The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

– Elizabeth Drew

In my recent article, How to Read a Book, I offered some ideas for extracting value from dead trees. I focussed primarily on non-fiction in that article. Now I want to offer you an approach for fiction.

Fiction differs from non-fiction in only one necessary way: it’s made up. But that small variation in its linguistic DNA produces an entirely different organism. While the primary goal of fact-driven content is to extract the information you need, the primary goal of reading a story could be anything. A work of fiction is, essentially, an artifact of self-expression. There are as many motivations for writing a story as there are reasons for us to communicate with one another. Many authors write stories to explore issues they’re experiencing in their own lives. Others attempt to get us thinking about the good, bad, and ugly things in our world.

But if works of fiction are made up, why bother reading them? What value can we possibly derive from the people, places, and things that exist purely in our imagination? And how can those fictitious forces inspire us to push our own boundaries and do things we’ve never done before?

Why Read Fiction?

Obviously a question like, “Why read fiction?”, has many answers: for entertainment value, to improve your vocabulary, to be inspired, etc. For me the primary value of fiction, the one that is most beneficial from a growth perspective, is that it offers an experience.

What kind of experience? Whatever one I choose. The literary landscape is as diverse as a very diverse thing. If I want to live in a world full of robots, I’ll read Asimov. If I’m in more of an anarchist mood, I’ll reach for Orwell. When I wanted a taste of life in Soviet Russia, I read Ayn Rand’s We the Living. I immersed myself so completely in the story that I began to feel the agonizing boredom of waiting for hours in line for rations of stale bread and rancid butter. I came to understand the paranoia that people felt, how careful they had to be with their words towards the Party, fearing that one of their listeners might be a member, knowing the fate that came to those who begged to differ.

Several weeks after reading that book I found myself in conversation with a couple friends from eastern Europe, who’d lived under the Soviet regime. It was fascinating to discover how much their real-world experiences paralleled my not-real-world ones. A lot of what they said refreshed the mental images of what I’d read, almost as if they were things I’d lived through myself.

This episode is explained by more than just my overactive imagination. Even science has something to say about the ability our creative powers have to shape our reality. In an article entitled “Experiencing the Future”, in the June 2008 issue of Le Monde de l’intelligence, Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, talks about how our thoughts are processed in ways similar to real sensory experiences. Here’s a quote:

The pleasure that we feel when we imagine future events comes from the same parts of the brain as the pleasure we feel when we live events in the present.

The visual imagination activates the visual cortex, in the same way as our visual sense; the auditory imagination activates the auditory cortex, in the same way as our hearing, and the affective imagination activates the affective centers of the brain, exactly like affective experience.

So while we know that fiction is–obviously–quite fictional, diving deeply into a great story can be an almost visceral adventure. A decent novel can entertain you. A good novel can make you feel stuff. A great novel can change your life.

Read Only What Interests You

That a novel offers an experience is of no inherent value. Getting the most value out of a novel requires asking yourself: What kind of experience do you want to have?

My answer to that question is usually a reflection of where I’m headed with my life. I often use my intentions as a compass to point me to the right section in the bookstore. Since my primary relationship to a story is through its characters, I look for books populated with intriguing personalities: people I’d want to know in real life, or at least have a conversation with through a bullet-proof glass window. I used to choose books to read because they were “classics”, or recommended by so-and-so. I’ve since become wise to the folly of that approach.

There are so many words to choose from that knowing where to begin your search for a good book can be overwhelming. Here are my preferred sources, all of which can also apply to non-fiction:

• Bloggers. A great deal of what I read is stuff recommended by bloggers I respect.
• Online forums. Shared interests are a great source of reading ideas, particularly for novels, since their titles rarely give a clear hint at what they’re about.
• Other books. Not only those mentioned in the main text, but also those in the bibliography.
• Wikipedia → Influences. Many Wikipedia pages for authors include a list of authors that influenced them. You may also prefer to read stuff by authors they influenced.
• Bookstores. When all else fails, nothing beats spending an hour or two just wandering around a big bookstore, picking things off shelves and examining them.

Fiction as Vehicle for Growth

Great fiction expands your emotional repertoire and deepens your self-understanding. This makes it a particularly useful tool in the conscious pursuit of happiness. I prefer to choose a reading path that floods my imagination with images and ideas that are aligned with my present goals.

For example, reading Atlas Shrugged taught me a lot about self-reliance. I was so inspired by the characters in Ayn Rand’s epic novel that I decided to devour her other well-known works of fiction: The Fountainhead, We the Living, and Anthem.

This kind of tunnel vision is a healthy thing, for short periods. It gives the ideas a chance to soak in, for the mindset to really rub off on you. Unlike most non-fiction, a novel takes an idea and wraps it in context so you can see how it might play out in the real world. By focussing your reading around a particular theme, you build up a database of reference “experiences” related to that subject. Of course, fiction is no replacement for real life, but like the example I gave earlier about We the Living, it can still offer profound insights.

Invite the Characters Into Your Life

Every so often, you’ll meet someone who changes your perception of the world. You might work alongside a brilliant computer geek who redefines your notion of competence, or you might connect with someone in your social life whose ability to deal with a rough situation inspires you.

This same reservoir of human potential is available in paperback form. It requires only the force of your imagination to be extracted. So when you read a novel, really read it. Invite the characters into your life. Think about them even when you’re not reading. Weigh the events in your life against the events in theirs. What might they be doing right now? How would they handle the situation that you currently find most challenging? How is your personality different from theirs and in what ways do those differences shape your lives differently? Experiment with all the ways you can think of to weave the story and characters into your own existence–without getting arrested.

Only fiction can provide such a broad context in which to think about life, the universe, and everything. Use this to your advantage. Just like we exercise caution in who we choose to associate with in real life, so we should be picky about what we read. Read deliberately, with your mind wide open. Use fiction to live; not as a replacement for the real world, but as an extension of it.

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.

– Ezra Pound

I run a One Man University.

I’m the Dean, the Professor, and the entire student body of OMU. My major is the conscious pursuit of happiness; my minor, everything else. My tuition is paid in regular installments of hard work, self-determination, and persistence in the face of failure and rejection.

I’m an able student even though I’ve never gotten high marks in my courses. In fact, I’ve never gotten any marks at all. I have no GPA. And there is no shiny piece of paper at the end of this educational rainbow. My progress is measured exclusively by the tangible results my research and experiments produce to make my life an adventure worth living.

