping my notes in the same place is still very important. Now days I use Evernote and DevonTHINK.

Record Your Chats

One simple thing that saves me a lot of time is using Google Talk. In Google Talk, all of my chats can be searched just like the rest of my email. I’ll often recall discussing something, but can’t remember if it was on email, chat or the telephone. Since I have all the archives of my chat conversations, I can search those and email at the same time. If there were a way to record and transcribe all of my telephone calls I’d be all set. Even if you don’t use Google Talk, most chat applications will let you archive your sessions and that can work very well.

What do you think? Were any of those tips helpful? Do you have any of your own? If so, please share them in the comments below.