*Elimination* FAQ suggestion thread

[Marcie]

Thanks to the members who suggested we sticky a FAQ to the top of each folder. Tim likes the idea, so we'll be doing some compiling/brainstorming here.

Please add your suggestions for topics in this thread (include relevant historical threads please when possible) that should deserve a spot in the official *elimination* FAQ thread, Tim wants to edit/approve the final version, so please be succinct/accurate and follow the rules (in the announcements at the top of each folder.) Thanks!!!

[read]

I don't want to be a pain, but can I add a friendly note that this area of the forum is to talk about elmination, not muse creation, testing ideas, or topics covered in other areas of the forum?

Elmination Basics

One of the biggest things I learned from the book is that elimination takes risk. Especially in our current economy, it's tough to decide that some things aren't worth doing. It's also crucial -- especially as employees are often expected to take on more and more responsibilities. Even someone looking for work can use principles of elimination to make the job search faster or less taxing.

As Tim says in the book, "Eliminate before you delegate." I also think it helps to eliminate before you run full-force into muse-creation. I've noticed a lot of people in the forums are excited about muse creation and generating more income (understandably so), but sometimes I wonder if elimination gets overlooked. Without practice in elimination, we're just adding more work to our plate with a muse -- creating another job for ourselves, rather than finding freedom. Elmination is important!

Some of the ideas below are directly from the book (I hope it's okay to paraphrase from the book, Marcie?).


Work


Staying constantly in contact adds, rather than elminates. Streamline your communication so that you can deal with it once or twice each day. This is possibly one of the most radical steps you can take, in a world where we are increasingly expected to be on call.
Do not respond to every email. There are messages you can ignore -- or email exchanges that you can shorten. Leave out that last "No, thank you!" email, and that's one less response you can expect next time you check email.
Sometimes a phone call is just a lot faster. Also, while people may feel perfectly comfortable emailing you long requests at midnight, most people will think twice about calling. It can help to encourage people to leave a voicemail, rather than an email.
Elimination gets easier when you look at what you do best and work on delegating or elminating what you're not the best at.
Decrease meetings, when at all possible.



Household

There have been lots of ideas exchanged in the forums about ideas on how to eliminate, batch, and otherwise decrease household work. Here are a few of the ideas I've seen from others:


Batch laundry
Delegate weekly housecleaning
Elminate un-needed stuff
Delegate or batch cooking (hire someone or use freezer meals)
Get a remote-controlled vacuum cleaner



Other Personal Tasks

I haven't seen lots of this, so I generated a quick brainstorm from things I've seen on Tim's blog or ideas from the book:


Go on the low information diet: avoid news, random web surfing, Facebook rabbit holes, and other time sucks.
Maintain friendships only with people you truly want as friends
Spend money on recreation wisely. Remember that you're saving to use money on your dreamline. Don't waste it on stuff you don't need.
Automate monthly saving (this idea is from Richard Koch)
Delegate or batch travel planning
Get creative, in thinking of other areas of life where you might eliminate: exercise, travel, shopping, etc.



Elimination for the Service Worker

I've heard some people who work in service struggling to elminate (I was one of them.. and still have a lot to work on). Here are a few considerations for service workers:


Start by concentrating on household and personal elmination (I've heard Tim say this in interviews). For the service worker, this becomes especially important, as you'll need to work more just by the nature of the work you do.
In any service-oriented job, communication becomes everything. Get a system for communication that works, and implement it. Whether you use autoresponders, set expectations with new clients carefully, or have a VA help respond to calls quickly, find a way to untether yourself from your cell phone, crackberry, or inbox. You probably already do this when you're in a meeting or otherwise engaged with a client. Apply this to other instances -- or hold office hours to help people know when they'll be able to reach you live.
Thing about what you do best in your work (usually, this is the service part), and, if at all possible, get help with the rest.



Further Reading


The 80/20 Principle, by Richard Koch
Living the 80/20 Way, by Richard Koch
The Simplicity Survival Handbook, by Bill Jensen (this book really helps, especially if the idea of saying "no" to a boss or even a coworker gives you heart palpitations).

[luiscongdon@msn.com]

Greatly enjoyed the post!

It got me to think about how much time I spend 'doing' the boring stuff, the junk because I have spent so many years 'doing' what others wanted me to do and not what I wanted to.

I am now more committed to owning my 'Being, doing, and Having' the LIFe I want. Not the one of go to work, sit at my desk for a lot of hours just acting like I am busy but doing a lot of nonsensical surfting-- I mean I enjoy some of it but in a way I don't feel completely at ease and peace when I am at work and am suppossed to be busy BUT there isn't something to, and sometimes what there is to do is not what I want to do.