Much of my learning takes place along the intellectual highways paved by great works of literature, both factual and fictional. There are few places the written word will not go. For virtually every branch of human knowledge there is a book offering to start me down that path.

So it should be no surprise that the heart of my university is its library. From Ayn Rand to Aristotle, Tim Ferriss to Henry David Thoreau, I’ve got access to a universe of interesting people and fascinating ideas to help me navigate the murky waters of reality.

But building my library of good books is pretty easy. The hard part is knowing how to read them.

Reading for Growth

All deliberate action is prefixed by an idea. Books provide a rich source of intellectual leverage. Knowing how to read is one of the most important skills you can learn on your path to personal growth.

So when you look down and notice yourself holding a good book in your hands, what do you do next? Assuming you picked it up accidentally, you’d probably want to put it back down. But if it arrived there by intent, you’d probably want to flip to the first page, fix your eyes on the first word in the top left corner, and continue in a left-to-right, top-down fashion until you reached The End.

Unfortunately, if your goal is to actually learn something from your efforts, things get a little more tricky. Reading is to acquiring knowledge as typing is to building software: it’s merely data entry. The challenge is to extract maximum value from what you read.

Personal growth books require particular consideration. There’s a fundamentally different process involved in reading a book about, say, starting a business versus reading a book about the emerging sex toy industry in China. The only reason to read a book about starting a business is if you actually intend to start a business. Likewise, reading a book about losing weight is pointless unless you have some pounds to shed.

So what’s the best way to read a book whose sole purpose is to get you to do something?

While the ideas in this article are biased towards the study of books on subjects like starting your own business, eating healthier, getting your finances in order, and other growth-related topics, most of these ideas should apply to non-fiction in general, and even fiction to some extent.

Speed Reading

There are two kinds of reading. The first kind of reading treats a book like an integer, like the N in “I’ve read N books on subject XYZ.” This is the quantitative hunger fed by technologies like “speed reading.”

Or, even worse, photo reading.

The speed reader assumes that reading twice as fast makes him twice as productive. The best speed readers are so good that they can read a book by simply farting in its general direction. And they’ll even score 60% or better on a comprehension test while the smell lingers patiently in the air.

Of course, a reader who thinks that doubling his reading speed makes him twice as productive is like a programmer who thinks that doubling his typing speed will halve the amount of time he takes to finish a project. Effective reading is not measured by how fast you can vacuum words off a page. It’s measured by how well you integrate new ideas into existing conceptual frameworks, and how you use those ideas to do things you haven’t done before.

Slow Reading

The second, much more effective way to read, is to treat every book as an opportunity to expand your reality. The main variable in this equation is not speed, but change: How did this book change my life? What actions did I take as a direct result of reading this book? What were my results? What did this book teach me that I didn’t expect to learn? How have I applied that knowledge in my day-to-day life?

Reading well means going slow and making your brain hurt. It involves asking tough questions that push you outside your intellectual comfort zone, and being willing to explore unfamiliar ideas until you understand them, no matter how long that takes.

During the four years that I played chess seriously at a fairly high level, I probably read no more than 10 chess books cover to cover. It wasn’t because I didn’t like reading them or because I was too lazy. I just needed that much time to explore the ideas they gave me to a depth that satisfied me. The first two or three books I read were fairly basic. But by the time I started studying books of the great masters, I could read the same book over and over and gain new insights every time.

While my book consumption habits were well below those of the average player, my tournament results well exceeded them.

One Book at a Time

I eat, sleep, and breath every book I read. I find there’s no better way to absorb new ideas than to carry them around with me wherever I go.

When I read Never Eat Alone, for example, I completely immersed myself in the relationship building mindset. I spent a great deal of time implementing what Keith Ferrazzi was talking about as I learned it. I reached out to “aspirational contacts”, went out of my way to volunteer my time and effort for projects that interested me, and planted the seeds of mission-centered relationships. It was during this flurry of activity that I even met my current girlfriend.

Had I speed read my way through this book, or diluted my efforts by juggling three or four other books at the same time, I doubt any of this would have happened. I’d have worn my four-minute literary mile like a badge of honour: N = N + 1. Next.

Relentless Curiosity

The Perl programming language has the notion of a “taint” flag. When set, this flag adds a rule to the interpreter saying that, roughly speaking, any data that enters your program from the outside world (files, user input, environment variables, etc.) cannot be used to affect anything else in the outside world, unless you explicitly untaint it.

This is a useful model to apply to your research. Trust your own mind above the author’s, no matter who he or she is. Question every chapter, every page, every paragraph, and every sentence you read. Practice relentless curiosity. Start with the most basic questions you can ask and work your way up from there. For example:

• Why am I reading this book? What problem am I trying to solve?
• Is this the best source of information I know of on this subject?
• What is the author’s solution to this problem?
• What are the advantages of this solution?
• What are the disadvantages of this solution?
• What ideas from this chapter/section/exercise can I apply to situations in my own life?

Reason is the primary means by which we “untaint” ideas. Relentless curiosity is not just some cutesy Dennis the Menace personality trait, it’s a basic tool of survival.

Three Big Ideas

Even if you read every book slowly and deliberately, you’re still going to encounter far more interesting ideas than you’ll ever hope to remember. The penultimate step to thoroughly devouring a good book is to extract the Big Ideas out of it. I read a lot so I tend to limit this number to about three, but feel free to tweak as you see fit.

I’d encourage you to write the summary in any format you want, whether as bullet points or more coherent prose. The goal is to simply create something that you could look at in several months and be able to regurgitate the most important lessons the book had to offer.

Act Quickly

The last step is the most important: Act immediately on what you read. Take action as you read the book. Do the exercises, if possible. As I’ve mentioned previously, the idea for 30 sleeps came from one of my answers to an exercise in The 4-Hour Workweek.

The call for timely action applies to almost any book you read to acquire a new skill. For example, when I read books about the Ruby on Rails programming framework and spot a useful feature that I didn’t know about before, I try to immediately update all of my code, where applicable, to use this feature. This helps me commit the new idea to memory and ensures that I actually use the idea in my code, rather than deferring it to an ever-elusive “someday.”

Ultimately, every growth-related book is a 30-day challenge in disguise, limited only by your creativity and willingness to transform thought into action. You’ll know the quality of your reading habits not by how many books you can claim to have read, but by how many of the good things in your life can be traced back to a spot on your bookshelf.

Information is not knowledge.

– Albert Einstein

I have a confession to make: I’m a crack addict.

On the information black market, my drug of choice goes by the name of email. The good stuff is laced with social media and RSS. The better stuff also includes mailing lists, website statistics, IRC, and 500 TV channels. The best stuff adds both Facebook and MySpace accounts, instant messaging of every kind, and a pony made from Ajax.

My dealer calls himself Unread. I caught a glimpse of his driver’s license once though, when his wallet spilled all over the ground while we were shooting up in an airport lounge. Turns out his real name is Unimportant Bullshit. That’s a pretty funny name, when you think about it.

But I haven’t thought about it. I’m usually too strung out to notice. I just keep buying more product.

How much do I buy? Well, it’s available only by the truckload, even though you have to squeeze it into your veins with that measly little needle called your attention span. This is less than convenient. I’m stocked for at least the next three U.S. presidencies. Come to think of it, that might be a good thing.

Oh, and another oddity: My dealer won’t take cash. He demands that I pay him only in Yeses:

Do you want more email? Yes.

Need another hit of RSS? Yes.

It’s been 10 minutes since you last checked your visitor count for today. Aren’t you going to see if it’s been updated? Yes.

There’s poker on TV right now. Shouldn’t you be watching it? Yes.

How’s about checking if there’s anything interesting on the reddit front page? Yes…master.

But I haven’t even mentioned the worst part: version 2.0 of this drug is coming out soon, and apparently it must be administered anally.

I used to be the consumer. I’m now the consumed.

It Can Happen to You

This (mildly exaggerated) description of my own dependence on unimportant information is not uncommon. But why does it happen? When you drill down to the deepest layers of information addiction, what do you find?

You might have thought you hit bottom when you saw chunks of job disinterest, aversion to boring tasks, and a substance resembling Nothing Better To Do. But a few inches below that, you find the real crust wrapped around the core of an information junkie: Fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of life itself.

The beauty of aimless internet reading, linguistically graceful internet flame wars, and social media popularity contests is that you can’t fail at them. Even if engaging in these activities causes you to fail at whatever you were supposed to be doing, you can just blame it on all that wandering around the Web 2.0 theme park. It certainly sounds a lot better than, “I tried everything I could to fix this bug, but I still can’t figure it out.” And it’s way easier to just drag your feet through the mud known as your Day Job (TM), than to risk giving your notice and heading off into the unknown in search of a better life.

Information is an analgesic. It not only dulls the pain involved in actually Getting Shit Done, but if you do it right, it actually feels like you’re doing something, instead of avoiding doing something.

My Story of Addiction

I’m exaggerating my information addiction slightly. After all, every man, woman, child, and fetus has a Facebook account, but I don’t. I’m not on MySpace either. I don’t do instant messaging at all, except to talk to paying clients on software consulting gigs. And while I’m usually found on IRC, I rarely pay attention to it.

But I’d be lying to pretend that I don’t throw a few balls down the gutter every now and then. My most recent slip-up came about a month ago, when I ordered Food Network as a way to help me learn cooking.

What started off as awe and admiration at Jamie Oliver’s ability to create amazing dishes from fresh ingredients grown right in his own backyard, morphed into an interest in Australian Open tennis and World Matchplay Darts. Oh, and what’s that? A documentary series on sex workers in California? And lookie here, it’s even running right after Poker After Dark on another channel. How convenient!

The distraction began with TV and, as my brain started getting accustomed to idleness, snowballed into other non-activities. Before I knew it, I was spending entire days swinging from one vine of useless information to another.

The Solution

The irony of information overload and addiction is the sheer volume of information available on these topics. For example, when I Google for “information overload”, I see over 1.5 million matches.

My solution to dealing with this mess is what I call a 30-Day Information Fast.

You’ve probably already heard the term “Low-Information Diet”, popularized by Tim Ferriss. As the name implies, an Information Fast takes things a step further. The key behind this solution is to completely cut off all attention-draining inputs with no exceptions, but to do so for only a limited period of time. The point of total withdrawal is, obviously, to reclaim the time and attention lost to unnecessary diversions, but also to help you discover which of those things are actually important to you. You’ll know you gave up something important when you keep wanting to reach for it to help you solve a problem you’re working on, or when, even after a full 30 days without it, you’re eager to catch up on what you missed.

The rules during the 30-Day Information Fast are as follows:

• No blogs. No reading RSS feeds nor any direct visits to blog websites.
• No TV. Not one second of the boob tube is allowed.
• No social media sites. My only exception will be for submitting my articles, if applicable. Sometimes you guys beat me to it, which is always appreciated.
• Check email only twice per day. I’m not going to hardcode the times when I’ll be checking email, but it must be no more than twice, unless absolutely necessary.
• No Facebook, MySpace, or instant messaging. This is a non-issue for me, but I know a few people for whom this alone would add years to their life. Feel free to also include IRC here, if it eats up a lot of your time.
• Check web stats only once per day. I’ll bet almost every blogger has been bitten by the stats demon at some point. I’m no exception. I’ve had days where it seems like all I’m doing is following my stats.
• No internet forums. There’s currently only one forum I read regularly. Still, I’d like to see what happens when I pull the plug on it for a while.
• No mailing lists. Another non-issue for me, but it’s not hard to imagine that some people will benefit greatly from turning off this fire hose.
• Exceptions. DVDs, books, magazines, music, all social activities, conferences, seminars, user groups, and, in the interests of self-preservation, this blog. This 30-day trial takes aim at attention-draining inputs. I usually consider these exceptions to be a solid use of my time.

Feel free to tweak this list to suit your needs, in particular by adding things that I haven’t mentioned, but which affect you. If you want to remove things from this list because you “can’t live without them”, that’s a sign that you’re probably cheating. :)

Of course, I’m still going to publish new content during this time. In fact, this 30-day trial is intended to improve my chances of attaining my goals for expanding the quality and reach of my writing over the next month.

This challenge is not particularly meant to extend beyond the 30 days. It’s merely an attempt to create a space in which to think deeply about your life and your purpose, to replace distraction with action, and to let the truly meaningful uses of your time bubble up to the surface of your attention.

I don’t care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don’t harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there you’re never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants.

– Zig Ziglar

Whether your goal is to start a company, meet an amazing guy or girl, or travel the world in a hot air balloon, there are few among us who wouldn’t want to get there more quickly. A powerful tool for speeding up your progress towards any goal is constraints.

A constraint is a rule, restriction, or boundary within which you must operate to achieve a goal. It might be a limit on the manpower you assign to a task, a fixed amount of time you give yourself each day to work on something, or a budget that helps you avoid going broke.

Sometimes constraints are forced upon you. Sometimes you impose them on yourself. Sometimes you inherit them as side effects of other choices. When chosen consciously, constraints stimulate growth by forcing you to take immediate action. They can also help establish consistency, to ensure that you keep moving towards your goal, even after your initial enthusiasm wears off.

Constraints Get You Moving

Without constraints, 30 sleeps would probably not exist.

Over the last several years, I’ve spent a lot of time “thinking about” doing things. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but my ideas never crossed the boundary from thought to action. When it came to making my business dreams come true, I was all talk and no action. I spent most of my time honing my procrastination skills: criticizing, aimless internet reading, linguistically flavourful internet flame wars, and other forms of mental masturbation.

As often happens in these situations, I finally sunk so low that I knew I’d have to change my approach if the Yet Another Idea I had–the idea for 30 sleeps–was going to become a reality. I decided to use constraints to get things moving.

I did this in two ways. First, I committed to working on 30 sleeps for one month. This rule gave me a temporal sandbox in which to play around and build something useful, without worrying whether I’d still want to be doing this in six months or a year from now. Second, after starting this site in June, I made the decision that, no matter what, it was going live on July 1, even if the entire website was just:

<p>Hello, world.</p>

Obviously, that would have been pretty embarrassing, but when it comes to achieving your goals, you’re better off doing a poor job than not doing at all. Constraints force you to Get Shit Done. You achieve goals much faster if you start with something bite-sized that you can accomplish in a few weeks, rather than going into hibernation for several months to plan something so big that it evaporates into thin air.

In my case, when July 1 came, I rolled out the site. It wasn’t much, but at least it was. For the first time ever, I finally translated a business idea into a living, breathing entity that people could actually use. Even cooler, exactly one month after I started, one of my articles hit the front page of reddit, and later did well on StumbleUpon, bringing me tens of thousands of new visitors.

Had I not forced myself to give birth to this site on July 1, I would never have known that such early success was possible. I probably wouldn’t even be writing this article. This is why I always say that “action is the nuclear weapon”: I think that most of us are capable of astonishing ourselves, if only we would get the hell out of our own way and dive in.

Constraints Create Momentum

Ironically, this article is the product of yet another constraint: the constraint that I must publish at least three articles per week, between Monday and Sunday, for the month of December. Note that the goal is that I want to create content that changes people’s lives, but the rule is to do so at a pace of at least three articles per week.

Last month I made the mistake of not forcing myself to be creative. I just let it flow…and published only five articles, or about 50% of my normal output. This go-with-the-flow mentality was exactly the wrong way around. In any creative pursuit, consistency is critical. Sure, sometimes a great idea just comes to you, but generating high-quality creative output regularly requires deliberate and continual effort.

Constraints are useful for establishing momentum. The more momentum you have, the faster you achieve your goal. I’ve already had a couple moments this month where my three-per-week rule has spurned me on to create new content, where last month, when I didn’t have any publishing quotas to meet, I might have slacked off and not written anything at all in the same situation.

It’s easy to be excited when you first start a new business, lose your first 10 pounds, or take your first shot at social skydiving. Well-chosen constraints give you the momentum to convert your initial enthusiasm into lasting changes.

Constraints and Self-Employment

For someone who’s never been self-employed before, it might seem like a dream come true. You’re your own boss, work on your own schedule, make decisions on all aspects of how things are done, and you don’t have anyone breathing down your neck.

But there’s no better way to stunt your entrepreneurial growth than by overdosing on freedom. Freedom is wasted without good constraints. This includes setting limits on your working hours, having deadlines that force you to focus on truly important features instead of losing yourself down the urgent-but-unimportant rabbit hole, and keeping your expenses in check.

I often use constraints when writing articles. I set a limit of between two and four hours and try hard to finish in the alloted time. This forces me to not only stay focussed when I’m writing, but also encourages me to improve my writing process in general, to create the best content I can in the most efficient manner.

Of course, you can use constraints to help you achieve goals faster regardless of your desired outcome. If you want to meet a great girl, but you’re also the early riser type, you could make a constraint that you won’t go to bars or nightclubs to meet people. If you want to give up alcohol, but aren’t sure you want to commit to that decision for life, you might constrain your obligation to a trial period of a few months and see how it goes.

There’s plenty of room for being creative with the constraints you choose. The key is that if you’re not using constraints to help you stay on track, you’re probably slowing yourself down.

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of mental laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

– Timothy Ferriss

“Work smarter, not harder” is one of the ultimate clichés. Like most clichés, few people actually do it. The busy outnumber the productive by a wide margin. Whether you’re a boss, an employee, or working for yourself, we’ve all had our treadmilling moments. Here’s the difference, from a geek perspective:

Busy-ness is impressive. It puts you in the heat of the action. It gives you an elevated sense of importance. You’re always late for social engagements, barely have enough time for family get-togethers, and hardly get a moment’s sleep. Emails get exchanged, meetings fill up your schedule, worldwide teleconferences become the norm–there’s even the occasional hope of revenue exceeding expenses. You’re like a rock star without the music.

Of course, it’s all just an illusion. A commitment to anything more than your standard workday is a commitment to work harder, not smarter. There are only so many hours per day that you can produce world-class, creative output. Building something that changes people’s lives is extremely hard, but looking like you’re part of something big is much easier.

Want a challenge? Remove a feature. Cut your deadline in half. Deliver rather than debate. Instead of being the devil’s advocate, be the user’s advocate. Eliminate half your RSS feeds. Stop making it pluggable and start making it work.

If you had to come up with one action you could take to put less time and effort into something and still get the same, or better results, what would it be?

According to the article, the secret to being more productive on the job is to, well, work:

“Our findings are astounding: By simply sitting down and doing work, employees can dramatically increase their output of goods and services,” said Deputy Undersecretary of Labor Charlotte Ponticelli, who authored the report. “In fact, ‘working’ may revolutionize the way people work.”

I’m not one to just believe what I read, but I have to admit that the research blew me away:

The results showed across the board that working is 100 percent more productive than listening to music and checking e-mails, 100 percent more productive than meandering around the office socializing with coworkers, 100 percent more productive than playing online Sudoku, 100 percent more productive than watching YouTube videos of nostalgic childhood television programming, 100 percent more productive than reading celebrity-gossip blogs while chatting with friends on Instant Messenger, 100 percent more productive than napping, and 98.2 percent more productive than not showing up to work.

