Episode 9: The 9 Habits to Stop Now -- The Not-To-Do List

This episode is less than 20 minutes long and just me riffing on productivity. It's intended to give you tools for the week or weekend ahead. Please let me know what you think by pinging me on Twitter (@tferriss) using #TFS! What do you like and what don't you like? Would you like more of these or something else? Thank you, Tim

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  Good day, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another edition of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is an in-betweenisode, as one of my fine readers suggested calling it, and that is "short-form audio essays in between the longer interviews." So if you want the longer stuff, just go to iTunes or anywhere else, search "The Tim Ferriss Show" and you'll find lots of long interviews with everyone from chess prodigies to master photographers to scientists in between. In the meantime, I am going to present a short essay, and it is entitled "The Nine Habits to Stop Now: The Not-to-Do List." I'm not going to edit this, because quite frankly, I don't know how, so if I stumble,

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  please forgive me. Here goes. Nine habits to stop now: The Not-to-Do List.

• 0:51Tim Ferriss?

  Not-to-do lists are often more effective than to-do lists for upgrading performance, and the reason is simple. What you don't do determines what you can do. So I'm going to elaborate on nine stressful and very common habits that entrepreneurs and office workers should strive to eliminate. Focus on one or two at a time, just as you would with high priority to-do items, so one or two per day, no more. And I've worded them in a "not-to-do action" form, to try to make these actionable. Number one: Do not answer phone calls from unrecognized or unknown phone numbers. Feel free to surprise others, of course, but don't be surprised yourself. It just results in one unwanted interruption of various

• 1:35Tim Ferriss?

  types, right? And there's a task-switching cost, so when you go from task to task, you will typically, let's just say 40% of the time, not complete the task that was interrupted. Another reason to use an app like Freedom. And secondly, you'll end up in a poor negotiating position. You don't want to be surprised, so let unknown phone numbers go to voicemail, and consider using something like Google Voice, where you can listen in on the voicemail, or something like SimulScribe, that will allow you to receive voicemails as email.

• 2:06Tim Ferriss?

  Number two, do not email first thing in the morning or last thing at night. The former scrambles your priorities and all your plans for the day, and the latter just gives you insomnia. Email can wait until 10 a.m. or after you've completed at least one of your critical to-do items, alright? And read more, of course, of what I've written about working first thing in the morning offline. And you can find plenty of that stuff on the blog at fourhourblog.com. Number three, do not agree to meetings or calls with no clear agenda or end time. Phrased another way, you always need a clear agenda beforehand and a stated end time for meetings or calls, alright? If the desired outcome is defined clearly, this is what we want to accomplish in this

• 2:49Tim Ferriss?

  call or in this meeting, and there's an agenda listing topics, questions to cover, no meeting or call should really last more than 30 minutes, alright? So request them in advance so you can quote, "best prepare and make good use of our time together," end quote. Number four, on the not-to-do list, do not let people ramble, alright? Small talk takes up big time. So forget, "how's it going?" when someone calls you. Stick with, "what's up?" or, "I'm right in the middle of something, but what's going on?" A big part of getting things done is getting to the point, alright? So you don't have to be rude about this, but remember what I mentioned about task switching and the cost of interruption.

• 3:32Tim Ferriss?

  It's not a question of if you have the time to, say, engage in five minutes of chit-chat. It's whether you can afford the interruption or not, and I guarantee you, 99 times out of 100, you cannot afford the interruption. So, go from, "hey, how's it going? How was your weekend?" to, "what's up?" or, "I'm in the middle of something? What's going on?" Number five, do not check email constantly. Batch checking email and check at set times only, alright? So, of course, I'm somewhat known for the policy of checking email twice per day, something I recommend. I belabor this point enough elsewhere, so I'm not going to elaborate too deeply, but needless to say, get off the cocaine pellet dispenser and focus on execution of your top to-do.

• 4:15Tim Ferriss?

