Quick bit on Microsourcing (yes, still a tease)

It’s been a short while since my last post, but let me tell you why: I’m still trying to figure out how to make Microsourcing work. The key idea with microsourcing is that you should break up any outsourcing task into small chunks that can quickly be outsourced, easily measured for results, and then paid in smaller increments. This should alleviate any of the problems traditionally associated with outsourcing: poor communicaton, poor control, and lack of visibility. But, that said, it’s hard to know just how small a task should be. So, I’m still working on that.

Get efficient. Do Online Printing.

But more to the point, I want to discuss what has recently been a bit of a god-send to us four-hour-a-weekers: online printing. What is online printing? To us 4HWWers, it’s a way of outsourcing your printing needs to a third party at a cost and complexity much lower than you can do on your own or with a local print shop. Online print shops, like PsPrint give small shops and small businesses (or the muse that you are creating) a way of delivering high-quality print products (such as business cards, brochures, flyers, posters, booklets, catalogs, CDs, and even things like calendars) with short-turn around times, online convenience, and very competitive prices.

I’ve worked with many local print shops, and while I always love the small guy, the truth of the matter is that they really can’t compete. I’ve been very frustrated by the large “print shop” chains that are even worse than Wal-mart equivalents since they are higher price, poor quality, worse service, and fewer offerings than the online print shops can offer. In truth, no traditional printer or local copy shop can really match the breadth, capability, price, and quality than online print shops can offer.

Here’s how I use them: need to quickly put together a booklet or flyer for an online product or print offering? Want to quickly put together some sales sheets for that muse you are working on? Need some business cards to create your in-person identity? Quickly put together a sketch, or even better, use the online design tools provided by these online printers to create custom print products in minutes. Many of these online printers offer customizable templates. Some even go an extra step and will handle mailing and deliver logistics for you as well, including providing mailing lists and custom mailing services.

Why am I saying this now? I’m still surprised at how little is mentioned about the power of the Internet not only for delivering online goods, but also for printing and distrbution of real-world items. Online print shops really provide a way of getting your ideas and concepts to market quickly…. and more importantly, keeping you to your four day a week goal.

Like many of you, I struggle to get things done on time that I really need to get done. I get bogged down in the grunt work when I should be focusing on the bigger picture items. You know the drill, focus on the important but not urgent, but all the while the urgent things eat up your time. If you did a Time Audit, you’d find that much of the time is being taken up by short-term activities that can easily be reduced, eliminated, or outsourced. Yet they stay on your to-do list anyways.

Why is that? I believe it’s because of the psychology of delegation. Anyone who has been doing something for a while believes that they can do a task faster, better, and less expensively than a third party. And in many ways this is absolutely correct. I have found, through my own experience, that I can perform better in at least two out of the three criteria (faster, better, cheaper) than anyone else I can get to do the task. But that is NOT the point!

If a task can be outsourced, it can be defined. If it can be defined, it can be measured. If it can be measured, you can figure out what things need to be learned to do it well. That means by definition anyone who has the time or talent to do the task can do the task. Including yourself. When you do it yourself, you are keenly aware of the requirements and the specifications for doing the job, so you can say that you’re being 100% efficient with regards to requirements-to-implementation, whereas a third-party can be very requirements-efficient, but never as requirements-efficient as the person who is in control of the requirements (that’s you). In that way, you feel that you can do it “better” than a third-party.

Likewise, outsourcing comes at a cost. Your cost is your cost of time, whereas the outsourcer’s cost is the cost of labor. Now, Tim would say that your time-cost is greater than your outsource-cost, and that’s absolutely correct. However, what’s not factored into the equation is the problem of free cash flow. Many startups and muse-focused entrepreneurs simply don’t have the free cash to hire an outsourcer. So even though the time-cost is more than the labor-cost, the cash requirements for labor-cost are higher (cash is tighter than time), so in that case you feel that you can do it “cheaper” than a third-party.

And finally, outsourcing comes at a time-efficiency cost. Just as the person who knows the requirements will be the most able to translate those requirements into reality, that person will be able to execute on it the fastest. It simply takes time to manage a third-party, check on their quality, and then integrate the results with everything else going on in the business. In this manner, because of all those time inefficiencies, if you do it yourself, you feel that you can do it “faster” than a third-party.

