Timothy Ferriss: Focus on what matters
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I’ve been cautiously optimistic about Timothy Ferriss for a while. He’s a hell of a self-promoter, and there’s some strong common sense in his books The 4-Hour Work Week and The 4-Hour Body. I’m not sure his advice is for everyone, and some people might be inclined to take it to unhealthy extremes, but this advice to startups applies equally well to going concerns (big business) and to individuals:
What advice does he give to the businesses he advises when it comes to studying data? “Dont measure too many things,” he says. “People often become overwhelmed with a deluge of data because they’re looking at 1,500 variables. And that can be paralyzing because you end up sitting there looking at your analytics program all day long as opposed to doing the more uncomfortable thing that you should be doing, like calling that big customer. And usually, the most uncomfortable thing to do is the one that people need to act on soonest.
I see this over and over. An executive team with 36 annual objectives and 58 sets of measures and targets is simply ineffective. When everything is important, nothing is important. Leadership is about making choices, and Ferriss nails it: you have to make a small set of priorities very important and ignore the noise around them. Good advice for anyone.
Related articles
- The 4 -Hour Body. An uncommon guide to rapid-fat-loss, incredible sex and becoming superhuman,Timothy Ferriss (regnordman.com)
- The Secrets of Super-Productive CEOs: An Interview with Timothy Ferriss, Author of The 4-Hour Workweek (inc.com)
- Book Pushes The Times Toward Unprecedented Exclamation Mark Usage (observer.com)