  Instead of responding to manufactured emergencies. All right, so hitting refresh or inbox repeatedly in Outlook Gmail is not a constructive way to spend your time. Email is everyone else's agenda for your time, as I've said before. So set up a strategic autoresponder and check email two or three times daily. You can also use tools such as Boomerang to schedule follow-ups if you don't hear back from someone or to send email at a later point in time so that you're not refilling your inbox as quickly as you clear it. All right, so do not check email constantly, check it at set times. Batch, just like you wouldn't do your laundry when you have two pairs of dirty socks. You wait for a critical mass and then you process.

• 5:01Tim Ferriss?

  Number six, do not over communicate with low profit, high maintenance customers. There is no sure path to success, and this is actually a quote from Bill Cosby, but the surest path to failure is trying to please everyone. So do an 80/20 analysis of your customer base in two ways. Which 20% are producing 80% or more of my profit? And which 20% are consuming 80% or more of my time? Then put the loudest and least productive on autopilot by citing a change in company policy. It's pretty straightforward, right? Send them an email with new rules as bullet points. Number of permissible phone calls, email response time to be expected, minimum orders necessary for A, B, C, D, and E, etc., right?

• 5:43Tim Ferriss?

  Offer to point them to another provider or supplier if they can't conform to the new policies. Sometimes you really have to fire your customers to create the business and the life that you want. Number seven, do not work more to fix overwhelm. Prioritize, all right? If you don't prioritize, everything seems urgent in importance. If you define the single most important task for each day, almost nothing seems urgent or important because that one thing is the force multiplier that will render everything else unimportant or less important or make them all easier, right? So define that single most important task for each day. Oftentimes, it's simply a matter of letting little bad things happen.

• 6:26Tim Ferriss?

  Right, so examples of that would be returning a phone call late and apologizing, paying a small late fee for some type of return, uh, losing an unreasonable customer, et cetera, et cetera, to get the big important things done. The answer to overwhelm is not spinning more plates or doing more. It's defining the few things that can really fundamentally change your business and life. So if you don't have time, the truth is you don't have priorities. So think harder, don't work harder. Number eight, do not carry a cellphone, iPhone, crackberry, whatever, 24/7. All right, a digital leash, do not carry a digital leash 24/7. Take at least one day off per week.

• 7:11Tim Ferriss?

  Turn them off, or better still, and I tend to do this on Saturdays, which is also cheat day, right? Leave them in the garage, in the car, somewhere you can't get easy access. I do this at least once a week, and I recommend you leave the phone at home if you go out for dinner. All right. So what if you return a phone call at, let's say, an hour later or the next morning? You know, as one reader put it to me, uh, uh, when he was explaining how he responded to a MIFt coworker who worked 24/7 and expected the same from everything and everyone else. Quote, "I'm not the President of the United States. No one should need me at 8:00 PM at night. Okay, you didn't get ahold of me, so what bad happened?" The answer, of course, nothing.

• 7:54Tim Ferriss?

  All right, last but not least, number nine, on the not-to-do list, the nine habits you should stop now, do not expect work to fill a void that non-work relationships and activities should. Work is not all of life, all right? Your coworkers shouldn't be your only friends. Schedule life, cool activities, and defend it just as you would an important business meeting. Never tell yourself, quote, "I'll just get it done this weekend," end quote. That's how you end up screwed, where you have neither productivity nor relaxation. So review Parkinson's Law in the Four Hour Work Week. Force yourself to cram within tight hours so your per-hour productivity doesn't fall through the floor. Focus, get the critical few done, and get out.

• 8:39Tim Ferriss?

  Emailing all weekend is no way to spend the little time you have on this planet. And those are the nine. So to reiterate and summarize this, it's very hip to focus on getting things done. There are a million new tools and tricks every day, every week, on a million different websites. But getting things done truly is only possible once we remove the constant static and distractions. If you have trouble deciding what to do, as many people do, including me, just focus on not doing. Focus on the not to do list.

• 9:13Tim Ferriss?

  Different means, same end. So I hope you enjoyed the essay and I would love to hear what other items you would put on your critical not to do list. If you had a not to do list of only two or three things, what would you add to that list that I didn't just describe? I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what you thought of the episode. Just ping me on Twitter @Tferris, T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S, and thanks for listening.