How to be more effective at work! Short Review of "The four hour workweek"

I have a 39 hour contract at my job. I am sure I could perform the tasks I do in less than 30 hours a week or even less. However, my contract says I should stay 39 hours so I spend time thinking about this blog, drinking coffee with my colleagues, hang out on facebook etc... I know people who tell me that they don't have time for anything, they are so busy and they work 40-50 hours a week. I don't believe them, it is not possible to be efficient that long!

Lately I read this book, which totaly agrees with my point of view: The four hour week. Tim Feriss explains during 350 pages how you can change your life and get a descent salary while working only four hour a week. You can spend the rest of your time travelling, learning new things and enjoying life. Read this book! 

Life is too short to spend it at work being useless.

While reading this book, I found it hard to change my life directly. But I took three things, tried to apply it and it works:

1. Know that your time is very very very valuable 

We always say "Time is money". This has a part of truth. Your time has a great value, and it is yours. There are some tasks you don't like to perform like cleaning, make updates on your computer, which you sometime could outsource for 30-50 Euros. But you don't want because you think you can do it yourself for free. Maybe you could use this time to finally learn Spanish, make you first app like Rosa or just spend some quality time with you friend and family. 

So when you have a new task asks yourself "Is my time worth to perform this?”

2. The Pareto principle (p70 in the book)

"Pareto's Law can be summarized as follow: 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs"

For example, when you write a report, in order to reach the quality 100% you need to spend 100% of time. However, you will spend 20% of your time to reach the quality 80%. Is this 20% value to the product more valuable than this 80% time? Please refer to point 1. Your time is valuable!

3. Stop reading your emails!

Tim Ferriss states that he needs to check his work email only once a week. When I started my job, I would have an alert popping on my desktop every time I got a new email. I suppressed it! Then I had only the small envelop on the task bar, but this also disturbed me. Now, I try to check my emails only once during the morning, before/after lunch and once during the afternoon. It is hard but worth it! 

No one expect you to reply to your emails in the next three minutes. If it is so urgent, they will call you! In that matter you are more focused on your task, if some people decide to make an email conversation then you can catch up easily and most of it YOU ARE MORE RELAXED!!!!!

TIP: Before leaving work in the evening, plan the first task that you will perform in the morning. When you arrive at work perform this task before opening your emails. This will give a better feeling to start the day and raise your effectiveness.

I hope this helps you! Do you also have some usefull tips for us to be more effective at work? Please share with us!!!!