Book Review: The Power of Doing Less: Why Time Management Courses Don't Work And How To Spend Your Precious Life On The Things That Really Matter

Fergus O’Connell claims that the real reason why time management courses fail is because ironically, they try to teach time management.  This is the wrong approach, says the author. What they should be teaching instead is that people should aim to do less work. This is the aim of this book.

A major portion of the book is about convincing the reader that the right strategy is to reduce the work you need to do: decide which ones you need to do and which ones you don’t need to do.
 
The rest of the book provides quick and easy techniques to drop unnecessary work, and prevent new work from coming to you, or back to you.

Apart from the main point about reducing what you need to do, this is a basic work on regaining more time for yourself.

Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing

Philosopher: Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Pragmatist: Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Academic: Anything worth doing is worth publishing. 

Businessman: Anything worth doing must be worth doing.

Entrepreneur: Anything worth doing I already did last week.

Accountant: Anything worth doing is worth recording the worth.

Procurement: Anything worth doing must be done at the lowest cost.

Frederick Taylor: Anything worth doing can be done more efficiently.

Lean Consultant: Anything worth doing must be done with the least waste.

Venture Capitalist: Anything worth doing? Call me.

Procrastinator: Anything worth doing is worth doing tomorrow.

Agilist: Anything worth doing should be prioritised in a backlog.

Manager: Anything worth doing can be delegated

Economist: Anything worth doing, surely someone has already done it.

Project Manager: Anything worth need to be delivered on time, to budget, to scope.

Risk Manager: Anything worth doing must be worth doing on a risk-adjusted basis.

Pessimist: Nothing is worth doing

Optimist: Everything is worth doing. With a smile.

Cynic: Anything worth doing is always done for the wrong reason.

The New 5W and 1H

The popular version of 5W and 1H is a reminder to ask: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How?

The new, or older, if Machiavellian roots are traced, is practiced as:

WHO should we blame?

WHAT is in it for me?

WHEN will they find out the truth?

WHERE can we cut quality?

WHY me?

HOW can we hide the problem?

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