Most of the old world was built with simple machines. Consider the construction
achievements of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Using abundant manpower and
simple machines like the incline plane, wheel and axle and the lever, early societies
built structures that still stand 2000 years later. In contrast, our society,
in spite of having access to exponentially growing technological resources, marvels
at an automobile that still runs after 10 years of use. The paradox of the ease
of technology strikes again.
I
love simple machines.
My favorite simple machine is the lever.
You remember the lever from science class. The stick (lever) jammed under the
heavy log you want to lift (load) propped on a big round rock (fulcrum).
Push down on stick (effort) and heavy log lifts up. You do it all by yourself.
Harnessing leverage is a much better method for getting work done than
finding four friends with strong backs and weak minds to help you lift the log.
Improve leverage by moving the fulcrum as close to the load as possible
and increase the lever length. Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough,
a place to stand and I can move the world.”
Archimedes
was a bright guy, but a little too optimistic. I checked at Home Depot and the
longest lever available was only twenty two feet long. Forget about moving the
world; that lever wouldn’t even move Monaco.
OK, enough physics
and history. Here is what leverage has to do with your business. The term leverage
is used frequently in the business world. Business owners leverage their asset
base by using borrowed money to grow their businesses. Marketing departments leverage
customer testimonials as another tool in their marketing workshop. Workers leverage
time telecommuting by working from their PC’s at home.
The
easiest solution to increase leverage in your work day is to move the fulcrum
closer to the load. In business, time is the lever. You use time to increase
the amount of work (log lifting) you can do in a day. Time is like a Home Depot
lever, it is only so long and no longer. Focus on moving the fulcrum to strengthen
your leverage on your workload without increasing effort.
Here
are some ways to move the fulcrum tomorrow:
1. Get out of bed twenty
minutes early to start your workday before everyone else. You can organize your
day, respond and compose e-mails and get your game going before everyone else
does. Twenty minutes of uninterrupted time at the start of the day is as productive
as one hour’s effort during “normal” business hours.
2. Create a sharper
image of yourself and your office. Looking the part of a productive person
will make you more productive. Strengthen your wardrobe, get your hair cut and
clean or shine your shoes. Clean the clutter from your desk and find out what
color the desktop is. Appearances are powerful to the people you deal with and
to your own self perception.
3. Eliminate delay. Respond to requests
immediately. Granted, it’s not easy to shoehorn more work in an already busy day,
but the effort of taking care of tasks while fresh in the mind is rewarded by
impressed customers and colleagues, lowered stress and greater self confidence.
There
are many other ways to get more leverage on your day and more things done. Be
thinking about things you can do to increase leverage and do less heavy lifting
in your work day.
