Post deleted by Mat Sklansky

[ElSapo]

I have not read the book, so this is far from fair criticism...

...but the NYT article seems to be about some rich guy who decided to pay cheap labor to read this email and do menial tasks for him, and then said that reading less email was the path to more time.

If I could pay someone to come in and do my job for me, yes, I too would have more time.

[ElSapo]

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[ QUOTE ]
If I could pay someone to come in and do my job for me, yes, I too would have more time.

[/ QUOTE ]

ummm, exactly?

You don't see how thats pretty useful information if you are a business owner? lol

Lots of people doing work that could be done for them for $10 an hour. They could use that extra time to sit on the beach or grow their business or do whatever they want.

The book goes into great detail about ways to save time, why to save time, and also what to do with your time once you have it.

If you do not see the value in that, well...

[/ QUOTE ]

If that's the premise of the book, then it's just not directed at me and my criticism is meaningless. If it's directed at business owners, that's not me.

[AZK]

I've heard great things about the book, haven't gotten around to reading it.

Re: the telecommuting idea - yeah it's great, but it's a fine line between being overproductive and underproductive on your off days as soon they will expect more work from you or better projects, or you will be too useful or not useful enough, just something i've heard from people that do it.

re op:

yeah it would be great to hire a bunch of people to work for me while I sit on a beach, unfortunately I can't , 99% of the population is also in this predicament....

If I had 10M then this would be no problem...but then I likely wouldn't need the book?

Sounds like the same problem as the rich dad/poor dad books or how to make a million books... you could start by saving your money and NOT buying this book....

This is just from what I gather in your post. When I read the book I'll probably change my mind.

[Gildwulf]

I see this working for certain types of jobs that have a lot of administrative crap (booking flights, schedules, etc), but a lot of my work is client management/networking/etc that can't really be outsourced. The stuff that can be done at a computer is privileged and confidential and I would probably get fired if I tried to outsource it.

What I would consider this for is

a) paying some guy to be my pokertracker at sites without poker tracker (ie sifting through hand histories, recording date and time, + or - $ on session, limit, number of hands, etc)

and

b) keeping track of friends' and families' special occasions, sending cards and gifts, etc., making sure I keep in better touch with people.

[Matt Flynn]

I liked this book and changed a couple things I was doing based on its recommendations. The presentation is a little slipshod, and the author clearly works more than 4 hours a week, but whatever.

Here are the changes. I've long been a fan of not wasting time on stuff that isn't fun or productive, so most were minor.

1. I spend less time on the internet. This frees up time. The "information diet" is a strong recommendation imo. Probably it's a half hour a day difference. Previously I avoided almost all tv and print media and still do.

2. I am placing greater emphasis on outsourcing with my current widget project. For example, I was going to write the patent app drafts to save money. Now I'm paying a lawyer to do it all.

3. I have further reduced employees' wasting of my time. People like to "meet" to discuss "issues." When the issues are interpersonal, I find people love to talk and hate to be nice to their significant idiot, so cutting this off has freed up some time.

4. It encouraged following my prior goals of working less on forced tasks and more on interesting projects.

5. I have taken extra days off to do fun stuff.

My life has not changed. Nothing in this book was new to me. Much of this correlates with age and is independent of the book, so take it with a grain of salt.