Focus on producing the most value to you

Think about whether you can be good enough at something to be in the top ten percent. The answer is yes. It is not easy. There is no simple answer to getting there. The most effective ten percent wouldn't exist if it were easy. The process leading to it is not simple, even if there is a simple answer to the question. Top performers have the greatest efficiency. Peak efficiency means you can make more money doing less hours. This happens by doing the right things. These people generate the most added value for you and others. You can't be good at everything. You have to make wise choices.

It is better for you to be excellent at a few things than to be mediocre at many things. You should also know some things more than others. It is better than knowing as much about many things as others. Focus on core areas of expertise. Keep improving them. You're never done. Others will pass you by if you stay where you are. Nowadays, we are talking about ten thousand hours of focused training if you want to be a top performer. I agree to some extent. I believe there are shortcuts that reduce the number of hours. I also believe that ten thousand hours are not enough without talent. It can even mean double the number of hours. This may not be enough without talent if the competition is tough.

I don't think that constant training is enough to get to the top of the world if you don't have passion for what you do. Focus on your passions because they bring you the most joy and benefit. It's easier for you to enjoy the merry-go-round of good things through your passions. There are exceptions. One of them was Andre Agassi, whose father forced him to practice tennis so much that he hated it. I recommend Agassi's biography to you, where he goes through all the emotional scales that top artists experience during their lifetime.

Productivity vs Efficiency

Your productivity increases when you do things better than before. Your efficiency increases as you reach your goal faster. The difference between productivity and efficiency can be seen in the fact that in efficiency thinking you wonder if you need to do something at all. Increasing efficiency means selective laziness. By focusing on it, you decide whether you are doing things that are useful for you or whether you are doing mandatory things only to reach their minimum effective dose.

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People can be roughly divided into four different groups in terms of work ethic and intelligence. Stupid and lazy is not useful. Still, remember that intelligence comes in many forms and you can get more out of stupid and lazy in the right task. Hardworking and stupid is the most dangerous combination. They cause damage by focusing on the wrong things. They can be workaholics without achieving any benefits. Stupid and diligent people can cause damage, because the mistakes they produce are impossible to correct. Doing pointless and useless things well does not make them important, and spending a lot of time on pointless things does not add value.

Hardworking and lazy are the best people. They probably maximize what they do better than others because they do not want to do unnecessary work. Hardworking and smart is a relatively good combination because they rarely make big mistakes or do a lot of useless tasks. People in this group can learn to be lazy because they have enough capacity to learn to be more efficient. Maximizing efficiency is done by focusing on the things that produce the greatest benefits. Strive to maximize efficiency, especially at work. Think before you act. Even hard-working and lazy people don't always understand the most important things. Often this is due to emotions. However, don't overthink because your instincts are often right and overthinking causes indecision, creating inefficiency.

Work, relative vs the absolute benefit

Hello and happy new year to everyone! 

In the next few months I will put some more material to this blog. It is mostly the material before in Finnish.

It is all about the ratio of effort put to the work and the benefit obtained from it. The benefit is most commonly measured in money. Consider other things, such as meaningfulness. It is difficult to measure because it is individual. In most cases, you will reap the greatest benefit by employing yourself. When working for others, most of your time is spent producing the greatest benefit for some intermediary or to the owners. You have to produce more than your employer pays in wages and side costs of employment. If this is not the case, you must at least convince your employer of your contribution.

A small number of employees produce the greatest benefit. Make yourself invaluable if you want to keep your job in an uncertain economic situation. It might be hard for you to understand it. It could result in losing your job. Employers can also choose the wrong employees to leave. Don't be lulled into your own irreplaceability. Your excellence may be a concept that others do not recognize.

One way to improve the relative benefit is to reduce the time spent on work through working remotely. It improves your relative income through two mechanisms. The first is the reduction of time spent commuting. The second is an opportunity to increase efficiency. The longer the commute takes and the more it costs, the more the relative income rises. Travel expenses often don't matter much because you can deduct them on taxes. Employers rarely compensate for the time you lose commuting, so reducing it is an essential part of the benefits of remote work.

