LittleFishPhilosophy

Do You Work By The 2/3 Full-Rule?

Twenty or so years ago, a well-seasoned and successful business associate of mine gave me some free advice. The advice was to fill my workday so that it was only 2/3 full and leave 1/3 open for the unknown. At first, I felt that this type of scheduling was unproductive, but I quickly learned that it was essential to running a successful company.

Imagine a day filled with back-to-back meetings and calls, and the action items that would come as a results of them. If your day is filled to capacity, when will you get to returning subsequent calls, writing proposals, fulfilling requests, answering questions, actually running the day to day operations of your company, putting out fires or even take on new business? The answer to that would be to work 60 hours a week and if you work 60 hours a week, stress would increase and quality would decrease.

If you work by the 2/3 full-rule, you will dramatically increase the quality of your service and decrease your stress.

Analogy

I have a fish bowl on my desk with two gold fish in it and if I fill the bowl with water to the very top, it would over flow if I added anything to it. I wouldn't be able to add another fish, or move around the pebbles and the fish would have to swim very carefully without making any quick movements, otherwise everything would spill over. If I keep the bowl 2/3 full, then there is room for the fish to swim freely and room to add others.

Give your day, room to grow!

Keep Swimming Little Fish!