implement all the timesaving tools from Elimination and travel
Epstein Suite indexes the text; the original document lives at its official source. We don't host the original file — view it on the official release to read it in full.
View the original on the official releaseDocument text
Text is machine OCR and may contain errors. Confirm against the original source above.
implement all the timesaving tools from Elimination and travel.
He is a mechanical engineer and is producing twice as many designs in half the time since erasing
90% of his time-wasters and interruptions. This quantum leap in performance has been noticed by his
supervisors and his value to the company has increased, making it more expensive to lose him. More
value means more leverage for negotiations. Sherwood has been sure to hold back some of his
productivity and efficiency so that he can highlight a sudden jump in both during a remote work trial
period.
Since eliminating most of his meetings and in-person discussions, he has naturally moved about 80%
of all communication with his boss and colleagues to e-mail and the remaining 20% to phone. Not only
this, but he has used tips from chapter 7, “Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal,” to cut
unimportant and repetitive e-mail volume in half. This will make the move to remote less noticeable, if at
all noticeable, from a managerial standpoint. Sherwood is running at full speed with less and less
supervision.
Sherwood implements his escape in five steps, beginning on July 12 during the slow business season
and lasting two months, ending with a trip to Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, for two weeks as a final
test before bigger and bolder vagabonding plans.
Step 1: Increase Investment
First, he speaks with his boss on July 12 about additional training that might be available to employees.
He proposes having the company pay for a four-week industrial design class to help him better interface
with clients, being sure to mention the benefit to the boss and business (i.e., he’ll decrease
intradepartmental back-and-forth and increase both client results and billable time). Sherwood wants the
company to invest as much as possible in him so that the loss is greater if he quits.
Step 2: Prove Increased Output Offsite
Second, he calls in sick the next Tuesday and Wednesday, July 18 and 19, to showcase his remote
working productivity.2 He decides to call in sick between Tuesday and Thursday for two reasons: It
looks less like a lie for a three-day weekend and it also enables him to see how well he functions in
social isolation without the imminent reprieve of the weekend. He ensures that he doubles his work
output on both days, leaves an e-mail trail of some sort for his boss to notice, and keeps quantifiable
records of what he accomplished for reference during later negotiations. Since he uses expensive CAD
software that is only licensed on his office desktop, Sherwood installs a free trial of GoToMyPC remote
access software so that he can pilot his office computer from home.
Step 3: Prepare the Quantifiable Business Benefit
Third, Sherwood creates a bullet-point list of how much more he achieved outside the office with
explanations. He realizes that he needs to present remote working as a good business decision and not a
personal perk. The quantifiable end result was three more designs per day than his usual average and
three total hours of additional billable client time. For explanations, he identifies removal of commute
and fewer distractions from office noise.
Step 4: Propose a Revocable Trial Period
Fourth, fresh off completing the comfort challenges from previous chapters, Sherwood confidently
proposes an innocent one-day-per-week remote work trial period for two weeks. He plans a script in
advance but does not make it a PowerPoint presentation or otherwise give it the appearance of something
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013941
Have a question about what this document contains?
Ask the documents