Richard Branson’s Six Secrets to Productivity | Hacker News Reader

Richard Branson’s Six Secrets to Productivity

biz30.timedoctor.com

41 pointssalimmadjd13 comments

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TL;DR:

* Exercise

* Keeping lists

* Love what you do

* Don’t get the lawyers or accountants involved too early

* Hands off delegation

* Set big audacious goals

There is no evidence or references in the article that confirm that Richard Branson either said or endorsed any of these things.

Hands off delegation

So basically figure out how to get other people to do the work for you. Sounds like the way lots of startups try and get "the crowds" to provide content and stickiness.

No, it basically means: get the smartest and most creative people to do the jobs that one person shouldn't try to multitask. You're right, you can get a lot of stuff done by yourself, but after a certain point the workload and efficiency of doing it all yourself plummets. So you go and get the best people to do those jobs. The best people don't want you watching over their shoulder - that's hands-off delegation.

Nice information on the face of it, but where did it come from? The writer doesn't mention speaking to Mr Branson, or credit any other source.

Looks like it's just a few quotes ripped from other sites like this one:

http://www.wordpower.ws/quotations/richard-branson-quotes.ht...

First: Don't spend the day on HN ;-)

Correction: Zeroth.

Sorry for being to geeky ^_^

*too

>"Richard actually often gets up early at 6am to run"

I think getting up early is often tied to productivity by itself, however the attribution here is only to the exercise. Oh well, it's not a scientific paper.

>“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.”

I think this doesn't apply to anyone but perhaps the crowd here. Many people tend to want to have a clear delineation between work and home life to avoid work creeping too much into family/personal time.

in his autobiography, During his fight with BRitish Airways his wife dragged him to a barbecue with friends. He spent all but the first five minutes in the car calling and organising his teams for a crucial meeting Monday Apparently he felt it was the closest to divorce he had come.

We have to take with a pinch of salt how rosy life was for people who have succeeded and look back hoping their kids were not too fucked up by them. (it's a worry we all have - just likely to be more so for people who spend life running round the globe)

7) Get on with doing work and stop reading Hacker News and other people's tips on productivity!

http://productiveblog.tumblr.com/

Link doesn't work, goes to a login page, no matter if your logged in or not.

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