Chicago, IL

By A.B. Dada

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One simple fact of business that many entrepreneurs and employees ignore is the idea of efficiency: doing more in less time.  We generally want to find ways to save big amounts of time only, which is a mistake that almost everyone in business makes.

One key area to increasing efficiency is to shave seconds off of tasks you do commonly.  From buying a printer with a faster warm-up and first page out to reducing overhead on your desktop are ways that I find to make myself much more efficient.

It’s July 2, which is the time of the year when I do the most important thing possible to save myself a ton of time in the long run: wiping my workstation clean.  Sometimes I prefer to buy a new workstation completely, but lately I’ve found that starting fresh is better than buying new.  My most used workstation is 3 years old, and works just fine if I take the proper steps to maximize that micro-efficiency.  Saving a few seconds here and there every minute can mean almost an entire work-week saved annually.  Consider the following situation:

Is your web browser running a bit slower than expected?  Does loading up a needed website take 10 seconds instead of appearing instantly?  Does double-clicking on a program to load take 30 seconds instead of 5?  How about simple processes like pulling down the file menu and clicking “open”?  These are areas where cutting down on the time it takes to do a task can save you significantly.  I find that as my workstation bogs down, I lose important seconds.  By starting fresh, I can save more than a work week per year.

A slow computer (meaning latency of doing fast operations, not operations that always take long) can lose me up to 90 seconds per work hour.  Doesn’t sound like much.  If you lose just 1.5 seconds of work time per minute worked, that’s 90 seconds per work hour.  Getting that time back is precious.  90 seconds per work hour means 720 seconds lost per work day, or 3600 per week and 187,200 per work year.  That’s 3120 work-minutes lost per year, or 52 work-hours lost.  1.3 work weeks a year are lost to inefficient computing!  If you make $40,000 per year at your job or business, you’re losing $1000 per year in lost efficiency.

Here’s what I do quarterly:

1. I upgrade the memory in my workstation to the maximum, based on what it costs.  I went from 512MB to 1GB to 2GB to 4GB in my workstation over 3 years.  Extra memory means the computer has to “swap” to the hard drive less, which saves you a TON of time in terms of micro-efficiency.

2. I upgrade my hard drive to a faster hard drive.  I went from a 5400 RPM drive to a 7200 RPM drive to a 10,000 RPM drive in 3 years.  The 10,000 RPM hard drive is surprisingly zippy, and files open and save MUCH faster, possibly saving me more than the whopping 6 minutes per day.

3. Once you replace your hard drive, put your old one in an external case, which costs about $15-$20 locally or online.  Use that USB based drive to retrieve the data you need.  On the fresh drive, reinstall your operating system and needed applications.

After you finish these fairly simple tasks (I can do it in under 90 minutes each quarter), your PC will be completely refreshed.  Programs will launch quicker, the web will feel zippier, files will open and save much faster.  You’ll save mere seconds here and there, but you’ll save a huge amount of productive time in the long run.  Even if you do this at a job you’re employed at, you’ll be more productive than the person in the cubicle over, which means you’ll finish your projects early and make an impression on upper management.

Another little secret is to replace your Internet network’s DNS server with an open one from OpenDNS.com or another.  I prefer to run my own little DNS server on my own computer, which makes web sites pop up significantly faster than relying on my ISP’s DNS server.  Again, saving a few seconds here and there on common tasks adds up to a huge savings.

Don’t lost productivity by wasting seconds here and there.  Open a file and see if there is noticeable lag.  Save a file and note the same.  Visit a common website and see if your PC takes time to “think.”  Open a program and see how long it takes.

Then follow my simple 3 step process above, and make the same comparisons.  After you realize I’ll save you at least $1000 a year, send me $10 via paypal today as thanks to making you more efficient, more productive, and more profitable.  Then share this secret with friends and family by providing a link to this site.

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