Let’s deflate the Better, Faster, Cheaper Bubble

The most successful companies are the ones that most effectively delegate tasks in the most economically-efficient manner while minimizing the inefficiencies inherent in delegation. Of all the constraints imposed on the business (financial, market, competition, and time), the most inflexible is time. You can remove financial constraints by borrowing, selling other products or services, selling parts of the business, or other means. You can remove market constraints by finding new products to sell, and/or focusing the business on specific niches where you are more competitive. But you can only remove time constraints by finding other people to do the work. Simply put, as the business grows larger, the time constraint issue becomes primary. All other problems can easily be solved if you can effectively and efficiently manage time.

In this way, the key to getting more out of your time and multiplying the money-return of time is to multiply the amount of time available. Perhaps for my later academic career as a business school professor, I could actually come up with an equation called the “Money-return of Time” that somehow calculates how to optimize the use of time for best revenue potential, but that’s for later. I think we all know that the best way to get more from your time is to multiply the amount of time you have to get things done and remove the inefficient activities from your time consumption. Both of these things: multiplying available time and increasing time quality requires outsourcing.

Effective outsourcing therefore means being keenly aware of the potential inefficiencies of time, quality, and cost inherent in outsourcing and coming up with a strategy to mitigate those inefficiencies. Therefore, it is not about whether to outsource, but rather how and when.

Introducing Microsourcing…

To help figure out how to outsource effectively while minimizing the time, cost, and quality inefficiencies, I’m going to introduce in my next blog post the concept of microsourcing. Simply put, microsourcing is an outsourcing strategy that focuses on chopping a task into more fine-grained tasks until you’ve reached a point of optimum, delegating that task to be performed within 24 hours, then quickly ascertaining the quality of that work, and quickly integrating that work with the rest of the activities. Doing so allows you to minimize cost, time, and quality inefficiencies and keep you focused on important, non-urgent items. Stay tuned, and we’ll explore this topic in greater detail together.

First, I optimized the Time Audit spreadsheet. Thanks to Hilarycat for some good contributions. I’ve attached it below:

Time Tracking Spreadsheet 1.1

Big Changes:

• I tried to use Brick’s Life Management Matrix(“Essential & Unforgetable”), but it simply did not work for me. I found that focusing each task on a Dreamline tasks, or if not, realizing that the task does not contribute to dreamline activity, was sufficient to realize that goal. However, Covey’s quadrants were still very helpful. Indeed, one should organize one’s day to do Important, Urgent tasks first (without distraction) and then move to Important, Not-Urgent tasks as quickly as possible skipping unimportant, non-urgent tasks and outsourcing or automating unimportant, urgent tasks
• Metrics and measurement. Simply recording tasks doesn’t accomplish the task of the time audit. What’s required is to look at trends. One week is probably enough to see beginning of trends, but probably it takes two weeks to really and fully see the trends. So, I have now another worksheet in the spreadsheet that tracks the ongoing tasks and allows you to pinpoint the time wasters and your 80/20 important tasks
• After listening to the wonderful YouTube videos shown on Brick’s Life Sutra blog, I realized that tasks should not only be listed, but you need to determine WHY you are doing those tasks and what happens if you don’t do that. If you can’t answer those questions, then don’t do them!
• Also, I added some columns to evaluate whether the task was an 80/20 task (that is, it occupied 20% of the time, but had 80% of the results), as well as added “Trim” to the set of next steps. This means that I should do this task if it appears again, but focus on reducing the time allocation.

The first thing to realize is that there’s three parts to effecitve Time Auditing:

• Determining the tasks to be accomplished and planned time allotment
• Faithfully recording actual execution time and noting any interruptions.
• Recording the history of all such tasks for later analysis

It’s really the second bullet that we’re after for this audit. Spending time on time recording is just a means to an end, so it should be done as effectively and efficiently as possible. But simply recording time is not enough. One has to first have a plan for how that time will be spent, and then, an audit of how the actuals vs. the planned result. Think of it like a budget. First, plan your budget, then measure your spending, then determine the variances, using that to determine how to alter your actual spending or the planned budget.

