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grueling
agotadora
yearned
anhelaba
I had thought, for instance, that people who prioritized well would perform well, and they did, but the best performers in our study also did something else. Once they had focused on a few priorities, they obsessed over those tasks to produce quality work. That extreme dedication to their priorities created extraordinary results. Top performers did less and more: less volume of activities, more concentrated effort. This insight overturns much conventional thinking about focusing that urges you to choose a few tasks to prioritize. Choice is only half of the equation—you also need to obsess.
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Our top performers took a different approach: they strove to find roles that contributed value to the organization and society, and then matched passion with that sense of purpose. The matching of passion and purpose, and not passion alone, produced the best results.
Top performers collaborate less. They carefully choose which projects and tasks to join and which to flee, and they channel their efforts and resources to excel in the few chosen ones. They discipline their collaboration.
The very best people didn’t just work smart in a conventional sense, but pursued more nuanced practices, like doing less and obsessing, and matching purpose with passion.
To work smart means to maximize the value of your work by selecting a few activities and applying intense targeted effort.
The talent and effort explanations still play a significant role in determining how individuals perform. But the real key to individual performance is the seven “work smarter” practices.
The convoy ended up moving as fast as the slowest
method.
Amundsen had chosen one method and mastered it. He had done less, then obsessed.
Writers like Daniel Goleman and Stephen Covey have argued that people can only perform at their best if they select a few items to work on and say no to others.
he applied huge amounts of effort to perfecting that single method
we found that employees who chose a few key priorities and channeled tremendous effort into doing exceptional work in those areas greatly outperformed those who pursued a wider range of priorities.
“Do less, then obsess” affects performance more than any other practice in this book.
We all have a finite supply of attention to devote to our work responsibilities.
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
Other studies have shown that switching between tasks can decrease your productivity by as much as 40 percent.18
fanatic attention to detail.
That is, if you violate either the “do less” or the “obsess” criterion, your performance will remain about average—slightly above the 50th percentile.
Instead of asking how many tasks you can tackle given your working hours, ask how many you can ditch given what you must do to excel.
“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”
The problem is that we love to keep our options open.
To perform at your best, discipline yourself to shave away any options that you stick with for psychological comfort alone.
the most innovative companies first generated lots of ideas and then killed off the bad ones and obsessed over only a few good ideas.
There are many ways to tie yourself to the mast. Do it ahead of time, so that when you sit at your desk feeling the urge to distract yourself, you can’t.
Doing more is usually a flawed strategy. The imperative to focus is also misunderstood. Focus isn’t simply about choosing to concentrate on a few areas, as many people think. There is a second harsh requirement: You must also obsess in those areas to produce exceptional quality. The smart way to work is to first do less, then obsess.
Wield the razor:
Tie yourself to the mast:
break with convention and try new ways of working.
Then we have people who rack up volumes of activities and run around bragging about how busy they are, as if busyness equals value.
