Torch busy work

For the next 5 minutes, let’s elevate your career.

In today’s email:

I listen to podcasts when I’m driving, walking, and tidying the house. This week’s Career Wisdom is from Tim Ferris, one of the all time greats of podcasting.

Podcasts are efficient because we get to perform an uncomplicated task while listening to them. This is a productive form of multi-tasking.

AI is excellent to transcribe podcasts and summarize the information. We can prompt top 10 tips, powerful quotes, or themes. Readable or listenable at any time.

Many people avoid having uncomfortable conversations at work. We have a career advantage if we choose to embrace the discomfort. We can be central to resolving disputes, challenging practices, and negotiating favourable terms.

Embracing discomfort can take courage. The outcome of the conversation will be optimized by speaking in direct language about the thing you want to be different. Focus on actions, don’t criticize a person’s character. Keep your tone respectful.

Great leaders embrace discomfort. Again and again.

It’s worthwhile auditing your tasks and projects. Start with the ones over which you have significant autonomy.

Identify the ones that seem to be adding little value. The unimportant tasks that keep you busy but nobody would care much if you stopped doing them.

Now stop doing them. If nobody complains, good. Reconsider if there was more value being created than you thought.

Torching busy work liberates our time to be more productive.

We get serenity and happiness by removing things from our lives that add little value. This can range from physical objects to relationships.

A scarcity mindset hoards; an abundance mindset releases. Out with things that we don’t need.

Timothy Ferriss (1977 — ) was born in East Hampton, New York. Both of his parents ran their own companies. Ferris spent a year as an exchange student in Japan aged 15 and graduated from Princeton University with a B.A. in East Asian Studies. His studies shaped his curiosity and interest in self-improvement and lifestyle design.

Ferriss worked in sales at a data storage company and founded a nutritional supplement business while studying at Princeton. Disillusioned with traditional corporate culture, he explored ways to optimize work and life. This led to him writing the first of his 5 international bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek.

The Tim Ferriss Show podcast has surpassed 1 billion downloads. It features interviews with prominent guests from business, entertainment, science, and sports. Ferriss was an early-stage investor in Uber, Shopify, Facebook, Twitter, and Alibaba. Some of his career wisdom: