How to Do Your Best Work (The 2 things you are missing)

I have had many jobs since I was 15 up to now at 30.

My first ever job was as a lifeguard in our local swimming pool during transition year in school.

Think less David Hasselhoff running, and more cleaning toilets and sitting in the high chair nearly falling asleep.

From there I did door-to-door sales one summer during college for 3 months. Some of the toughest work I ever did.

3rd year in college I did an internship in Volkswagen Group Ireland for a year in the head office in Liffey Valley.

Great experience, and some stories not for this email! I went in with 0 points on my licence and left with 9, but that could have been the least of my worries!

When I finished college my first job was as a Junior recruiter for Arvato (a business process outsourcing company). We were hiring people to work for Google ads through Arvato. The ones who sift through all the porn/violence etc and get rid of it so that you don’t have to see it - yeah, great fun!

After nearly 2 years there, I quit. Longer story of not getting my increase in salary with my promotion even 3 month later. Being taken advantage of and worked to the bone. Highest stress levels of my life. Learned so much about managing stress from this experience.

So I interviewed for 3 other companies at the time (one of them was Facebook) and got to final round in all of them……..but got none of the jobs. I still stuck to my guns and quit the Arvato job anyway, even though they offered me a few grand to stay for a few more weeks.

Integrity is more important to me. You can’t buy me then. You can’t buy me now.

So I was on the dole for a few weeks, then got a job as an administrator in a finance company. (30k for admin and low stress……when I was only getting paid 25k as a Senior Recruiter in Arvato with mountains of stress and responsibility as the point of contact to all the operations managers for recruitment haha I realised then how much I had been taken advantage of, but you live and learn. Great experience and wouldn’t change any of it.

That job actually taught me so much. Somedays I didn’t know whether to cry or punch a hole in the wall. It was just chaos. Understaffed and unmanageable workload. Demands being made that you can’t fill. Taking blame for things literally out of my control as I am covering for my boss. The boss makes promises we can’t fill - we do our best to do the impossible and fail, and get blamed.

For context my manager ended up in hospital after he came out of a meeting holding his heart……that will give you an idea of the stress we were under!!! One of the lessons there - don’t make promises you can’t keep. Just be honest and tell it as it is. Making false promises will help ease the stress in the short term……..but it’s only building in the background to set you up for a big fall. You have to back it up with another one....until you are so far down in your web of lies everyone can see it and you are trapped with no way out.

While I was maybe a month into the admin role in the next company, I got a call from Facebook with an offer of a different role than the one I interviewed for. Finding candidates for roles. I would have taken the janitor role in there at the time for the perks and to get out of this admin job haha, little did they know. Happy days, gluk admin role!! Gimmie that free food boi.

And around 3 years ago, I quit the Facebook job to pursue this coaching business full-time.

I’ve been in many different jobs, in many different industries, but there are some things that transfer across all of them. There are some things that enable you to do your BEST WORK…..no matter what industry/job you are in.

It all comes down to EFFECTIVENESS & EFFICIENCY

Effectiveness and efficiency are what will set you apart from your coworkers, or even as an entrepreneur. It has served me well in every domain. And it’s something ANYONE can utilise once they understand it.

The Busy Badge of Honour (the norm)

I don’t know about you, but the ‘busy badge of honour’ never sat right with me.

First in, last to leave……..cool, do you want a medal? To me, all I saw was someone posturing for the approval & recognition of others, while glorifying the hustle culture 24/7 shite we see everywhere.

Yes of course, there will be times where you need to do the long hours, and I do value hard work and discipline, don’t get me wrong. But is that how you want to live your life? With your nose to the grindstone - life passing you by. When you take up your nose and its skint to the bone, 40 years have gone and you didn’t even realise? There are better ways than just constantly working all the time which you will find out in this newsletter.

I did the ‘8 hours’ or more in most the jobs. I followed the norm. But it was only once I knew I was going to quit these jobs eventually and pursue my passion for coaching that things changed.

The already dwindling motivation for these jobs was starting to plummet. I just couldn’t justify giving 8 hours of my life each day building someone else’s dream. A dream I had zero passion for. When I could be building my own like I am now. Sharing my experience and learning to help others in things I am passionate about.

