<25> Success by Doing Less
1/13/25
In the next a few posts, I’d like to share a few of all-time favorite readings that have changed my life. Well, at least they tried ^^ to change my life. This WSJ article was written seven years ago today (12-Jan 2018) and it continues to give me an uplifting experience whenever I revisit it. It’s about “how to survive better” and suggests a simple solution: Do less. That most top performers in business have one thing in common: They accept fewer tasks and then obsess over getting them right. 3 favorite parts from the article:
The “Natalie Question”: We had similar education and experience and had been selected for our skills by the same rigorous screening process, but she did better while working less. [The sentence before this one reads: “He explained that Natalie never stayed late—she worked from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., no nights, no weekends”]
Selectivity as the Key: The common practice we found among the highest-ranked performers in our study wasn’t at all what we expected. It wasn’t a better ability to organize or delegate. Instead, top performers mastered selectivity. Whenever they could, they carefully selected which priorities, tasks, meetings, customers, ideas or steps to undertake and which to let go. They then applied intense, targeted effort on those few priorities in order to excel. We found that just a few key work practices related to such selectivity accounted for two-thirds of the variation in performance among our subjects. Talent, effort and luck undoubtedly mattered as well, but not nearly as much.
Many people never question whether their work produces value: When I conducted research at Hewlett-Packard some years ago, I visited an engineer at the company’s Colorado Springs office. He said that he was too busy to talk: He had to complete his goal for the week as specified in his job description, namely, submitting a quarterly report about the status of a certain project. He sent off the report in time, as he had in every previous quarter. Goal accomplished, right? What I knew—and he didn’t—was that the corporate research and development division in Palo Alto no longer used those quarterly reports. His dispatches sank to the depths of an email box that no one bothered to check. He had met his goal according to his job description, but he had contributed zero value.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-succeed-in-business-do-less-1515770816
A new year is upon us. Let’s all succeed by doing less! 😊