So, what were the lessons learned? In my case:

• Time auditing really doesn’t take that much time. I spend 4 minutes in the morning setting my list of tasks and defining when I would like to accomplish them. I then spend less than 20 seconds after each task indicating how much it actually took and then moving it to the Cumulative Time spreadsheet.
• I spend too much time task switching. Focus, focus, focus on one task and one task only and do it to completion without being interrupted. Which leads me to…
• Too many interruptions! Phone, email, and high-urgency task seem to be time distractors. When something is urgent, switching from one task to another simply invites more urgent tasks, distracting you from big-picture tasks.
• I must have ADD, because I can’t seem to be able to effectively focus on something without something else popping into my head demanding my attention or I get mentally exhausted and need a break. I think the 10-2*5 approach might work to combat that. Take tasks 10 minutes at a time. Then, take a 2 minute break at the end of each period, repeating 5 times and then taking a longer break afterwards. I use an egg timer now to time my tasks. We’ll see if this helps.
• Eat the frog! There’s always a task (or two or three) that seem to appear on the to-do list, but never get done. Why? Because they keep being postponed. The only way to counteract that is to do those tasks FIRST. That’s called “eating the frog” because when confronted with a bunch of things to eat, one of which is a frog, that just keeps getting put off. But if you eat the frog first, everything else can only be that much better. So eat the frog!
• Be more specific with your tasks! A vague task never seems to get done or even be done at all. Be specific to the point of micromanagement. If you want to make sales, don’t just have a task called “Make Sales” cause it will never get done and always appear. Instead, you should have a task called “Email the first 50 contacts on A spreadsheet and pitch B service”. Then, this can get done. Indeed, “Make Sales” is not a task, but a category. The more specific activity is the task in this category.
• Keep your email clean!!! Shoot for the Zero Inbox. You should not use your inbox as a to-do list. You should keep it clean at the end of the day since that will indicate tasks accomplished. If you need a task to be done, move the email to a to-do inbox, but then list the to-do in your daily tasks for that day or the next. Don’t create more frogs! This does force you to read and respond to email in batches. But you already know that if you read the Four-Hour Work Week.

Hilarycat had some other differences of thought on this spreadsheet, as follows:

Your Task and my Account are not actually the same. Account is what account you’re working on (literally). “The Jefferson account” vs. “Send out promos.” One’s a verb, the other’s a proper noun You can easily aggregate what you did for a given Account if you’re listing Account… and that way draw conclusions like “Wow, the Jefferson account is a huge time sink and makes little money – I should quit working with them” that you can’t do with entries like “send out promos” or “register domain name.”

Likewise, your Category is not the same as my Functions. Yours are vague – Core Business, Personal, Muse… Mine are highly specific business functions – Marketing, Coding, Writing, Research, Communications. Again… how does it serve you to analyze time spent on Core Business vs. Muse when you’re really trying to figure out what you can eliminate and outsource? Whereas if you’re tracking by function, you can realize, “Oh, I spend 4 hours a day writing emails… I guess it really is time to implement Tim’s communications obstacle course.”

I’m going to try to transition now from my do-it-yourself spreadsheet to the Personal Time Manager utility suggested by Brick and Hilarycat. If I can get the auditing part done without interfering with planning (you still have to define your daily to-do list), then I think this can work. I’ll get back to you with my results on that shortly.

But that’s missing the point a bit about why I’m doing this (and why I have a feeling other 4HWWs are also trying to audit their time). I’m trying to find out where I’m losing my time. I am nowhere near my 4HWW time goals, and in part that’s because I’m running around doing so many tasks that at the end the day, I wonder where all the time went. The 4HWW Time Audit tool is not meant to be something to be used if you are already time efficient, nor is it meant to be an operational tool… it is a diagnostic / auditing tool only.

The point is that I’m still working 12+ hour days and not getting any closer to my 4HWW goal. Part of the problem is that I’m already doing too much… I’m already task switching, so I’m not making the problem any worse by doing some analysis. Just like a doctor needs to do some tests, perform some scans, or do some blood work to figure out what’s ailing the patient, I need some analysis to figure out what’s ailing my time. The bloodwork / tests aren’t meant to solve the problem — they are purely diagnostic. Similarly, the 4HWW Time Audit is not meant to govern the way you spend your time, but rather audit the way you have been spending it. Once that has been identified enough to determine the patterns and trends… toss the 4hWW audit tool! It’s time to Eliminate, Automate, Outsource, and Repeat.