This is when I slowly started working less and less. The lesson I will go through today of learning how effectiveness & efficiency would change how I work forever, happened out of NECESSITY rather than curiosity. I was slowly working less hours than everyone around me, so if I didn’t someone figure out how to still be a good worker……I would eventually get fired.

Constraints force better QUESTIONS (better questions → better answers → better outcomes)

Now that I was only working like 4 hours or so instead of 8……..this forced me to ask better QUESTIONS. How am I still going to do good work and not get fired, in roughly half the time?

And off I went asking better questions to get better answers and outcomes:

• How much of this 8 hours are people ACTUALLY working?

• How much of this 8 hours AM I actually working?

• Probably 4 or 5 at best. And I’m coasting. Procrastinating. Talking shit to coworkers. Going on coffee breaks etc.

• What if you could do that work in half the time and have time to do other things you enjoy with the other hours?

• What if you cut out all the shite and focused only on MISSION CRITICAL TASKS, and ruthlessly prioritised them over anything else?

• If you did this, could you do the ‘8 hours of work’, in 4 hours? Could you use the other 4 hours now to work on your mobility & also on growing your instagram page and business?

Only one way to find out isn’t there? You TEST IT.

You can debate all day, but testing it is the ultimate equaliser. You will find out if it works or not.

Testing and iteration is the way forward. Test & iterate until you find success & consistency.

To me, I always valued working SMARTER over working harder. To me that was what showed who the best worker was.

But after asking myself better questions, I could clearly see why I wasn’t doing great work in some jobs: I was trying to multitask constantly. I was doing these tasks whenever I wanted and procrastinating in between. I was constantly available to everyone answering emails and messages. I wasn’t efficient or effective. And chances are you are pretty similar.

Why am I going to tell you about efficiency & effectiveness?

• Because it changed how I work forever.

• Because it got me past interviews in Facebook with no prep (You will see story down further)

• Because it didn’t just help me stay afloat in Facebook working less hours, it even got me promoted from working roughly half the time

• Because it's how I work today as an online coach/entrepreneur

• Because it WORKS, no matter the industry you are in

I’ve battle testing it in the 9-5 arena, and as an entrepreneur. And this shit works. I want you to gain from this knowledge and utilise it to get better results in your own career.

Effectiveness AND Efficiency

Right let's get to it!

These are the 2 things you are missing: EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY.

Once you read through, you’ll see why one doesn’t work without the other. But using both in tandem will skyrocket you to your best work in whatever it is that you do.

So let’s dive into the details:

EFFECTIVENESS (80/20 rule):

• The easiest way to describe effectiveness is through the 80/20 rule

• It’s called ‘Pareto’s Law’ and came from some Italian economist. He saw the trend that 20% of the people, owned 80% of the land. But this trend is true in a lot of things. And for here today trying to do our best work, it means that 80% of your RESULTS………come from just 20% of what you ACTUALLY DO.

• Let that sink in. 80% of your results, come from just 20% of the stuff you do. The other 80% of other tasks you do in your job is BASICALLY USELESS IN TERMS OF MOVING YOU FORWARD

• So here we need to IDENTIFY the 20% of your tasks that yield 80% of your RESULTS. And we are going to RUTHLESSLY focus on this 20%. Then you could hit the results in a much shorter timeframe as you are being so much more EFFECTIVE

• You can do this by listing out the top 10 tasks you do each day. Then imagine there was a gun to your head and you could only pick TWO TASKS to do to keep moving the needle forward as best you can in your job. This is the 20% that REALLY MATTERS. The 20% that is getting you 80% of your results but you surround it with fluff and shit to make you feel better.

My Facebook example:

• I was a sourcer on the recruitment team.

• 10 tasks:

1. Calls with candidates

2. Team meetings

3. Projects

4. Sourcing candidates on LinkedIn

5. Networking

6. Updating processes

7. Chatting shite

8. Playing pool/ping pong

9. Doing Jiu-Jitsu

10. Looking busy while doing fuck all

Gun to my head - what are the 2 most important tasks:

1. Sourcing candidates on LinkedIn

2. Calls with candidates (and put the best ones through to the hiring manager)

THAT’S IT.

The more I thought about it, I’m like yep. That is LITERALLY what they are paying me for. To find good candidates, and put them through to the hiring manger so he can hire the best ones. That is literally the CORE of my job. All the other stuff is trivial really.

So I had my 2 core tasks. The 20% that gets me 80% of my results. Onto Efficicnecy next as we have to combine the two.