This piece was obviously meant to poke fun. It ended up being non-fiction.

Donald Knuth, the renowned computer scientist, once said that “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.” He was warning computer programmers about taking it too far with getting their code Just Perfect. The same principle applies to meeting women, finding a job, starting a business, increasing your productivity, managing your time, getting your finances in order, and a swath of other daily concerns.

Personal development is a need-to-know pursuit. The fastest way to achieve your goals is not to spend your time learning about goal achievement; it’s to write code, talk to women, register a business number, write the first chapter of your book, or do whatever else you know you need to do to get where you want to go. There’s no point learning about time management before first figuring out what you want to do with your life. And spending endless hours on seduction forums when you’re not actively going out to meet people is time well wasted.

A great way to learn a programming language is to build something with it. The same applies to personal growth: Start with a specific problem to solve. Knowledge is best draped over a scaffolding built from trial and error. Having trouble finding your passion? What kinds of things have you tried already? Not sure how to ask a girl for her phone number? How did “Why don’t we exchange numbers?” work out? Personal development literature picks up where your own logic-driven, but unsuccessful attempts leave off.

Of course, the faults we recognize in others are really just a reflection of our own shortcomings. I probably wouldn’t have picked up on this nasty habit if I hadn’t already shaved a couple hundred hours off my life doing it too. But over the last while, I’ve become ruthlessly picky in my consumption habits.

For example, a few months ago, I virtually abandoned my participation in seduction community forums. It wasn’t only that I considered the highly analytical approach toxic and vastly subordinate to experience, it was also the simple question: Do I actually need to read this stuff? How would my life change if I didn’t? Would my results get better or worse?

Action provided the answer. My results improved. I met higher quality women with almost no effort spent on trying to push the right buttons, and reduced my forum participation from a couple hours per day to a couple hours per month. I felt a lot happier being authentic instead of “working the room” with stupid robot tricks.

A simple question I use to help me avoid premature optimization is: Is this the best possible use of this moment? Should I read this book on goal setting or should I just set some goals instead? Do I really need to ask about good places to meet women or should I just start saying hi to some of the dozens of women in my surroundings every single day? Any action that is not an ideal use of this moment is a waste of time.

The people I most admire are total animals. They are intensely dedicated to their craft, and make the most of every moment to reach their goals. They are so focussed on what they want that they don’t have time for anything that isn’t aligned with their intentions. They are constantly creating, always choose to align with the positive side of things, and are able to appreciate the true genius in almost everyone they meet.

And then there are “energy vampires”. An energy vampire is a person who drains other people’s life force.

Actually, I’ll take this a step further and offer a more “inside-out” definition. To me, an energy vampire is any thought pattern, activity, or habit that drains your life force. Whether the external influence that leads to this negative energy flow is a person, place, or thing, the vampire can only strike if you take the bait.

Energy vampires are a primary threat to your happiness. They dilute your attention and drag you down. They’ll turn you from a star player into a benchwarmer. Sometimes energy vampires are so pervasive in our lives that we don’t even notice them. We spend so much time in the clutches of negative thought patterns and distractions, yet still wonder why we never seem to get where we want to go.

The following is a list of energy vampires that have affected me most at one time or another, with solutions I’ve used to fend them off and stay aligned with my purpose:

1. Polling

How many times have you checked your email today? How many IM conversations do you have going on right this minute? How many IRC windows do you have open? Do you know off the top of your head how many visitors your site has had so far today? (Be honest.)

Polling is the habit of constantly checking the status of something. It comes from the mistaken idea that information that is updated in real-time needs to be tracked in real-time. Polling is an energy vampire because it snaps you out of your artistic groove. It’s not just the 30 seconds it takes to check your email. It’s the 15-20 minutes you spend responding to a new message that kills your focus.

Solution: Set a time each day to do all your checking. I generally check my feed stats, website stats, email, and revenue stats once every day around 5:00 PM.

Uninstall applications that alert you of new email. For truly urgent messages, use urgent mediums like phone or a knock on the door. If you are absolutely required to use your Inbox for urgent communications, configure your email alerts to monitor only items that require immediate response.

If you spend a lot of time on IRC, AIM, or Facebook, measure the output of this investment. How would your life be different if you spent all that time in virtual reality on face-to-face connections?

2. Arguing and Internet “Flame Wars”

Have you ever seen a news anchor host a discussion panel with experts on each side of the issue? Do you EVER see one expert say to the other “Hm, you know what? I’m completely wrong. Now that I’ve heard your point of view, I think we should pull all our troops out of Iraq.”

Nobody ever wins an argument. People argue to make themselves heard, not to listen to and evaluate what the other person is saying. Internet flame wars are even worse. When two nameless, faceless opponents square off in the digital ring, the shit can really hit the fan.

Solution: The key to winning an argument is don’t argue in the first place. Not only will you definitely not “win”, the other side is probably not even listening. Stop trying to prove that you’re right and just live by the truths you’ve uncovered from your own experience. On the internet, stay out of holy wars, and avoid starting them. Don’t post questions like “Which is better, X or Y?” or “What is the best X?” The only opinion you need on such things is your own.

I’ll admit, it took me a couple of years to stop getting into internet geek brawls, but thankfully it is a breakable addiction.

3. Complaining

You’ll never hear someone described as the “World’s Most Accomplished Critic”. Complaining and inactionable criticism is the highest form of mental masturbation. While it’s incredibly difficult to build and do amazing things, almost anyone can point out flaws. But finding fault does not equal intelligence. There is no Nobel Criticism Prize. Action is the true nuclear weapon.

Whether it comes from you, or the people around you, complaining is the Count Dracula of energy vampires. It will gnaw at your soul and attract even more things to complain about in your life.

Solution: Three words: It’s your fault. For any situation you complain about, you have three options: leave it, change it, or don’t change it. By taking full responsibility, you can actually do something about your current life situation, instead of drowning in the victim mentality.

Of course, there are some things you can’t change. For example, you can’t just decide that your girlfriend didn’t dump you. You have no control over what other people do, but you can choose how you react. If you have no choice but to accept a situation, then complaining about it is wasted energy.

4. Partial Commitments

A partial commitment is an activity that you enjoy, and may have even taken seriously at one point, but are now in “commitment limbo” about. You can’t make up your mind about how far you want to go with this. You dabble without going too deep. You might spend a couple hours a day practicing your instrument while watching TV, but you never get up on stage. Instead of giving 100% of your energy to your primary focus, you end up giving 50% of your energy to your primary focus, 25% to this sort-of-hobby, and the other 25% wondering which one you like more.

