Geeky Peek

I recently came across this gem of an essay from Bertrand Russel – http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

I am sure many of you have read this previously, I hadn’t.

If you have investors and a competitive, fast-moving market… annoyingly a startup is not a place where a 4 hour work day can happen. Early on at Peek, my average day was:

1. 7am – rise and talk to lads in China doing manufacturing, etc.
2. 9am – At office
3. 6:30-7pm – Leave office
4. 10pm – talk to lads in China again

It was not a well-balanced life! On top of that we were flying to China every 3-4 weeks (btw Beijing is one of my favourite cities).

The article made me reflect, could I have done all the tasks that needed to be done in a 4 hour workday. The answer is surprisingly undoubtedly ‘yes’. From a pure productivity perspective, yes, it is possible for me to do all my ‘tasks’ in a 4 hour period on any given day.

The problem that everybody is familiar with is ‘meetings’. Many demonize meetings as a waste of time, especially the anti-corporate culture startup scene. I, on the other hand, like meetings. In a startup you typically have a bunch of new folks working together on a project for the first time, meetings are crucial in forcing collaboration and group problem solving. People under-appreciate a team that can make decisions together, cohesively. Good meetings are the cornerstone for good group problem solving and collaboration. They are so unbelievably important… but yet so many people have ineffective, crappy, time-wasting meetings (which I’ll address with my handy list of dan-approved meeting tips).

So, while 4 hours of pure ‘work’ per day is quite possible when you toss in the overhead of communications and spending time developing relationships & teamwork skills with your peers, I’m not sure you can get under a 8-10 hour day. And then toss on personal development, side experimental projects, etc and next thing you know you’re hitting 10-12 hours per day. Gulp.

And thats also why I hate the book the 4 hour work week. It assumes that the best practice in life is to be a reclusive asshole who just makes decisions for people. The book smells of narcissism and tramples on the communication skills needed for humans to work together effectively.

My tips for making meetings effective:
1. Always have an agenda.
2. Always have a supporting document (helps crystalize your thoughts in advance, gives pre-reading). But most often don’t use the document (nothing worse than a group staring at powerpoints).
3. Tell jokes.. laugh often.
4. Do not be the hardass annoying time cop who makes the meeting stressful. Make sure your agenda is unambitious off the top in terms of time needs so you don’t have to make the meeting stressful. “Productive meetings” are sucky and stressful, “team building” is important.
5. Be very diligent in making sure everybody participates. Especially the angry sys admin in the corner typing away on his terminal…
6. Let tangents happen, don’t be in such a rush to say “lets take that offline”
7. Remember that generally team building is in fact the goal of many meetings
8. Go to the bar, park, a new office room, couches, anywhere interesting to change things up