Efficiency

In The Box Podcast

Episode 23: Principle Of Least Interest, Promoting Efficiency, Finding Your Audience And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we talked about getting comfortable with admitting you don’t know something, how the principle of least interest can function for the better, how to promote efficiency when two people are doing the same task, what the best reward is you can give someone who has done great work, and how to find an audience. Enjoy and be sure to subscribe.

Episode 23: Principle Of Least Interest, Promoting Efficiency, Finding Your Audience And More

I don’t know – One way to get comfortable with saying ‘I don’t know”

Principle of least interest – Do you believe in the principle of least interest

Promote efficiency – Does pitting friends against each other for a reward function effectively as a way to promote efficiency?

Work rewards – What is the best reward to give someone for their hard work?

Bonus – What is one way for a business person to find their audience?

 

Stay Positive & Surround Yourself By People Who Are All In

An Answer To Meetings Running Past Time

Garth Beyer

Meetings rarely end when they’re supposed to. Ever wonder what to do about it?

Why not state the meeting will end 5 minutes earlier than you originally thought. Instead of 5:00 p.m., tell everyone it will end at 4:55 p.m.

1) Cushion is better than being rushed

2) When the organizer also keeps time (perhaps by setting an alarm) wrap up doesn’t go past 5:00 and they don’t feel as rushed to finish.

3) Knowing a meeting won’t last for a full hour, attendees will be encouraged to tighten conversation, ask the important questions, and won’t feel bad for staying an extra two minutes, because no one is going to plan something else at 4:57 p.m.

The bad side to this 5-min grace period: people may still view it as “we’re getting out 5 minutes early” and if they don’t get out at 4:55, they may get frustrated.

Then again, all it really comes down to is awareness. For effective meetings, you don’t need to follow this tip, you merely need to think about meeting effectiveness, talk to others about managing their time better, and put it at the front of your mind when you walk into a meeting.

 

Stay Positive & Aware

In The Box Podcast

Episode 9: Referees, Fear x2, Haters And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we both thought we were covering a topic so there’s two times the fear talk, as well as discussion around what inspires something to become a referee, why white people riot, how to deal with haters and why working from home is a poor decision. Enjoy.

Episode 9: Referees, Fear x2, Haters, Working From Home And More

Referees – What inspires someone to become a referee?

White people + riots – Why do white people riot after their sports teams lose?

Fear – If you could give someone one tip on how to not live from a place of fear, what would it be?

Fear x2 – What was the last thing you were afraid of? Did you overcome it? How? If you didn’t, why not?

Haters – How do you deal with haters?

Working From Home – Do you think people should be able to work from home?

 

Stay Positive & Craft Those Connections

What Is Efficiency Anyway?

Garth Beyer

When you say you’ve done a lot, do you also say how well you did it? Likely didn’t think about it.

On the flip side, when you’ve done something really awesome, borderline remarkable, you’re sure to say just how long it took you.

In the game of making things better, we swap quality out with speed. We call ourselves efficient in terms of how much we get done instead of looking at the quality of our work. Speed instead of quality.

Speed is an objective community perception, easily recognizable and measured.

Quality, though, is more subjective. Quality can be compared with what everyone in the agency has made or it can be compared with your personal average. A bit more hard to measure.

In the marketing world, we have enough of the pace-type efficiency. We’ve spent years mastering it, creating charts, laying out entire office cultures based on it. In terms of speed, I’d say we’re near maximum efficiency.

Now that capacity has been met, we have an opportunity to redefine efficiency and pursue filling the void we’ve ignored all these years. We can stop trying to check more boxes and start starring them because we’ve done work that matters, work that’s special.

Being forward, it’s hard to create remarkable work (art) because it’s easier to see ourselves working faster, checking more boxes, getting to more meetings than it is to image ourselves making something remarkable.

To do so, we have to think differently, talk differently, and start seeing things differently.

The neat thing about remarkable work is it’s rooted in the saying, “we’re doing X, but just a bit differently.” No need to invent a new wheel, just think differently about the one you’re using. Only then can you begin giving meaning to the term “efficiency” again. And for that, thank you.

 

Stay Positive & A Little Different Can Go A Long Way

Profits Without Production

Garth Beyer

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I got turned on when I saw Krugman’s NYT’s post, “Profits Without Production.”

I thought to myself, “Finally, he sees it too!” Alas, while I am sure he would agree with me, he sees profits without production in a different light.

Nevertheless, since you cannot read what I thought he wrote. I’ll write it.