Solution: If you find yourself juggling a few interests, but always holding back on how much you commit, the first thing to do is decide which interest to treat as primary, and which ones are merely partial commitments.

Of course, the same “analysis paralysis” that got you into this state of indecision can make it hard to make up your mind. Instead of trying to think your way to an ideal solution, start with action. Pick a passion and run with it for 30 days, and see how it feels. Organize your environment in such a way that engaging in the other, partial commitments would not be easy.

For example, I was torn between making a run at professional Poker and becoming an entrepreneur. Fortunately, I had the bankroll to be able to walk each path and decide which one I liked most.

I started out with Poker. For one month, I committed to spending eight hours per day, five days per week playing online to see how it went. I needed only about four days to know that this was not for me. The variance was painful and I realized that my true purpose in life required a more engaging presence in the world and the ability to build cool stuff.

Then I gave entrepreneurship a try for 30 days, and out popped 30 sleeps. Strangely enough, it’s a site built around the concept of 30-day challenges. :) The moment I launched the site and saw people start signing up, I was hooked. I factored Poker out of my life by cashing out my online bankroll and uninstalling all my Poker-related software.

5. Television

A few years ago when I started working with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, my first assignment was to be part of a development sprint in Mark’s London flat. One of my first few days on the job, I was literally pair programming with the CEO at his kitchen table.

He had about five or six flat screen TVs on different walls in his flat, though they were never turned on. During one meeting, we decided to use one of them to do an app demo. We turned it on, and there was a DVD movie on the screen.

It was paused.

For the last two months.

Living your life on purpose leaves little time for the boob tube. Unfortunately, millions of man hours are swallowed up every day by this brainwashing machine.

Solution: The best way to give up TV is to cancel your cable subscription. It takes a mere five minute phone call to set the wheels in motion, and when all is said and done, you can still buy or rent the shows you really like on DVD.

My appointment with the cable guy is September 24th. When’s yours?

It’s important to identify thoughts or actions that cause you to leak energy away from pursuing your purpose. Sometimes these bad habits are so much a part of your life that you don’t even notice them, but they eat away at your time and emotional well-being all the same. An important question to ask yourself at regular intervals throughout the day is “Is this the best possible use of my time?” If not, you may have found an energy vampire.

In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.

– Unknown

So you’ve finally figured out your goal in life: To become a successful entrepreneur.

You’ve never liked working for others. You would love the freedom that comes with working for yourself. You know your wealth prospects are staggering. You visualize yourself reading the paper in your private jet, while sipping on champagne served to you by a Playboy Bunny. You see yourself sailing on your luxurious yacht, driving golf balls into the ocean with your new set of irons. You can almost feel yourself filling the sleeves of your custom-tailored Armani suits. You imagine weekend getaways to secluded European locations with your supermodel girlfriend. You’re a man on a mission, baby.

There’s just one minor detail you’ve omitted from your grand plan: What the hell does “successful entrepreneur” mean?

Make It Measurable

Some of the most exciting choices we make are in figuring what to do with our lives. Setting goals helps us chart a path into the unknown, where the action is. The only thing more exhilarating than watching the mental movie of your ideal life is realizing that you are the producer, director, and lead actor in this film, and the cameras are rolling right now.

But for our goals to be effective, they need to be specific. Defining your desired outcome in precise terms will help you figure out exactly where you need to focus your energy and attention, and make it easy to determine, at any given moment, whether your actions are bringing you closer to what you want or just distracting you from your real purpose.

To crystallize your intentions, ask yourself: Is my goal actionable? Is the output of my goal measurable? How will my external world change when I achieve this goal?

Here are some examples of goals that are insufficiently defined:

• Learn to speak Spanish
• Overcome social anxiety
• Get in shape
• Get better with women
• Get better marks at school

How do you know when you can speak Spanish? At what point will you consider yourself better with women? Try stating your goals in terms of the exact output you desire, for example:

• Spend 30 days speaking only Spanish
• Say “Hi” to 100 strangers
• Run for 30 minutes, four times per week, for at least three months
• Go on one date per week, every week, for two months
• Get at least 3 A’s this semester

The above goals are measurable. Even an outside observer can easily tell when you’ve reached them. They’re also carefully worded to ensure you achieve what you’re really after. For example, running four times per week for only one week doesn’t necessarily mean you’re “getting in shape”, but adding “for three months” as part of the goal’s requirements emphasizes your commitment to lasting change.

So how do you go from fuzzy dreams to concrete desires?

Define Success in Your Own Words

People often set goals using words like “expert”, “successful”, “good at”, “better at”. What do these words mean to you? Is being interviewed on CNN what you need to feel like an “expert”? Does “good at” mean being ranked in the top 10 or the top 1,000? All of these terms are subjective, so take some time to write your own rules of proficiency.

A great way to refine your definition of success is to observe what others in your field are doing. What are the most impressive attributes of those you admire? How can they be measured? What kind of revenues are they generating? What’s their batting average? What kind of clients are buying their work?

For example, at one point my primary goal was to become a Ruby on Rails expert. (For non-computer geeks, Rails is an Open Source framework for building websites.) For this goal to be truly useful to me, I had to define the word “expert” in this context. Did it mean speaking at a Rails conference? Nah, doing presentations doesn’t require expertise. Landing a Rails web development contract at an insane hourly rate? Hm, that’s more about negotiating skills. What about writing a book? Nope.

Eventually, I came up with a definition that suited me: Get a “commit bit” to the core Rails repository, which would allow me to make changes to the Rails source code itself. If the core Rails development team would entrust me with this privilege, I could definitely call myself a Rails ninja.

It turns out that while pursuing this goal, my interests shifted. After landing a few Rails contracts, I decided to shift my focus from wanting a “commit bit”, to building my own website using Rails. I used the skills I had acquired while pursuing Rails expertise to build 30 sleeps. So, even though my priorities changed, I still greatly benefited from learning Rails.

Notice the impact that a clear objective has on where you direct your energy. Had I defined “Rails expert” as “someone who speaks at Rails conferences” my actions would have been completely different from those required to gain change access to the Rails project itself.

Target the Side Effects

Some goals are tricky to nail down. How do you precisely measure “getting out of depression” or being “happy with who you are”? Emotional states are difficult to quantify, and many skills are subjective.

