A summary of things you should know about How to be a Productivity Ninja according to Graham Allcott: Introduction In this episode Graham Allcott takes a deep dive into hisRead More
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]]>In this episode Graham Allcott takes a deep dive into his book, How to be a Productivity Ninja, where he shows you how to worry less, achieve more, and love what you do.
In his book Allcott combines all of his teachings from his public productivity workshops from all around the world into a simple, effective guide to working faster and smarter. The goal of the book is to teach you how to overcome procrastination, how to use email more efficiently, new ways to increase your personal time, and how to de-clutter an information overload.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who own more than one business or run a time intensive business and need help balancing their overloaded schedule in order to work more efficiently.
My book is very real, hands on, and dives right into the practicality of where you are personally.
I originally wrote the book to be read from front to back but there are some who pick in and out.
Don’t manage time, manage attention. Look at the two or three hours that you are on top form and schedule your task according to that.
The first chapter is all about developing a mindset of a ninja to use in your productivity. This is about living in the present moment and not thinking about what you need to do or worrying about tomorrow. People’s best work happens when they are present and in the moment. We talk about being ruthless, ruthless with yourself and being ruthless with others. I go over reasons why we get stressed, attention management, and best ways to go about using your e-mail.
Then we get into what I call the CORD Productivity Model that has four elements which are capturing and collecting information, organizing, reviewing, and the psychology of doing. The capturing and collect element is about getting things out of your head and getting that information into what I call the second brain. The key to organizing is having a good set of list; I suggest having an overarching master to-do list and an overarching project list. The review element is where I ask myself a series of questions each morning to go over what I need to get done. The last element of the CORD productivity is the psychology of doing what needs to get done. Even though you know what to do it’s sometimes hard to find the momentum to get things started so I give you different ways to create it and ways to trick your brain into doing it.
There are also chapters on product management and meetings.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:36
“Time management is dead.” – Graham Allcott
“A ninja is not a superhero but they often appear so.” – Graham Allcott
I run a company called Think Productive and am an author. For the last few years I’ve been involved in productivity training and coaching with some of the biggest companies in the UK and increasingly around the world. At the moment my life is traveling the world and being the evangelist for Productivity Ninja.
The inspiration for me was my own journey with productivity. I used to be a chief executive of a charity here in the UK and I went freelance. And when I went freelance I realized that I no longer had a team of people around me and knew I had a problem and needed to develop my own skills. I started reading lots of different books, blogs, and experimenting with different systems to develop my own take on the topic of productivity. I am a big believer that the things you struggle to learn yourself are the things you should teach to other people so I started doing just that.
Making It All Work by David Allen
Linchpin by Seth Godin
Buy How To Be A Productivity Ninja by Graham Allcott on Amazon today
Visit ThinkProductive.co.uk to learn more about Graham and his book
Follow Graham Allcott on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Work Smarter by Nick Loper
Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Work Simply by Carson Tate
Relevant advice and tips:
6 Practical Tips to Become an Effective Entrepreneur
7 Productivity Tools That Every Entrepreneur Should Be Using Today
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Work Simply according to Carson Tate: Introduction In this episode Carson Tate takes a deep dive into her book, Work Simply, whereRead More
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]]>In this episode Carson Tate takes a deep dive into her book, Work Simply, where she provides a system to help make work less complicated and more organized.
In her book Tate gives you a step-by-step productivity system that is separated into four custom styles that are uniquely fit for different types of learners and doers. The goal of the book is to help you identify your own unique productivity style, maximize your effectiveness, lead great meetings, communicate properly, and tell how your desk defines your work style.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs that maintain a very busy schedule, work over 40 hours a week, and need help organizing tasks into an effective system.
The key difference from my book is that it is based on this concept that I developed called productivity style. In the book you take an assessment to determine your thinking style and once you discern your type then the rest of the book you customize strategies and tools based on your type.
I absolutely do not recommend you read my book front to back. I would suggest that you go to the chapter or chapters in the book that speak to your current challenge and read that content.
It would be to personalize your productivity. Decide to no longer accept a one size fits all solution for your time or e-mail or communication challenges. Push back and understand your thinking style and then rigorously filter and only allow in those strategies and tools that are in alignment with you and the way that you work.
