Pimp Your Work - Improving Your Work Day Efficiency

How I Got to the 9-Hour Workweek (Part 3)

by Celine on May 20th, 2008

In the first installment of this series, I talked about defining work and streamlining my email habits. In the second part, I talked about outsourcing and applying the 80/20 rule. Today I’ll discuss my schedule experiments and geoarbitrage.

Step 5: I conducted schedule experiments.

The main thing that drove my schedule experiments was reading this article from Web Worker Daily. What really struck me was this quote from Roald Dahl:

It suits me to start rather late. I start at 10 o’clock and I stop at 12. Always.

Source: WebWorkerDaily

This gave me the idea to find my “peak working hours“, the hours when I felt most productive. For a week I experimented with different schedules and identified what my major timesinks were. RescueTime helped me identify the timesinks, but the rest was up to me.

After seeing how I worked in different times throughout the day, I realized that I accomplished more when I worked at 3:00 am after sleeping early at night. This was for the following reasons:

• The neighborhood was more quiet since no one was up yet. The construction site in front of my house and the kids playing in the street make so much noise later in the day.
• The temperature was just right. I live in the Philippines, where it can get really hot from 10am to 2pm. It’s hard to work when the temperature is 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).
• I wasn’t started with my day yet. If I worked after I made lunch, did the laundry, etc., I’d have less energy and enthusiasm to go through it.

I also realized that I worked better when I used timeboxing. This helps me focus on work (and only work) during my working hours. To help myself focus, I didn’t check email or open my RSS feed reader until I was done working.

Once I defined my working hours (3:00 am to 6:00 am) and working days (Mondays to Wednesdays), I defined how I’d distribute my work tasks among those days. I tried to include some variety, and made sure that I didn’t write two articles for the same publication or website on the same day.

Geoarbitrage and Frugality

This section isn’t a step, because they describe situations and values that I already had with me before I went on this insane 9-hour workweek experiment. They might not be steps that I took, but they were integral to making the whole thing work.
Geoarbitrage is something that Tim Ferriss spent several pages discussing in The 4-Hour Workweek (which, in case you forgot, is the basis of this little experiment).  It basically means that you find the best place in the world that can give you the best value for your needs.  In this case, value means a combination of low price and good quality.

I’ve mentioned several times that I lived in the Philippines.  I love it here, and while it’s not perfect, I don’t want to live in any other country.

A funny thing about the Philippines, a US Dollar converts to around 40 Philippine Pesos here.  What does that mean?

Well, based on some quick research I did, a Big Mac costs $3.49 to $3.75 in the US.   Here, it costs PhP 87.00, which, when converted to dollars, is roughly $2.18.

I live a pretty good middle class life that costs roughly $375 to $500 per month to maintain.  This includes utilities and living expenses.  I have 2 dogs, 2 cats, a rooster, and I’m supporting 3 extra people in my house (I’m the head of the household).

Of course, it helps that I’m very frugal.  I’m the type who buys things in bulk and doesn’t spend on frivolities just because I can. I believe that my frugality plays a big part in keeping my lifestyle in check and making sure that I have enough for financially difficult times.

Just because I’m frugal, it doesn’t mean I’m a cheap penny pincher who doesn’t enjoy her money.  I have some hobbies that cost money - model-building, comics, and art.  I also travel a little and buy good food.  However, I always aim for a balance.  There’s such a thing as enjoying your money too much.

If moving to a country with a lower standard of living is too drastic for you, then go for the next best thing.  Find a city or state that has a lower standard of living.  These areas tend to be the more rural areas.  You can also look for work from international sources that allow you to work from home and pay you in a higher-performing currency.

Note that I’m not telling you to give up your current lifestyle, I’m just saying that your current lifestyle might be maintained at a lower price elsewhere.

Although this doesn’t conclude the 9-hour workweek series, this installment defines the last steps I took.  In the next post for this series, I’ll discuss the problems I am facing with the 9-hour workweek.

Photo Credit: Images by Zeth Lorenzo and Sophie from sxc.hu

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• Missing Pieces of My 9-Hour Workweek
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