EFFICIENCY:

• Parkinsons rule explains efficiency really well.

• This states that the time you ALLOW for a task, decides the PERCEIVED IMPORTANCE of that task.

• It can be a little confusing, a quick college example will make this crystal clear for you. In which situation do your PERCEIVE the project to be more important?:

• You have a project due in 3 weeks

• You have a project due in 3 hours

Pretty clear isn’t it? haha. Ok but WHY…..why are you working like a madman and efficient as FUCK when it's 3 hours away, and just going through the motions when it’s 3 weeks away?

It’s because the PERCEIVED IMPORTANCE is different based on the TIME ALLOCATED FOR ITS COMPLETION.

Whether it's a REAL deadline or a PERCEIVED deadline doesn’t matter. Real deadlines are obviously easier to be more efficient for as there are real-life consequences. But you can create your own consequences too for not getting your work done on time.

P.S. I literally put this to the test in final year of college. I did college backwards. I actually went into college year 1 & 2 and didn’t go out much. Then final year when I was like shit…..this might be the last fun year of my life, I don’t want to work 40 years in a job I have no passion for. Fuck…….well…….better make the most of this final year of freedom!! And so I lived with a party animal and we went out 3 or 4 nights a week minimum and barely ever went to college. Studied for the exams 8 hours straight beforehand with a few cans of monster and coffee! haha (exam at 9am, study 12-8am, go do the exam. Come home and sleep, then up and repeat until all were finished). We both passed all our exams. Got between 40-55%. SHWEET. Gimmie that desmond tutu (2:2 degree). And funnily enough all the fuss about getting the ‘2:1’ or ‘1st degree’…….and not once was I asked in ANY interview about it. All they cared about was my experience and my personality/attributes. Delighted I had that year looking back. What a year it was. Trialed being an alcoholic for a year haha. Would never do it again but some good memories.

Facebook example on being efficient:

I set TIME BLOCKS in my calendar for priority tasks 1 and 2 (Sourcing candidates, calls with candidates). All other tasks can DO ONE. Not important. G’luk.

I became a hermit. I GUARDED MY TIME. I created boundaries for myself. I was barely at my desk anymore. I went there in the morning to show my face and that I am here….but then I would disappear after lunch to other places in the building. It became a running joke “is Mark in today?” (One day I actually just didn't come in as I wanted to quite and pursue my passion..……..and nobody even noticed hahahah came in the next day and thought I’d be in trouble….but my manager was like ‘Hey Mark!……and she hadn’t a clue haha)

I avoided as many meetings/project work etc as I could without getting in trouble. I just focused on the 2 main needle-moving tasks, and then the absolute bare minimum of the other stuff I could do while getting away with it.

What was the end result of being effective AND efficient with my work?

• I worked about 4/5 hours a day if even (instead of 8). Some days could be 2-4

• I got the 2 main tasks done, then I used the other time to do things I enjoyed

• I would use the spare time created by this to:

• make my instagram stories to build my page and grow my side hustle back then

• Do my own mobility training during work time

(Zuckerberg basically paying me to get more mobile and launch my own business. Cheers man! haha)

• Do Jiu Jitsu (yes there was Jiu Jitsu in Facebook). Mad enough

• Play pool/ping pong (I made a promise to NEVER reject an offer to play ping pong if I was asked. Because I knew I would never regret it, and it would force me to be even MORE efficient if we played for ages). Think I had to decline once as I had a call coming up. But damn I got a hell of a lot better at ping pong in a year! Playing against someone who was at all Ireland level as a youngster. Would get hammered at the start but 6 or 9 months later I beat him eventually - I knew the power of small gains over time babbbbby ;) That was even more confirmation of it

For efficiency now I use time blocks in the calendar and also use a stopwatch to countdown the time left (which increases the perceived importance). I am currently in a 2-hour writing block and we have…….17 minutes left! Shit better finish the ending here!

The Results

I tell you to FOLLOW THE RESULTS....for mobility and anything else in life, so here they are. I did BETTER WORK…….in about half the time. Is that not what we all want? Or do you want to be the ‘busy fool’?

Newsflash - companies really don’t care about you that much. What are you doing it all for? that gold watch at 65? If push comes to shove, you are getting the axe. I saw it in real-time in many companies I was in. Friends cut, family cut. Shocked at times. Look out for number 1 - YOURSELF. Just like they do.

