4 Hour Work Week - Downloadable Checklists to be More Productive | Technical Writing Tips, Tools & Templates

I avoided reading Tim Ferris’ blog, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5 for the longest time. My mistake! If you want to learn how to save time and be more productive, this blog is gold-dust. It’s a cut above the rest as it backups up his philosophy with real case studies that demonstrate how his methods work.

For example, Bernard Sandoval developed a 5-page 4 Hour Work Week guide as required reading for his employees called “Being More Productive” that you can download below.

4 Hour Work Week - Email Time Saving Tip

Studies show the average worker checks email 30 times per day

How to Crush your Inbox

Here’s a suggested approach to reduce the amount of time you spent/waste on emails.

Set a time each day to check your email and check voice mail
Studies show the average worker checks email 30 times per day.
Our goal is to let the email “batch” or collect and check 3 – 4 times a day.
Quit, close, or disable send/receive when working on important tasks.
Read client/agency related emails only and delete non-business related emails.
Unsubscribe from email lists that do not contribute to client work.
30 minutes should be sufficient to return all important emails and phone calls.
Lunch is a good time to conduct personal business and return non-business voice mails.
Personal emails, browsing, and calls are not permitted during business hours unless there is an emergency.

How to Control your Cell Phone and other distractions

In a nutshell: stop checking your email all day. Close your inbox so you can focus on other things, like finishing the report, article, diagram that you need to finish.

AND, the same applies to your cell phone, IM, twitter and whatever distracts you.

One CEO added: “I can now pull in 35% more work and not have to add staff. Think of what that could do nationally.”

Tim reckons that, “it’s a great starter kit for a few of the concepts in the book and it’s all presented in an easy-to-digest checklist that anyone can review each morning.”

FYI: You can share these downloads with friends and those you work with.