Elon Musk's Time Hack: Do More in Less Time [TMR #049]

(As a quick note, we’re nearing the 50th issue of TMR. If you’ve gotten any value from these, please share it with at least one friend or send me a reply/comment. Thank you!)

Are you wasting your time?

Elon Musk’s track record is incredible.

Just this past week his company launched the largest rocket ever built, had it autonomously return back to earth, then only to be caught by a giant robotic arm in mid air.

Freaking incredible.

And did you see the “We, Robot” presentation? I believe that was last week as well.

Wow!

What did you do last week?

How Elon Musk Makes it All Happen

The most common principle Musk brings into his company, aside from extremely effective time management, is his insane sense of urgency.

You’ve likely heard of Parkinson’s Law, which says: “work expands so as to fill the time available.”

If you allow two weeks for a project, it will take two weeks.

Whereas if you allowed 3 hours for the same project, you’d likely get it 80%-100% complete.

Humans are always trying to achieve more, and as they pack in idea after idea, they naturally increase the timeline to achieve the result.

Bad idea.

Shrink your timeframes.

Musk gets more done in less time because he pushes the limits of what is possible in time. He gets people onboard who share the same love of challenge and drive.

You would achieve more in a day if you limited the number of hours in your workday.

Yes, you read that right.

You would achieve more in a day if you limited the number of hours in your workday.

I used to clock out at 12pm. 12pm!

And I was very strict about not working after 12pm, otherwise the deadline doesn’t work.

The only thing I would accept after 12pm was client or sales calls.

But what did that make me do?

Get up earlier.

Stay more focused.

Work faster.

Ignore things that didn’t matter.

Even this morning, I have 90 minutes to do an entire day’s worth of work because of other plans I have during Fall Break.

Today will be the shortest work day, but likely the most productive.

Closing

Experiment with this idea.

Give yourself a limited number of work hours and stick to it.

I’d recommend doing 6 hours or fewer to really help with the sense of urgency.

You’ll soon realize that most of your day is fluff.