Early on in the book there is a chapter on your productivity style, why it matters, and how to identify it.
Then the book moves into the areas that I think most of us really struggle with in our businesses. In this section there is a chapter about Managing Your Attention and in our 24/7, always connected world, how do you manage your attention so that you’re able to focus on your goals and priorities. And this chapter looks at how to control against distractions, how to manage “emergencies”, and also how to manage your technology.
Then the books moves on to Setting Priorities. Everybody knows about setting priorities but I introduce a new framework here that I call Ready Goals and these goals are slightly different than most of us have been taught around Smart Goals in that they are realistic, exciting, action oriented, directive, and ultimately they are yours.
Next I look very specifically at the challenge we face like investing your time wisely, how to free your brain and build an effective master task list, how to get more done, and then how to tame your inbox. And then we move into how to shape your space. How do you shape your physical environment regardless of where you work for optimal performance?
Each of the sections start with best practices and each one have very specific strategies for you based on your productivity style. Each chapter also has very detailed charts that make it very easy to access the information and most of them are downloadable from the website.
In the third part of the book we talk about how to work more effectively with others. This section looks at how to delegate effectively and gives you charts on productivity style clues so that you can identify the style of your direct reports, the style of your investors and vendors. Then there is a section on working well with others and why we have what I call these productivity clashes and what to do about them. And the finally piece in this section is around meetings and how to get work done in and through them.
I end the book with a high level summary so that you can pull out the nuggets and take away what you want.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 07:38
“Every time you say yes to something you’re saying no to something else.” – Carson Tate
I am the owner and founder of a company called Working Simply and that’s my personal mission as well as my company’s mission to help individuals, teams, and organizations streamline and simplify their workflow.
I am very privileged to have the opportunity to work with really high achieving entrepreneurs and business owners and as I was working with them I was finding that they were struggling in trying to adopt and adapt some of the time management, productivity, best practices in the marketplace. So they were feeling frustrated and overwhelmed because the latest and greatest app or blog post that they read wasn’t working for them. I realized that it wasn’t the lack of drive but rather the tools that they were using weren’t aligned to the way they think. So I wanted to write a book that helped people identify the way they think and then align their thinking styles to the way they actually work so that they can be more productive and more discerning.
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Buy Work Simply by Carson Tate on Amazon today
Visit CarsonTate.com to learn more about Carson and take her productivity assessment
Follow Carson Tate on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Work Smarter by Nick Loper
Four Seconds by Peter Bregman
Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Relevant advice and tips:
6 Practical Tips to Become an Effective Entrepreneur
7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Work Simply with Carson Tate appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about Get Big Things Done according to Erica Dhawan: Introduction In this episode Erica Dhawan takes a deep dive into her book, GetRead More
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]]>In this episode Erica Dhawan takes a deep dive into her book, Get Big Things Done, where she unlocks the 21st century secret to getting things done through the power of connectional intelligence.
In her book Dhawan teaches you what is connectional intelligence, how to develop it, and reveals the secrets of how many well-known leaders have used it to achieve their own professional goals. The goal of the book is to help you creatively gain more supporters, drive more innovation, develop solid strategies, and solve problems on a large scale so you can achieve better performance.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who have a growing network of connections and needs a guide for making the most use of their network by building actionable connections.
The idea in the book is a concept called connectional intelligence and it speaks to the quality of the connections we build rather than just the quantity of networks. It helps readers understand that networks don’t easily translate into outcomes. This book teaches a game plan on why some people are better at mobilizing their web of relationships to actually get big things done. This book is about the human ability in a skill that we can all build that particularly 21st century innovators have to maximize all of our connections and put them to significant use.
The book is written in a way where there is a set of stories that walk through how to use connectional intelligence in action across many different industries. But then we have a guide called Putting it All Together and that guide has a quiz, manger guide, and work plans to help you actually use it. So you can start in the end, the beginning or in the middle of the book depending on what your goals are and how to apply the ideas of the book.