It wasn’t until the start of the industrial revolution that “production” became mechanical, void of emotion, and downright dirty. Prior to the industrial revolution, to “produce” held power. Anything that was produced contained a bit of the person who produced it.

Production took hands (many of them), impromptu thought power, and personal insight (not mechanical). There were technicalities before there was anything technical. Then, once the industrial revolution hit, “production” took on an entirely new meaning.

It’s as you can expect, recall, and still see industries trying to continue. During the industrial revolution production was being carried out by robots, assembly lines, programmers, and chain reaction contraptions. No grit, no personality, and no heart. The only connection was between two wires. Profits came from faster production. As a result, the process to creating goods was a stale, monotonous, banal one.

Now, though, we’ve entered the post-industrial revolution which has – I don’t want to say returned, but has reconditioned “production” and given it an all new meaning. Production has maintained its sense of efficiency and multiplicity while involving the human spirit, a person’s passion.

This post-industrial revolution is the collaboration of the assembly line and creativity. However, not in the sense that one piece of creative work is repetitively created, rather, art (whatever your art may be) is continuously created, day in and day out.

For me, I write something different every single day. Alisa Toninato, instead of molding a typical metal pan over and over, sculpts something different, again and again. Now, those who are profiting the most (financially and internally) are those who have salvaged the key parts to production, but, generally, tossed the industrial revolution concept away.

Profits don’t come from production, they come from the interaction created from making more art. And making more art comes from doing enough weird things until they get noticed.

 

Stay Positive & Potatoes Pototoes, I Suppose

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

The Greatest Life Lesson From Getting A Job

Garth Beyer

After the struggle of searching for places to apply at, applying, and going through the interview process, you arrive at your new job. As crappy as it is, most will say, “a job is a job.”

While there is plenty to learn from the process of acquiring a job, what I would like to point out is in regards to the training that everyone must go through. Once you’re hired, the next step before you start – beside the paperwork – is to train, to learn what you will be doing.

You may be handed a small manual. You may be told to shadow someone. You may be shown what you will be doing and asked to run through it once or twice. Other than that, there isn’t much more to the training. In fact, I would bet that after training for any job, you will be nervous about not doing what you need to do right, efficiently, or flawlessly. Simply because you weren’t trained well.

You won’t master anything even with a manual. You won’t master anything by watching someone else do it. (How great would that be if we did though!) You won’t master anything by doing it once or twice. In fact, I wouldn’t even call any of that training. Training for something results in a sense of preparedness which this doesn’t produce.

No employers care about that though. They shouldn’t. Actually, they’re smart not to!

Employers – and now you – know that there is no better training than training on your feet. By that I mean getting thrown into what you need to do and being expected to do it right even with the haunting lack of preparedness.

As people, the best way to learn is to do. We can read, we can watch, we can shadow, we can even give something a shot or two, but the most effective and quickest way to learn anything is to jump in and do it.

For the next time you have an interest in doing something, catch yourself when you begin to “train” for it too long. And to simplify it for you, I can even tell you how long “too long” is. If training for something as important as a job only takes a few hours (maybe a day), then whatever you are training for better be more important than a job if you are training longer for it.

I could have told you from the beginning to not spend much time researching stuff and instead, do. But that would be an insult to the way the world works. The same way that skipping the barely helpful training for a job would be.

 

Stay Positive & For Best Results, Do

Garth E. Beyer

Becoming A Linchpin In A Cubicle

Garth Beyer

The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, ironically spends the majority of the time discussing the 80/20 rule, or Pareto’s principle. Essentially it states that 80% of the best results come from 20% of the work.

If you want to become indispensable, you don’t have to necessarily leave your cubicle. First let’s look at the three types of cubicle workers.

There are the cogs that know what they need to do, their orders and instructions, and make sure to extend the tasks to take up the entire day. They do the same thing every day and are always working, but not getting anywhere.

Then there are the LOL cogs that know what they need to do, and get it done quickly. They then resume surfing the web and entertaining themselves with hundreds of pictures of LOL cats and chain emails.

Lastly, there are the linchpins in a cog position, that know what they need to do and do it quickly and efficiently. Then they proceed to do more than is asked and because they used the Pareto’s principle, have 80% of their time left over to work on maximizing their art, their creativeness. They use the extra time to be more of a linchpin.

Tim Ferriss shared a way to do all the work necessary for a factory job with minimal time in the office and other time to work on starting up a business. I’m suggesting that the same time can be used at home or in a cubicle.

Everyone has the same 24 hours, but only linchpins risk using their cubicle hours to create something remarkable.

 

Stay Positive & Of Course You Don’t Look Busy, You Did It Right The First Time

Garth E. Beyer