And if you think from that example that working in Facebook was ‘easy’, pffff nope. Yeah there are class perks, but if you aren’t hitting your results you are cut VERY QUICK. They don’t fuck around haha and that’s fair enough. You’d come into work one day and not see someone……then a day later you find out they were let go (a lot of us initially came in on contracts, not made permanent until you earn your stripes).

Not only did I make the cut and be made permanent. Around a year after that I got a promotion! haha I was like wtf is going on?! I honestly thought at times that I was going to be found out. My manager would call me for a meeting and I’m like “oh shit…..this is it now. She knows what you’re doing. You had a good run, I want to leave anyway”…..but nope haha just a meeting about something else.

But what is the point of this? To show you how THIS SHIT WORKS. IT WILL GET YOU RESULTS.

If you train yourself to be effective AND efficient, you will do great work! You will do BETTER WORK, in LESS TIME. A no-brainer.

Keep in mind though that one WITHOUT the other isn’t enough.

If you are EFFECTIVE….but not efficient, you will do good work but it’ll take all day

If you are EFFICIENT….but not effective, you will get the work done quickly but its not the work that will move you forward

But when you add them TOGETHER……..NOW you will do your best work.

You will get effective work done in the shortest amount of time.

This is one of the main reasons for my success in any working environment, and you can use it too

This information saved me

Before we get into the actionable takeaways below, I’ll leave you with the example I forgot to include, which really solidified how good this efficiency & effectivess model to do your best work is. It was my phone interview for the Facebook role (stage 1 of 3).

It was through a recruitment agency. They said I was selected for an interview with Facebook - class. I was still in the stressful Arvato job and just wanted to get out. If I got to Facebook……SHWEET. Unreal. That would be best case scenario. She said she would contact me with the preparation to go through for the interview, Sound. No point starting any prep for the interview until we have that call.

Then like a week later around lunchtime at Arvato I got a call (I’m busy as usual and had forgotten my keycard on my way to the kitchen to answer the phone). “Hey Mark…….it’s X from Facebook! How are you???”……….my heart sank. I thought this was a call from the recruitment agency to go through the PREPARATION for this fekn interview………..but THIS IS THE ACTUAL INTERVIEW with Facebook. I have zero prep done. NOTHING. Zilch (turns out they had sent prep to an old email I gave them by accident, so I never got it. My mistake but it's obviously too late now).

So now the opportunity I REALLY wanted - to finally leave here and get to a much better job/company like Facebook…..was destined to fail. To add to this realisation of how I fucked up and was about to tank this interview…….I was in the kitchen with no keycard, so I couldn’t get back out to go into a room for some privacy. I had to do the interview in the corner of the canteen with some arvato employees eating lunch nearby hahaha. Fuck me. Couldn’t have gone worse.

So of course I try my best, but it's clear I have done zero prep for this interview. I work in recruitment MYSELF haha I know the boxes you need to tick. A candidate has to ATLEAST have done some prep on the role and company or else its clear they don’t give a shit. I could hear in her voice she was like “this guy did zero prep”. And of course when we move on to the harder questions, I have no prep done for those either. I’m drowning here. FUCK.

This interview which IF I prepped for could be going good/great…….is now going from average, to shit. I have about a 1% chance of getting through to the next stage. I need something to save me here. I need a fucking hail mary touchdown throw.

I know from my experience talking to candidates that you put the best ones through, but sometimes you throw in a wildcard - some candidate that fucked up, but said something interesting and you saw some potential in them. So you have your 3 good candidates put through, and you lob in a wildcard candidate. And sometimes they actually do the best.

So I’m like ok……Mark you need to pull out something this woman hasn’t heard before. Not about recruitment, she’s heard it all before and you’ve done no prep anyway you twerp. You need something else…….and what comes to my mind? ALL THE INFO I HAD JUST LEARNED ABOUT EFFICIENCY & EFFECTIVENESS that I have explained in this email. It’s all in my head. I wrote this email freestyle like I do with all of them.

I had just read the book “the 4 hour workweek” by Tim Ferris, and this is where I first learned it.

So I told her this concept of how I do my best work through efficiency and effectiveness………...and the tone in her voice changed…….shes gone from bored to INTRIGUED. She didn’t know this information.