There is one major concept that we decoded in our book that I think is incredibly important. That concept is that there are three types of people that use connectional intelligence and the three types of people are thinkers, enablers, and connection executors. These are people that have different types of traits and in the book we have a quiz that you can take to figure out which type you are. By reading this book you can learn not only whether or not you are a connecter and how to use connections but what type of connecter you are and how you can partner with the right people in your community to get big things done.
The book Get Big Things Done has 10 chapters and I’ll give you a little walk-through of what each chapter encompasses and what it’s all about.
The first chapter is called The Big Wave and it answers the question what is connectional intelligence and where do we see it in work at the world. Most importantly this chapter answers how to harness connectional intelligence to get to places that we all want to go.
The second chapter is called The Roots of Connectional Intelligence. In this chapter we explore the historical roots of connectional intelligence and we explore what some of the essential questions are that we want readers to think about that are at the center of connectional intelligence.
After the first two chapters we move into Part two of the book which is made up of a series of chapters that highlight a set of stories of connectional intelligence in action.
Chapter three is called How to Get Big Things Done a Primary and what this chapter does is it explores a typography of connectional intelligence in the modern world. We talk about stories like how a pumpkin farmer in Rhode Island is changing agricultural practices in Indian.
Chapter four is called Connect Intelligently and this chapter continues to walk through a set of stories but it really looks through how the ever changing digital landscape typically now favors the brave, the quick, and the connectional intelligence to get big things done. We have stories in there of entrepreneurs, small businesses, and large businesses.
The title of chapter five is called Courage Builds On Courage and this chapter is where we talk about how connectional intelligence isn’t just about winning big in business or pursuing a big ambitious creative dream. Actually more and more people are using their own connectional intelligence to respond within minutes and hours to natural disasters, to violent aftermath of political events, and to tourist attacks. We look at powerful stories of connectional intelligence and we talk about how using courage is a key attribute of getting big things done.
Chapter six is called Connect and Make Change and in this chapter we talk about how you can use this idea to dramatically amp the reach and the influence of individuals. It’s about how anyone and everyone can tap in to what they care about most.
Chapter seven is called Problem Solving in the Power of Play and it’s all about how one of the most powerful forms of connectional intelligence is how individuals are designing problems in a way that actually attracts people to pitch in and solve them differently.
Chapter eight is called The Power of Difference and in this chapter we talk about one of the most important attributes of connectional intelligence and it’s that it allows people to come together but also stands strong in what makes them unique. We talk about how connectional intelligence actually enables what we call those that might consider themselves an outsider.
Chapter nine is called Why not? Reimagining what’s possible and in this chapter we have readers meet those who are changing the face of healthcare, education, and environmental change.
The final chapter is called Putting it All Together and it’s called Your Get Big Things Done Handbook. This chapter discussed how to apply connectional intelligence to your own life as an entrepreneur, as an initiator of change, and as disrupter.
This book is for everyone and anyone that see’s themselves as being able to use connectional intelligence in a way to get big things done.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 07:31
“Take a dream, add connection, dream bigger, get big things done.” – Erica Dhawan
I am the co-author of Get Big Things Done and I serve as a strategist for Fortune 500 companies, organizations, and small business owners, on accelerating the connectedness of their teams with their customers, their clients, and other stakeholders.
The inspiration starts with my personal story; I am a first generation daughter of two Indian immigrants here in the US and as you can imagine my goal since childhood was to check all the boxes of success. In the 2008 recession I witness firsthand confusion and burnout of my generation and I saw how many dreams and passions were being squashed every day. After the financial collapse I completely switched gears to find more meaning in both my work and to better understand how the next generation and leaders that wanted to stay in Corporate America could leverage our passion and purpose and all of the resources available to us. And what I found through that research was that many of the struggles were similar and the struggle was around how to work intentionally to get big things done. This is what led to me co-authoring research with a renowned business strategist named Saj-nicole Joni.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
Buy Get Big Things Done by Erica Dhawan on Amazon today
Visit GetBigThingsDone.com to learn more about the book
Visit EricaDhawan.com to learn more about Erica
Follow Erica Dhawan on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Getting Results The Agile Way by JD Meier
Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Do Less Better by John R Bell
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Getting Results the Agile Way according to J.D. Meier: Introduction In this episode J.D. Meier takes a deep dive into his book,Read More
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]]>In this episode J.D. Meier takes a deep dive into his book, Getting Results the Agile Way, where he shares a simple, effective guide for achieving long-term and short-term personal goals.