In these cases, think about how to turn the subjective into the objective. How would your external world change if you were “happier”? Would you go out with friends more? About how many times per week? Maybe it would include having “zero arguments this month” with your spouse. The more you ask these questions, the more you discover that even the most feel-good internal changes do manifest themselves in many ways in the external world.

This one could take some practice, so let’s consider more examples. If a major source of your unhappiness is that you hate your job, then “get out of depression” might just mean “find a new job”. If you’re trying to overcome your fear of heights, make it your goal to stand in the observation deck of a tall skyscraper for 15 minutes, at an average heart rate under 80 beats per minute. Being “happy with who you are” might just mean feeling really comfortable talking to people, so why not refine this goal to be “Say ‘Hi’ to five new people every day for a month.”

Remember, targeting the side effects does not mean ignoring the underlying issues. It just means that if your goal is to “be happier”, for example, you’ll get there much quicker if you give yourself something tangible to strive for. It might seem funny to define these things in such concrete terms, but who cares? Be creative. Have fun with it. You can always redefine your goal at a later time, especially if it’s no longer pointing you in the right direction. It all comes down to results.

Use Short Time Frames

If you give yourself six months to get a date with a hot girl, you could easily spend the first five on aimless internet reading and movie rentals. Constraints force you to take immediate action, and use your time productively.

When you aim too far ahead, you make decisions and commit to things when you have the least information to do so. For example, it’s almost impossible for me to set useful and specific revenue goals for this site in three years’ time. I have no idea what my numbers will look like that far in the future. But I can look at my current revenue and traffic growth patterns and set realistic targets to push me forward over the next couple of months.

Don’t Be Too Specific

While effective goal setting requires precision, you don’t want to box yourself in. Rather than setting your sights on dating a specific girl, define a profile of what you’re looking for in a woman. Instead of putting all your hopes on getting hired by one company, focus on what kind of work you want to do, what kind of talent you want to work with, and a salary range that suits you.

If your goals are too detailed, it’s easy to get discouraged when your results don’t match up exactly with what you want. Being flexible will expose you to more opportunities. Rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, define boundaries within which to operate and keep an open mind.

Setting goals is the first step in paving the pathway to a better life. Goals give us motivation and direction to explore who and what we are. Effective goals are not only exciting, but specific. A clear description of our desires helps us focus our efforts on the right things and makes it easier to see whether we’re moving toward or away from what we really want.

Setting clear goals sometimes requires creativity. In some cases, the best way to pursue a goal is to aim for its side effects. But by making it measurable we make it actionable, and turn our fuzzy daydreams of success into exciting challenges we can take on in the present.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness; no laziness; no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

– Lord Chesterfield

*Yawn*

You wake up and reach over to your mobile phone to check the time. 9:48 AM. You overslept a bit, but whatever, it’s Saturday. You’ve got the whole day to work on your website. By 10:30 AM, you’re up and in the shower. You come out, dry off, butter up some toast, and at 11:13 AM you’re already catching up on the day’s news. Human ear grown on mouse’s back? Whoa. Saturn may have another moon? Cool. Oh, and look here: “Scientists discover how to regrow teeth”. According to the article, they could start experimenting with this stuff on real human beings within 5-10 years!

All this information feeding is making you hungry, so by 1:15 PM, you head out to grab a bite to eat before really diving in. An hour later, you’re back and feeling ready for some hardcore hacking. Your website idea is going to rock. You start to clearly picture what your life will be like when you’ve automated your income stream. Time, mobility, and income will all be yours in ample quantity. You’re feeling so pumped up that you jump into your favourite tech and business blogs to add some fuel to your entrepreneurial fire…

[Cue introspective piano music.]

Do you often put off important tasks until the last possible minute? Are you constantly making excuses for why now is not the right time? Do you harbour feelings of stress, guilt, shame, and resentment knowing that you’re not living up to your full potential?

Procrastination is like the gravitational forcefield at the center of our comfort zone. It’s constantly trying to reel you in, weigh you down, and protect you from venturing into the unknown. Procrastination is Public Enemy #1.

But by understanding how procrastination works, we can learn to fight back against the feelings of stress and anxiety that keep us standing still. The fear we feel is like a doorway marked “Do Not Disturb”. But the door is not locked, and walking through it is the shortest path to adventure.

Dream chasers unite: This is war.

Why We Procrastinate

According to Dr. Neil Fiore, author of The Now Habit, there are three reasons why we procrastinate:

1. Regaining control. When we feel like we’ve been given a task that we don’t want to do, or feel like we’ve been put in a situation of powerlessness, we can use procrastination as a form of silent protest.
2. Fear of failure. The easiest way to avoid failure is to avoid risking it in the first place. Procrastination gives us permission to write off our underperformance because hey, we weren’t even trying anyway, right?
3. Fear of success. Success comes with its own strings attached. Landing your dream job might involve relocating to a new city. Your promotion might alienate some of your co-workers. And dedicating yourself to the pursuit of happiness might require letting go of the people in your life that drag you down.

We procrastinate because of the benefits offered by inaction. Procrastination helps us protect our ego by avoiding failure and rejection, and keeps us from venturing too far outside our comfort zone, where things could get a little risky and unpredictable.

But safety and security are deadly. Comfort leads to boredom. The benefits of idleness are fleeting. The relief we feel from avoiding risk eventually turns into stress and guilt. We start questioning and doubting: Why am I so lazy? Why can’t I just take action to get what I want? Will I ever break out of this vicious cycle?

Overcoming procrastination requires acceptance. It means giving yourself permission to be human and make mistakes, and accepting that the present moment is always full of reasons why you shouldn’t chase your dreams.

Now Is Not the Right Time

In fact, now is never the right time. The “right time” implies security, certainty, and a predictable result. How can you start your business if you haven’t even fleshed out all the details of your business plan? How can you move to another city right now if your son is still in college? He’ll never make it without you! And you obviously don’t want to sell your house yet. Wait until the housing market picks up steam.

But guarantees are for kitchen appliances. Human beings are creatures of growth, and growth is inherently organic and unpredictable. Setting goals means charting a path into the unknown. Uncertainty is where the action is. Living happily means living dangerously.

Instead of seeing all the unknowns as excuses to not take action, consider them a part of the adventure. Focus on how your circumstances can be made to fit your ideal world, rather than on how they’re preventing you from getting what you want. By thinking this way, now becomes always right time.