She’s asking me more about it, I’m answering & explaining it well….shes asking me where I learned this from…………….I FUCKING GOT YOU. I knew it haha. I’M THE WILDCARD BABBYYYYYY. Put. me. THROUGH!!!

And so from a faceplant shit interview for the first 20 mins with no prep, I turned it around on the last questions and brought in all the info from this email. The interview finished. I’m in the canteen like fucking hell………..I fucked up there but maybe……just MAYBE….I did enough with the efficiency/effectiveness answer to get me through.

And lo and behold, I get a call from the recruitment agency to say Facebook are putting me through to the 2nd stage hahahaha. With no prep. Why? Because this information was so useful that the recruiter who was on the call with me probably starting using it to improve her own work! And she put me through as the wildcard.

If that doesn’t show you the power of this info, I don’t know what will haha. Those interview stages are cutthroat. Thank you Tim Ferris. Funny how it can come down to tiny things in crucial moments. If I didn’t have that knowledge, I never would have worked in Facebook. C’est la vie.

This info lets me do my BEST WORK, and it’s also saved me in tough situations……what can it do for YOU?

Time to find out. You have an arrow in your quiver that not many people have. Use it to your advantage.

3 Actionable Takeaways

1. Understand how the best work is done

• It’s a synergy between effectiveness & efficiency

• Identify where your weak link is

• Do you need to be more effective or more efficient?

2. Effectiveness

• 80/20 rule (80% of results come from 20% of tasks)

• Write out 10 tasks for your job

• Highlight the top 2 that move the needle forward & ruthlessly prioritise them

3. Efficiency

• Parkinsons law (time allotted determines perceived importance)

• Create boundaries for your work to increase the urgency

• Use time blocks in your calendar & a stopwatch to help

Client Example:

My goal with clients is to help them as much or as little as they want. So for a good number of clients I help them not just with their mobility, but with a range of other things like the info in this email about how to do your best work.

Peter was a client who I helped with not just mobility & strength, but gave all the advice/wisdom on a number of topics from the training to career and beyond! I love it. My pleasure. I learn so much each week as I love to, and if it can benefit others lives too then all the better!

This Week

Education:

• Current Reading: The Denial of Death

• Podcasts

(Lex Friedman Podcast: John Danaher: Submission grappling, ADCC, animal combat, and knives). Finished this one from last week

(Modern Wisdom Podcast #488: Nick Bare - Consistently good not occasionally great)

(Modern Wisdom Podcast #481: Tim Kennedy - Lessons learned through pain)

(Modern Wisdom Podcast #436: Jordan Peterson - Your Life is Built for More)

Business:

This week's client testimonial (Leanna Cassidy)

Personal:

Fun this week:

• Wednesday: Weather was shit so didn’t bother going for a meal or to the cinema! Just stayed in and finished work at 6pm to train. Then watched some videos from a current mentor, and then watched UFC 280 lead up videos!! Great card this weekend

• Saturday: will go for meal/few pints with a friend

• MRI results: Got both of my knees scanned as they are the only thing really holding me back at the moment. Turns out I have a meniscus tear in both knees. Knew I had tore the right one a few months ago in Jiu Jitsu. But the left knee has been an issue for 10 years. Got it scanned before and they said it was perfect. I suspect it was a meniscus tear that they didn't see. Anyway, not ideal but we keep moving forward as best I can! If you can’t do what you want, you do what you can! (last weeks newsletter topic!) Waiting to see an orthopaedic surgeon now for a consult to see what they think. Possible double knee surgery

Training:

• Tested the One Arm Chin Up on Sunday. Didn’t get a new PB, so the 2.5kg assisted OAC PB from a month ago still stands. That's the PB for the last year's work! I tried 1.25kg and got halfway up so that was a positive too! Back to the long game and chasing the small gains again! Trusting and enjoying the process

• Lower body session Monday and Upper (push) on Wednesday.

• 2 Jiu-Jitsu sessions. Can train and spar and people wouldn't know any different. But with the knees I am only compromised in a small number of positions. I can’t sit on my heels comfortable, which doesn’t sound like a huge deal - but if you do Jiu Jitsu you know how a lot of moves/positions require this

That’s it!

Use the extremely powerful combination of effectiveness AND efficiency to do your most potent work going forward!

Any questions on it just send me an email or a DM on Instagram.

Enjoy the weekend!!

Don't Settle,

Mark