I like being at home and experimenting with foods, surfing the net on sites like these, traveling, and I really want to take some classes (NLP, coaching, art class, and have time to work on myself).

[REOBULK]

Garbage bag full of clothes that were buried too deep in the drawer - check
Reading 45 minutes of useless "news" every morning - check
Set up auto-responders for VM and EM - check
Removed myself as "Team Leader" of my real estate team - check (now I just funnel leads and do weekly motivation check-ins)
My dogs are getting nervous........:p

[charlestown]

I was just about to start a thread on this very subject before I saw this sticky, since I have become acutely aware of how much time was being wasted everyday on nonsense, so I am interested to hear what others are doing as well.

Here are a few steps I have started to take:

1) Unsubscribe from email newsletters as they arrive - How often do you really read them anyway?

2) Unsubscribe from all the daily emails from newspapers - This alone probably saves me an hour a day that used to be lost every morning catching up on world events. Following the news every day can be like a drug and I actually think it does little more than make me depressed.

3) Pretty much eliminated all the social networking like twitter etc. which saves time, but more importantly my sanity. I've never really liked the whole concept.

4) I am now screening phone calls and not bothering to pick up the phone when I know it's somebody who just wants to chat about something boring for an hour. If they leave a message and it's something that requires an answer, I reply with a two line email. After half a dozen times when you don't answer, they start to think you are always out, so they stop calling ;)

5) Taken straight from the book, I now turn off the TV or ditch a book when it becomes boring rather than forcing myself to finish something.

6) When affiliates contact me with a list of requests who clearly don't have much to offer I just hit the delete button rather than wasting hours trying to help them with everything, only to find later that they don't send me any traffic. I learned the hard way, having lost weeks of my time a few months back helping an affiliate in all kinds of ways who was promising the earth and hasn't managed to deliver more than 5 visitors a month since :mad:

7) I am now pretty ruthless about eliminating information and only start to read something if I am convinced it will help. This is particularly important with subjects like internet marketing or technical matters that I probably don't need to know and can outsource cheaply. In the past there have been times when I have spent the entire day studying information I thought I needed to know, only to find myself exhausted at the end of the day and no further forward with my main objective. On a side note it's very liberating to trash all those files on your computer desktop that have been sat there unread for months!!

Apart from all this elimination though, something I need to work on is deciding more about what I want to do with the free time. Income is a priority at the moment while making these changes, but in the longer term going through all of these steps is only useful if you can find genuinely interesting ways to spend your time with new activities.

[maraki]

Hello

I am an self contracted x-ray tech and mammographer. My job does not require me to sit at a desk...I don't need to check emails, go to meetings, answer phones, or deal with time consuming projects.

I show up to the job wait for patients and do their x-ray or mammo and leave 8hrs later.

I work 4-5 months save money and then travel for about 2 months and usually take small 1wk trips in the 4-5 months i'm working. Overall it's great. There are time when I get back from my travels and there is no work maybe 1-2 days a week and that means no $ to save because i need to pay rent or bills. Also a few years back I decided to leave for 4 months and got my self into some debt which I am still trying to pay off.

I am up to Automation in the book and throughout the book I feel none of this applies to me, since I don't have a normal desk job. The only part I was able to do was the dreamline and that was simple because I only want 2 major things...a base home and money to travel. The smaller things I am already working on even before the book.

I do want a 4HWW and have more money come in so I can buy a base home instead of looking for a place to live every time I return from my travels. Also so I can just keep traveling instead of coming back and hoping there is work so I can look forward to traveling again.


Please tell me that If I keep reading the book it will help me or give me suggestions with the problem. This way I can eliminate some time reading the book if I don't need to.

I have nothing left to eliminate from my life besides my current job which most people think I am lucky to have and be able to do what I do and travel so much...But they don't know about the NR and thats what I wanna be.

Thanks for reading and any comments you all might have
Sorry if it's posted in the wrong thread couldn't really decide where this belongs.

Maria

[gardinerf]

Thanks for this reminder, it's a couple of months since I read the book and it is easy to lose sight of this process. For me it is now especially important since I've added learning to play the piano to my daily activities. Something else needs to go!

I'll refer back to the book to get myself refocused.

regards,

Gardiner

[Marcie]

Hey everyone - bumping up all the FAQ threads - we still would like to compile some "best-of" types of threads/topics here. Please add your suggestions for topics here (include relevant historical threads please when possible) that should deserve a spot in the official *elimination* FAQ thread. Thanks!