Achieve More by Doing Less

Achieve More by Doing Less

Doubted if you have read the title correctly? Do not worry, you've got it right. You can actually achieve more by doing less. The question is, how? 

First, we need to master the art of doing nothing. By doing nothing, it means rest. Many people are deprived of sleep nowadays. We work day and night under pressure to meet demanding deadlines. We are tensed up, and so stressed that we often failed to notice what we are in a viscous self-defeating cycle. Nowadays we are playing multiple roles in our daily lives. To live up to other’s expectation and to avoid disappointing the people around us, we are taught to never say NO when people make requests.

Many times, we are made into believing that we can achieve batter result by doing more. Therefore, we keep our schedule as tight as possible, end to end. We have become so blinded by the secular value and the expectation from the external environment; eg. from our superior, from our spouses, from the school, etc.

We have always been told that the most successful people are the most hardworking people in the world. We read motivational articles citing successful figures and described how those people worked until late night every day and wake up next day early morning before dawn to achieve who they are today. However, is that really the truth? Is that the best way to be successful?

Robert Kwok, the richest man in Malaysia, during his interview in 2011 with CNTV, said that one of his secret of success is that he has a simple night life. He rest early at night, to ensure that he can be at tip top condition the next day.

 Li Ka-Shing, the richest Chinese entrepreneur in the world, keeps his work desk clean all the time. He is known as Superman because of his great success in managing his mammoth corporation. Contrary to common belief, he do not do many things at once; he only selectively attend to important things, and he makes sure he completes what he started.

1. It is not how many things we have done but how many important things we have completed that counts.

2. Without proper sleep, our cognitive function may not perform best when we needed it most.

3. When we make mistake, we actually spend more time to correct it than to avoid the mistake. Sleeping an hour earlier may avoid blunder that would take a few hours to rectify.

4. Sometimes good opportunities are hard to come by. We miss it, that’s it. It cannot be compensated with extra efforts. We are losing more opportunities than we know when we failed to stay alert due to lethargy, a result of overwork and sleep deprivation.

5. When we are reluctant to decide what to attend to and what to reject, it could mean that we are not confident. People tend to make themselves feel good/important by appearing busy and attending to many tasks. These are the people who are inferior in nature. To cover their inferiority, people tend to act the opposite way, to convince themselves of their importance by “accumulating” tasks.

6. Human body is the most delicate and complicated machine in the world, that even the most knowledgeable medical practitioners has yet to fully understand how our body works. Worse of all, we do not have spare part for our vital organs. Once our body start to fail, all is over.

7. A healthy body is our biggest capital. We can only achieve more when our mind and body operate at optimal condition. Resting is a vital process which our body heals itself. By resting properly, we can achieve more by doing less.