In his book Meier provides a very flexible, step-by-step time management system that offers you enough planning to get you going, but simple enough to change it up as need be. The goal of the book is to help you prepare your life from daily to yearly, find your true motivation, improve upon your productivity, and feed your energy with daily habits to move you forward every day.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who sacrifice their personal life for their work life, constantly live with to-do lists, and are looking for a way to make their daily lives less stressful yet more meaningful.
It’s a couple of things. I think that it’s the fact that it’s about simplicity; I really wanted to create a system that was easy to fall off but then very easy to get back on. I didn’t want people to feel intimidated by the system but I also wanted to be more than just a doing task kind of a system. I wanted it to be a system that focused on us as a person.
This book is designed that you can read it all the way through but I also wanted it to be a really quick reference book. I know that people are starved for time and looking to get quick insights so I also made it so that you can dive in and just get the pieces that you need.
If there is one thing to walk away with it’s the idea of thinking in three wins; thinking in terms of three win for your day, three wins for your week, three wins for your month, and three wins for your year. When you think about winning it adds the fun factor and brings you alive.
In the making of Getting Results the Agile Way the idea was to have it been more than just a book, I wanted to create a system for people and it’s a simple system.
In the first part of the book it introduces you to the system in a very simple way by stepping into the values, the principles, and the practices. It’s about giving you the foundation so that when you look at it you are not trying to break yourself against the system. Instead what you are doing is learning how to tweak the system and make it work better for you.
There are three key things upfront that the book lays out that are the big ideas which are the idea of the rule of three, the idea of hotspots, and the idea of a pattern that I call Monday Vision Daily Outcomes and Friday Reflection. I really focused on the idea that if you could get a day right, you could get a week right and if you could get a week right you could get a month right and if you can get that right you can get your year right. The idea of The Monday Vision Daily Outcome Reflection is meant to be very simple. It’s about focusing on what we could do with the time we’ve got, the energy we got, and the results that we want to accomplish. When you get to Friday you want to be able to list the three things that are going well and the three things that need to improve on.
So that’s the system in a nutshell when you look at it from a week’s standpoint but I wanted to dig a little bit deeper. People can get that very simple frame but I wanted to help them design a day, design a week, design a month, and design a year. So when I designed the day the idea was that you don’t have to design your day every day, instead you have to look for the patterns. The idea in designed your day was to improve your startup routine, your shutdown routine, and find the better times in your day where you might be more productive or creative. In designing your week it was a similar idea but in this case we look at what we actually want out of that week and design accordingly. In designing your month we have a lot of opportunity for course correction so we need to step back and figure out what the three wins we want are and target those wins. I find that designing a month can be a really powerful way of getting a big block of time that ends up working in our favor. When it comes to designing the year I find that it helps to first step back and know the three wins that you want out of it.
The whole middle part of the book is about becoming the whole architect of your life. It’s about what you want your days to look like, your weeks to look like, your months to look like, and your years to look like.
Towards the end of the book it gets pretty hardcore and it’s more of a drill down. Now that you know what your want out of your days, weeks, months, and year, we drill down into some of the key results, patterns, and strategies, the things that we can do that help us spend our time more effectively.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:16
“Where the life is a bowl of cherries and you get the pits or the world is your oyster and you look for the pearls, you decide. So choosing your mindset in metaphors is one of the most powerful things you can do to shape your everyday experience and ultimately your life.” – J.D. Meier
I work at Microsoft and been here several years but what I’m really focused on is helping businesses change. I’m in the business of business change but I also help people thrive in work and life.
The big thing was that I saw too many people living in pain and not doing the things that made them come alive. I saw people that simply didn’t flourish when I knew that they could and I want people to be all that they’re capable of. I really wanted people to be able to think, feel, and do their best.
Work from the Inside Out by Nancy O’Hara
Buy Getting Results the Agile Way by J.D. Meier on Amazon today
Visit GettingResullts.com to learn more about the book and exclusive content
Visit SourcesOfInsight.com to check out J.D.’s work and life blogs.