This is an analysis tool, not a management tool. If you already know where your time is going, then don’t use this sheet! This sheet won’t help you, and in fact, it will be a hindrance For those who are already cramming a hundred tasks into a single day, this 4HWW Time Audit sheet aims to find out what tasks are the time-wasters, which tasks are the ones to accentuate. This is purely an analysis tool, not a tool for running something once you’ve already achieved the efficiency point.

In any case, the question was how much time to spend on this worksheet. The answer: as little as possible. I spent 2 minutes on this spreadsheet first thing this morning assigning tasks and allocating time, and then 30 seconds on this spreadsheet after each task recording how much time it took. No more time than that. No need to put “work on the spreadsheet” in the spreadsheet. I had 10 tasks total for the day. I think 5 minutes aggregate invested in determining my time wasters goes a long way to getting me to 4 hours a day!

Thoughts? Do you agree? Disagree?

Make sense?

While Tim Ferriss talks about Elimination and Automation as two of the 4 cornerstones to making the Four-Hour a Week lifestyle happen, he provides no real techniques for going from a 40+ hour workweek to a 4 hour workweek other than starting to outsource things and manage your email and phone habits. What first needs to happen is an effective observation of how time is being spent and how to wrangle it.

My 4HWW blogging buddies (BTW, welcome new buddy id_bob at Four-Hour Work Week and Customer Support!) have all talked about doing a time audit and focusing on time management, but I can’t stress its importance enough. Rather than going cold turkey from 60 hours to 4, I think anyone serious about reducing their ineffective time needs to do a proper running analysis of how they spend their work day.

On that note, I’ve created a spreadsheet that I use every day to figure out where my time is going, plan what I hope to accomplish that day, determine if my time estimates are right or wrong, and then make a decision how I will handle future such tasks. I want to share that timesheet with you and get your opinions of it. Here it is below, with an example of how it is filled in:

Download 4HWW Time Tracking Worksheet

Let me explain the columns in this time management spreadsheet:

• Task — A quick description of the task to be done. Most Important Tasks (of which there should never be more than 3 in a day) should be identified by bold, italics, and red-colored font.
• Category — Some tasks might be work related, some might be muse related, others personal, some in pursuit of a dreamline activity, or what have you.
• Planned Start and Planned End — When are you planning to start and end this task? Be specific and get ‘r done.
• Time Allotted — A calculated field that tells you the obvious… how much time you were planning for this task
• Actual Start and Actual End — When you managed to start this task and end it
• Actual Time — How long did it really take?
• Actual Cost — If you noticed, this spreadsheet also tries to calculate your hourly cost. It takes into account your salary (what you want to be making on a yearly basis), divides it by 50 weeks and then by 5 working days in a year to determine your daily rate (2 weeks of non-work and 2 days of non-work per week are normal). Your hourly rate is calculated by dividing this by eight. Now, of course, we aren’t going to work eight-hour days, but neither are we working 24 hour days. Your cost should be a cost that can be easily compared with outsourcers. So, this is a good way to do it. Anyways, based on that hourly cost, the cost of performing this particular task is calculated. “My goodness! It really cost me that much to do that??” Now, you might not care about all the costs. Personal tasks, in particular, don’t have costs because you want to spend time on those. However, it’s worth seeing how much you’re “investing” in those personal activities and thus make sure you are deriving some benefit from that time investment.
• Interrupted? — Was this task interrupted by something else (especially something not on your planned to-do list)? If so, it’s possible it took longer than it should. Next time around, what can you do to eliminate unplanned, unproductive, unnecessary interruptions?
• Dreamline Goal — Does this task fulfill any 4HWW Dreamline goal? If so, indicate which dreamline it addresses (6, 12, or 18 month), and which activity. For example: “6mo – Doing – Become a Great Cook“
• LM Quadrant – My buddy Brick at Life Sutra wrote recently about the idea of the Life Management Quadrant — focusing tasks on the Essential, Unessential, Forgettable, and Unforgettable. For me, this is a vital column in any time management spreadsheet. By itself, it’s not enough to manage tasks, but used in combination with everything else, I think it’s quite potent (thanks, Brick)! For this exercise, I’d like to use the classification EF, EU, UF, and UU to denote Essential / Forgettable, Essential / Unforgettable, Unessential / Forgettable, and Unessential / Unforgettable tasks. The idea is that core 4HWW tasks should be Essential and probably Unforgettable. Those Essential tasks that are Forgettable should probably be Eliminated, Outsourced, or Automated. Essential tasks that are Unforgettable should be focused on and optimized / repeated. Unessential Forgettable tasks should definitely be eliminated. Unessential, Unforgettable tasks should probably be part of your long-term dreamline activities. Not to be eliminated, but something to get better focus on.
• Next Action — What should you do next time around if this task creeps up on your schedule? There should really be only four possible answers: Eliminate it, Automate it, Outsource it, Repeat it.