Increasing remote work is a good opportunity for knowledge workers. They can often do their work without arriving at the workplace. Some employers take advantage of this opportunity. Remote work is often a matter of negotiation. Getting an agreement from an employer may require a trial period. Use it effectively, because employers may not believe in its benefits. Practice doing remote work many times before the test time so that you can produce good results. Also, remember to tell your boss that he can end the probationary period at any time if he wants to. Make sure that you can minimize reasons for your boss to refuse a probationary period.

Don't leave room for failure, because you may have to wait a long time for the second test period. You are in a better negotiating position well after the results, when you start discussing the continuation of remote work. Carry out your remote work without interruption. Manage the necessary things efficiently. Your employer must benefit from remote work more than your normal job.

The benefits of remote work in terms of productivity are best seen as the opportunity to focus on the most important tasks without interruptions. They can produce a mandatory refocusing in tasks that require precision, which can last as long as 45 minutes. This is due to the reprogramming of your brain, which does not happen immediately. The duration depends on the difficulty and differences of the tasks and the quality of the interruption. Find a place where there will be no interruptions. For the majority, working at home is not the best idea.

Focus on the most important tasks when working remotely. According to some studies, unnecessary interruptions can take up to a quarter of the working day. Eliminating interruptions can cut up to two hours from your work day. Find yourself a place where there will be no interruptions. This is not a home for most people because there are self-inflicted distractions.

Another mechanism that improves the efficiency of remote work is the ability to choose one's work tasks, doing them at the best possible time. You can eliminate unnecessary work when you decide for yourself. You can more easily avoid pointless meetings when working remotely. When you work remotely, you don't have to focus on less useful tasks that others offer when you're at your most efficient. This is especially true for those who take orders from others.

The third mechanism is that you can choose how and where you do your work. Many workplaces have established ways that have been used for ages, even though they are ineffective. Not all working methods are suitable for everyone. In remote work, you get to choose your own way of working. It doesn't matter where you do your work. You too have your own place where your work goes best. Try many places and draw your own conclusions.

The biggest disadvantage of telecommuting can be greater responsibility. It might not be right for you. Working remotely requires more from yourself. Not everyone is able to take responsibility for their work for long periods of time. In addition, telecommuting can reduce the influence of external factors, which is beneficial in creative fields. On the other hand, the free time increased by remote work improves the opportunities to seek them elsewhere.

For an entrepreneur, the relative benefit is a different matter, because he pays the same amount of his profits in proportion as the profits increase. The entrepreneur also has to take into account the cost of the employees. Everyone should generate more income than they consume the company's resources. In Finland, the amount of money is about twice the salary. The threshold for hiring is higher than in many other countries.

Although the majority of employees should produce added value compared to their costs, this is not the case. A small number of employees produce the greatest added value. Make sure your employer knows the added value you bring. Don't expect fame and glory. Make sure others see your value. As an entrepreneur, you have to think about whether the customers bring more income than what they waste your resources. According to the principle of less is more, a small number of customers generate the biggest profits and losses. This also applies to individual products and services. For example, Apple's iPhones generate more than half of the turnover and an even larger part of the profits.

Less Is More Thinking is non-linear

Less is more thinking is non-linear. It means that using small investments in it brings great benefits. It increases the time used for thinking, but it creates benefits for our lives. It is important for us to be able to think about things that are important and interesting to us. People are individuals. We cannot do everything as others do, producing fun and benefits for both ourselves and our environment. The core idea is that only a small portion of our efforts yield us most of our benefits. Ratios vary by subject. The number can be 80/20 or even 99/1. 20% of the products can generate 80% of the company's sales. An even number is just a number. Actual ratios can be as high as 50/1 or 97/20. The latter could mean that 20% of authors sell 97% of books in the United States. Radical fluctuations are due to the non-linearities of life and the world. This is important in social outcomes.

The difference is very large, which means that by exploiting the great effects, we can maximize the power of small things. We should start by thinking about the small core issues, those that produce the greatest benefits in relation to their size. After that, we can reduce our workload by focusing only on core issues, or we can try to keep our workload the same by increasing their share, thus increasing our benefits. We must not just focus on them. It is equally important to get rid of harmful things from our lives. The less is more principle also works in terms of negative effects. A small part of our lives produce the biggest negative effects. Eliminating them is difficult. We need to pay close attention to those efforts.

