You can’t scroll your Facebook feed or peruse Pinterest these days without coming across an Instant Pot recipe. The latest trend to hit the home kitchen since the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer and his late night infomercials, the Instant Pot boasts that it will “speed up cooking by up to 10 times and using 70% less energy.” Pot roast, spaghetti, garlic parmesan chicken breasts, all under an hour and people are stoked.
And why shouldn’t they be?
Wouldn’t the less energy-better results formula get you jazzed up in all areas of your life?
Well seal the valve on that Instant Pot and tune into Episode 51 of Women Your Mother Warned You About because this week co-hosts Gina Trimarco and Rachel Pitts spoke with Denise Gosnell about “The Power of Forced Hyper-Efficiency” and how she encourages people to basically pressure cook their lives.
In 2011 software developer turned tech lawyer Denise watched her house burn down after being struck by lightning and ruminated on two questions. The first posed by the fireman who knocked on her door that evening and the latter by an internal monologue:
“What do you want us to retrieve in the next 5 minutes before your house is ruined by fire and water?” and “How am I going to make this the best thing that ever happened to me?”
The short answer? She decided she was going to quit working so much doing work that she hated for stuff she didn’t even care about when it’s burning.
In a culture where “workaholism is now the respected addiction” you might think she’s bananas but Denise is here to tell you that “you can actually make more money by working less and still make a difference in the world.”
Consider the amount of work you get done before you go on vacation. Always impressive isn’t it?
This phenomenon was the catalyst behind her consulting business, The Vacation Effect, where she coaches fellow entrepreneurs in growing their business by minimizing their workload. The strategies she preaches started out as an experiment where she allowed herself to work only three days a week for 30 days. This experiment taught her a number of things about where she was wasting time, where her inefficiencies lie and what really matters when it comes to getting things done, and what happened? The process was so enlightening that the three-day-work-week is a way of life for Denise.
Now you’re asking, where can I focus efforts in attempting to become more efficient? How can I be like the Instant Pot?
Time Blocking – batch all of your appointments, set aside a specific time frame each week where you can accept and schedule meetings, calls, etc. Take control of your calendar.
Delegation – start documenting your policies and procedures and systemize things within your business so that anyone on your team can learn and execute them. Utilize your most valuable resource, your employees.
Automation and Outsourcing – what on your to do list can be automated or outsourced?
And finally, take time to rest and refresh. In order to be your best, most productive self you need time for yourself.
Does working only three days a week sound like too big a task to take on? Denise understands and suggests, as she would to all of her clients, that you design your own time limit experiments and see what inefficiencies you uncover.
She encourages “experiment [your] to everything, experiment your way to awesome!”
