Too much information? Ignore it
oprac. AMI 2007-11-19, ostatnia aktualizacja 2007-11-19 10:32:03.0
After reading Timothy Ferriss's recent best seller, "The 4-Hour Workweek" (Crown), Jason Hoffman, a founder of Joyent, a software company, urged his employees to cut out the instant-messaging and multitasking. From now on, he told them, severely restrict e-mail use and conduct business the old-fashioned way, by telephone.
"All of a sudden," Mr. Hoffman said of the results, "their evenings are free. All of a sudden Monday doesn't feel so overwhelming."
Timothy Ferriss is a boyish first-time motivational author from Long Island whose curriculum vitae includes stints as a competitive kickboxer and tango champion, writes Alex Williams
in the New York Times.
Mr. Ferriss's business lessons, focused on cutting out useless information, have been culled from his six years running a modest sports nutrition company that sells, mostly over the Internet, supplements used by athletes to increase reaction speed and muscle power.
Without appearing on Oprah Winfrey's show or doing a book tour, Mr. Ferriss has seen his book quickly become a best seller, largely on the strength of blog chatter in the tech community. Subsequently, he has become a pet guru of Silicon Valley, precisely by preaching apostasy in the land of shiny gadgets: just pull the plug. Crawl out from beneath the reams of data. Stand firm against the torrent of information.
His methods include practicing "selective ignorance" - tuning out pointless communiqués, random pieces of information, and even world affairs (Mr. Ferriss says he gets most of his news by asking waiters). Work crisis? Pay someone else to worry about it - ideally in Bangalore. Once the e-clutter is cleared away, he argues, there will be plenty of time to scuba dive the Blue Hole in Belize, just as he does. Or at least fantasize about it.
Like most motivational gurus, Mr. Ferriss gives readers a dramatic back-story filled with recollections of the grim days in which he was lost in the wilderness, working 10-hour days on his supplements company in 2003 instead of enjoying what was supposed to be a vacation. He then offers his road-to-Damascus story of enlightenment, wherein he rebounds out of a work-induced nervous breakdown with a vow to eliminate everything that was standing in the way of happiness. "BlackBerrys and e-mail aren't inherently bad," he said. "It's just like medicine: it's the dose that makes the poison."
Putting his beliefs into action, he said, he set about dumping all the clients who involved more work than they were worth. He reduced and outsourced his staff, from 250 eventually down to fewer than 15, and instructed underlings to deal with all but the biggest emergencies themselves.
Most fundamentally, Mr. Ferriss turned ruthless against e-mail. He hired personal assistants in India and the Philippines to sort through and respond to most of it, and ignore the rest. He typically checks e-mail messages only once a day, at 2 p.m., and only sees those few urgent ones his outsourced assistants forward to him.
With all the time left over, he said, he has lived the life that most postpone until retirement. In the last two months alone, he said, he has traveled to Scotland, Sardinia, Vienna and Bratislava, as well as Japan, all while technically "running" a company that he claims kicks off a high five-figure personal income every month.
Słownik
once the e-clutter is cleared away - gdy już pozbędziemy się elektronicznych śmieci
recollections of the grim days - wspomnienia ponurych dni
lost in the wilderness - zagubiony w dziczy
set about dumping all the clients - wziął się za pozbywanie się wszystkich klientów
instructed underlings - pouczył podwładnych
oprac. AMI
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