Also, remember to include breaks, scheduled phone calls and appointments, and lunch. These are all tasks…hopefully you’ll have more time for those and less for those needless UF tasks!

I’m going to be using this spreadsheet on a daily basis… religiously. I want to see how with careful time auditing, I can get to more effective use of time and closer to my 4 Hour goals. I will also be continuously tweaking this spreadsheet since I’m sure there will be things to add or change. I hope you will also put this to use and suggest ways to make it better.

As Peter Drucker says, “that which is measured is managed”, and that means time management just as much as anything else. Be ruthless in your use of time and the rewards, hopefully, should multiply.

Download 4HWW Time Tracking Worksheet

• Most Important Tasks (MITs): At the start of each day (or the night before) highlight the three or four most important things you have to do in the coming day.
• Big Rocks: The big projects you’re working on at any given moment. Set aside time every day or week to move your big rocks forward.
• Inbox Zero: Decide what to do with every email you get, the moment you read it. If there’s something you need to do, either do it or add it to your todo list and delete or file the email. If it’s something you need for reference, file it. Empty your email inbox every day.

Sounds like the ideals of dreamlining, eliminating, and automating, eh? 47 more ideas at the link!

The problem is that my previous shredder wouldn’t just eat the whole envelope. Like most consumer shredders, it barely could eat five pages at a time. Those credit card applications with the “fake” credit cards would easily jam the shredder if I just tossed it in. So, I would have to open up the envelopes and feed in the application a few sheets at a time, tossing the fake card in the process.

While this might not seem like a lot of time, it piles up. I would have a stack of things to shred, and easily spend an hour or two going through that pile (yes, I do get that much junk mail). I wanted to cut that time down to zero. So I needed a shredder that can eat through any junk mail I tossed at it, the whole envelope and all. Right from mailbox to shredder, basically.

So, after a few minutes of searching on Amazon.com, I found the Fellowes Powershredder PS-77Cs, and I have to say it’s been working like a charm for a month! And it cost less than $120. A good outsourcing decision, if I say so.

Here’s some more specs on this paper-eating monster:

• SafeSense sensor stops shredding the instant paper is touched
• Can process CDs, small paperclips, credit cards and staples
• Shreds up to 12 sheets per pass, at a rate of 11 feet per minute
• 9″ paper entry width; 7-gallon basket
• Creates confetti shreds; includes five-year warranty on cutter
• Amazon.com Sales Rank:

  Popular in this category: (What’s this?)

  #2 in

  Electronics > Office Electronics > Other Office Equipment > Shredders

Equipped with a 9″ wide front feed paper entry, the PS-77Cs easily accepts standard letter or legal size documents. The durable steel cutters accept credit cards, staples and small paper clips, also shreds CDS in a designated slot safely. Quiet operation is perfect for use in office cubicles. Electronic auto start/stop feature ensures quick & easy automatic shredder operation. Shredder automatically shuts off and alerts the operator when a jam occurs, 7-gallon pull-out wastebasket is ajar or shredder is overheated. A clear window allows user to see if the 7-gallon wastebasket is full, while the convenient sheet capacity gauge helps prevent paper jams. Fellowes includes a five-year warranty on the cutter.

I’m not being paid to post this. I really am serious. One less thing to worry about, a few minutes shaved off each day, a few hours each month. If you are a productivity zealot, search for all your time wasters and conquer them when you can.

For those of you saying that I should just call the credit companies to get me off the list of people who accept credit card solicitations, let me tell you that it really doesn’t work. The moment you move or something changes in your information, you’ll get them. It takes less time for me to chuck it in the shredder than it does to deal with Trans Union, Experian, or Equifax.

Shred through your time wasters. Get a more productive shredder!