Focusing on core issues and eliminating unnecessary things requires constant thinking. We can’t avoid it if we want to get more out of our lives. Detecting them requires independent action and the use of your own thinking. On average, we are wrong all the time, even in important things. This is done by following the herd. It is sometimes right, but not nearly always. Cause-effect relationships are key. Often the consequences are considered to be the causes, even if they are not. For example, when one muscle is sore, the pain may radiate to another that is treated without failure. Pain is usually corrected with an analgesic that takes away the pain but does not eliminate the problem. The most important thing to think about is to find the main cause that will be put in order and through it we will get great benefit with less effort. We do not have to solve all our problems at once, but we can think of those that will bring the greatest benefits.

This way of thinking is much different from how we often see things as linear, that is, one by one. A small portion of actions will always be of the greatest value to us and others. We need to think about which action produces the most value. It is not found in mediocrity but under a deeper layer. We need to think new and get under the surface. The surface is our way of thinking linearly and traveling with the herd. Focusing on the same insignificances as the others, we create the same outcomes. To quote Mark Twain, “When you find yourself doing or thinking like the majority, it’s time to stop and think again.” For us, the best way to get to the highest value is to create a mindset where we often reject the opinions of the majority. They include dominant states of mind, consensus thinking, traditional wisdom, and easy answers. These obscure the reality from us, that is, the things that bring the greatest benefits. Giving up mediocre wisdom brings great benefits, but it is difficult. Changing our thinking is the hardest thing for us because it is hard for us to admit to ourselves that we are wrong.

short introduction about the philosophy part 2.

 Thinking

The purpose of the mindset is to get people to create activities that will greatly improve their lives by separating the few important things from the useless. Conscious consideration of one’s own actions is important, but unfortunately it is not easy. The mindset is not linear or fast but slow and thoughtful compared to “Get everything fast” thinking. Traditional thinking is different from this method and cannot be used in the same way. Above all, this way of thinking makes a person act differently than what society considers wise. One of its purposes is to enjoy life and leave out things that people don’t enjoy. Everyone's life is made enjoyable. Less is more philosophy is meant to maximize enjoyment by reducing time from doing things people do not care about.

The best way to think about modern society is shaped in the film Fight Club, in which the character Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, describes the modern world as follows: “An entire generation refueling, serving at tables, slaves in white collars. Advertising makes them chase cars and clothes, do jobs they hate so they can buy junk we don’t need. To be able to impress people they do not like. ” We have such a terrible amount of useless load in the form of both goods and use of time that we don’t even realize it.

Doing less gets more done

A small part of the making produces a large portion of the results and the smallest portion of the making produces most of the problems. These principles work in both private and corporate life. People do not have the ability to be good at everything. Everyone’s talents are different. Focusing on a few core areas will accomplish much more than trying to do everything possible. People have dozens of things to do at a time, and the biggest benefit comes from focusing on a few tasks that are at their most effective. People are able to do few things at once 100%, which means that many actions produce nothing but wasted effort.

Time is the most valuable commodity

The Western conception of time is distorted and misleading. It says that there is not enough time for anything. This is largely an illusion and not based on reality. Less is more thinking questions this perception and greatly improves efficiency. This requires an open mind and a willingness to question one’s own perceptions of one’s use of time. Time Management is a big business and is based on doing small things a little faster and more systematically, meaning saving expensive minutes or less time all day long. This is due in part to a Protestant work ethic that emphasizes long working days and tireless work. Freeing people from unnecessary waste of time reduces their stress. Less is more is a philosophy focused on improving lives by investing in shorter working days, doing only the things that really need to be done and not increasing the workload.

Well-being does not require great deeds or great wealth

Our well-being is not about big things. We need to keep in mind that in order to do well, we need to think about times when things have been very good or bad. In order to do better, we should increase the number of good times and reduce the number of bad ones. We need to do more of the things we enjoy and reduce those we feel uncomfortable with. If these things come up, people might want to think about how they can increase their comfort. We have a good opportunity today to shape our lives in a happier direction and we must seize our opportunity.