For example, a few years ago, I wanted to live in Europe. Lacking experience, not being a UK citizen, and not having a university degree, I had a hard time selling myself to companies in London, where I wanted to live. I could have easily written myself off and “waited for a better time” until I had more experience.

Instead, I forced myself to think creatively about the situation. The easiest way in would be to get citizenship, but what could I do to get it? After some research into my family tree, I discovered that I met the legal requirements to become a German citizen. And since Germany and the UK are both part of the EU, my entry problem would be solved. So I applied for my citizenship, and got it.

Unfortunately, it took a full two years to process my application, and by then my interests had shifted and I instead chose to move to Montreal. But I have been back to Europe several times, and used my German passport to enter on work-related travel. And, of course, I can now live there whenever I want.

So, even combining creative thinking with taking action won’t guarantee that everything works out, but I still ended up much better off for my efforts.

Do Anything

Another common pattern of inaction is the person who wants to “get into business” but is currently “sorting their shit out”, waiting for a surge of motivation, or a flash of divine inspiration. And they know that when this happens, somewhere over the rainbow, it’s going to be spectacular.

It’s easy to spend years keeping your dreams on a low simmer, waiting for the perfect moment to crank up the heat. In fact, there was at least a three or four year gap between me seriously acknowledging my desire to become an entrepreneur and actually doing it. The key to stepping off this treadmill is:

1. Take action.
2. Figure out what you want.

If your idea for a website isn’t completely fleshed out–even if it’s hardly more than a one sentence description of what it will do–start coding something anyway. Do anything. Crappy output is infinitely more useful than a brilliant idea stuck in thoughtspace. Making mistakes gives you a starting point for improvement, and your experiences will help you clarify your objectives.

Make Failure a Requirement

One of the biggest reasons for procrastination is fear of failure. But fear only works when we resist it. In my experience, the key to overcoming fear is to chase after it.

Instead of worrying that you might fail, aim deliberately low. Rather than trying to write an epic novel, start with a cheesy poem. Trade painting a masterpiece for producing a sloppy abstraction. Set the bottom end of a world record.

Pursuing failure removes the straightjacket of perfectionism. When you stop depending on the outcome, you lose the fear that was preventing you from taking action in the first place and start focussing on the task at hand. Giving yourself a chance to fail means giving yourself a chance to succeed.

For example, when I go out with the intention of meeting people, I often do my first approach telling myself “Okay, I’m just going to do this one and get blown out.” Sometimes I actually do get blown out, but other times it turns into engaging conversation.

Put Your Money Where Your Intentions Are

Finally, if you’re still finding it really hard to enter the action phase, this last technique has worked for me literally every time I’ve used it.

The idea is simple: Give your friend some money–an amount you would be uncomfortable losing–and make yourself earn it back by completing a certain task. For example, to force myself to break out of my social bubble, I would give a buddy $100 and earn it back, $20 for every person I talked to. You can apply this technique to just about anything. If your goal is to create a website, for example, give a friend $100 and tell him you get it back only when you’ve registered the domain and pointed it at your web host.

Make sure the output of your challenge is measurable, so that your friend can easily verify that you’ve completed it. It might be hard to tell if you’re “getting in better shape”, but “run three times this week, for 30 minutes” is clear cut.

Most people spend the better part of their day getting paid to achieve other people’s goals, so why not get paid to meet your own objectives?

Procrastination is the Governor of the State of Boredom. It wants to rule you, hold you down, and keep you from reaching your potential. It feeds on your fears and encourages you to keep talking in tomorrows. But by accepting that now is never the right time, you’ll start leveraging your present circumstances for future gains. By acknowledging that you might make mistakes, even making failure a requirement, you’ll experience the benefits of imperfection. And by using action to clarify your goals, rather than ready-aim-aim-aiming, you’ll have taken the most crucial step towards living your ideal life.

The busy outnumber the productive by a wide margin, caught up in a never-ending flurry of meetings, phone calls, email, brainstorming sessions, “management” and other treadmilling. At the end of the work day, a Cold War ensues between the managers and their employees about who will leave the office first.

If you can relate to this scenario (I know I can), and feel your life force being drained from you by spending endless hours furthering other people’s business objectives, then ask yourself this: What if you could get the same amount of work done in 7-8 hours as you currently do in 10-12 hours? In fact, if you could get the same or more value from your work in less time, wouldn’t it be crazy not to?

If you’re feeling weighed down by overwork, losing touch with those who matter, losing touch with yourself, then try the Five O’Clock Challenge. The challenge is incredibly simple: Leave the office every day at 5:00 PM.

Give yourself a no-overtime policy: No pagers, no mobile phones, no work-related email, no “one last thing to finish” after 5:00 PM. When the time comes, logout and leave. This challenge is applicable whether you’re self-employed or working for The Man, whether you work in a cubicle farm or in your boxers on the couch.

The goal of this challenge is to amplify the value of your time by setting boundaries on your availability. By forcing yourself to work “only” eight hours a day, you:

• Focus on only what needs to be done. Time constraints force productive choices, rev up your concentration, and encourage you to find creative ways to do more with less. You also become keenly aware of what is really adding value to the product, and what’s just keeping you busy.
• Encourage others to respect your time. By regularly staying at the office late, and coming in on weekends, you’re conveying that you don’t value your time. When it’s clear that you’re available only until 5:00 PM, your boss will think twice about calling you into a meeting.
• Have more time for other experiences. Less time spent furthering other people’s goals means more time to further your own, start your own company, meet girls, write a book, learn to speak another language, or become a world record-breaking Tango dancer.
• Improve your health. Reclaiming your precious time to spend more of it outside the office is a healthy choice, physically and mentally.
• Make more money. Working fewer hours for the same salary means an automatic raise.

I applied this principle to my own life on a recent contract with a high-profile tech company. I made sure from the start that my contract included the minimum number of hours I was required to work—35. Despite a corporate culture of “constantly overburdened” developers, I opted out. I studiously logged my seven hours per day, five days per week, and made a healthy six-figure salary, and almost certainly put in far fewer hours than anyone else in the company.

If you feel anxious about telling your boss that you’re going home on time today, then take it slowly. Start by leaving on time just one day this week. Then a couple days next week. See how your boss reacts. You might have some interesting realizations about whether you belong with this company.

Working less isn’t about laziness or slacking. It’s about valuing your time, learning to truly make the most of it, and becoming acutely aware of how much time you spend furthering other people’s goals.