I was talking to a friend the other day about how I was systematically trying to change my internal ideology and how difficult it is to do. Partly, this arises from the fact that you are basically blind to yourself – you live inside you, so it’s hard for you to step outside of your thinking errors or even underdeveloped thoughts.
I recently read The Four-Hour Work Week and was delighted to see that over the last two years, as I have expended monumental effort to change my internal ideologies, I have discovered and implemented the very ideas that Tim Ferriss is promoting in his famous book on time / life management.
Two helps he proposed that I have adopted:
1) Reduce / Eliminate meetings of all kinds. If you can’t get rid of the meeting altogether, see if you can deal with it on the phone or via e-mail. Never have a meeting without an understood goal and end point. This has saved me TONS of frustration and many hours.
2) The Customer is Not Always Right. From a business standpoint, this means get rid of your most high-maintenance customers. They suck up 80 % of your time and energy and give very little back. For someone not in business, this means look at who creates drama in your life and do something to reduce your exposure to these types of people.