Follow J.D. Meier on Facebook and LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Do Less Better by John R. Bell
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Morning Routines of Very Wealthy People
10 Bad Habits That Successful People Avoid
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Procrastinate on Purpose according to Rory Vaden: Introduction In this episode New York Times bestselling author Rory Vaden reveals all his insightsRead More
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]]>In this episode New York Times bestselling author Rory Vaden reveals all his insights on his book, Procrastinate on Purpose, where he provides a guide for mastering time-management and productivity.
In his book Vaden shows you how the greatest leaders in the world have figured out how to literally multiply their time giving you tools and techniques that will empower you to master your productivity. The goal of the book is to teach you how to manufacture more time into your day, become more effective at work with less stress, and how utilize procrastination to your advantage.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs that are managing multiple projects or businesses at once and need an effective time management strategy that adds more time to their day.
The opening sentence of the book says that everything you know about time management is wrong. And as we have been working with our coaching clients we’ve noticed that most of the clichés that you hear about time management and productivity frameworks that people use were developed in the 80’s and 90’s. It’s been 15 years and think of how the world has changed since then. There are two core things that make this book different from every productivity book. The first one is that everything that you read about time management is all about logic, its tips and tricks, tools and technology, calendars and check lists. What we noticed is that today time management isn’t just logical, it’s emotional. We really tackle the human element of productivity and it’s a fascinating journey and discussion about how feelings of guilt, fear, anxiety, and worry drive our decisions about how we spend time. The second difference is that this book introduces an entirely new era of thinking.
This one is designed to be read from front to back.
The whole book is all built around this one sentence and the sentence is you multiply your time by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that give you more time tomorrow.
This book shows you how to literally create more time. The way you multiply time is by giving yourself permission to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow.
The first part of the book gets you to understanding how to multiply your time. The second part of the book is how to do it and we introduce a diagram called The Focus Funnel. This funnel has five strategies each of which that multiply time and we created a vision framework for that. And each of the five strategies has a corresponding permission.
Strategy number one is Eliminate because by saying no to something today it creates more time tomorrow because it means tomorrow you are not doing something that you would have otherwise been doing. But the emotional element comes in because most of us struggle with saying no and so we end up saying yes to things that we really should say no to. Anytime you end up saying yes to one thing you are simultaneously saying no to an infinite number of others. Now when you have that insight you have a foundation to give yourself the emotional permission to ignore which is the first of the five permissions. And from that standpoint you can now start saying no to things.
The second step of the focus funnel strategy is Automate which is the permission to invest. The third strategy is Delegate and that is the permission of the imperfect. And if a task cannot be eliminated, automated or delegated than the task shoots out the bottom of the funnel. At that point you know that you have a task that must be done and it must be done by you.
So there is only one remaining question but it’s one that most of us don’t ask because we have a fear of coming across as lazy. The remaining question is simple should I do this task now or can it wait until later? If the task must be done now than it’s not a eliminate, automate or delegate task it’s what we call concentrate which is the permission to protect. You are giving yourself permission to protect because that moment you have run task through the methodology and you have absolute conviction that it is the thing that must be done, it must be done by you, and it has the greatest impact of the longest period of time. But if the answer to that question is yes than I am encouraging you and challenging you to not just eliminate, automate or concentrate but to procrastinate on purpose. And that is where the title of the book comes from.
So Procrastinate on Purpose is really just one of the five strategies for multiplying your time. So what you do is pop that activity back to the top of the funnel and that activity is going to enter into a holding pattern where it is cycling through the funnel until at one point one of the other four strategies will come in to play.
The book isn’t so much about what you need to do with your life it’s about how to think and creating the next level of results in your business requires the next level of thinking.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 10:04
“Automation is to your time exactly what compounding interest is to your money.” – Rory Vaden
I am the Co-Founder of Southwestern Consulting and a New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs.
In Take the Stairs we talked about three different times of procrastination and we talk about classic procrastination. Classic procrastination is about consciously delaying the things we know we should be doing. There is another type of procrastination called Creative Avoidance which is a little bit different than classic procrastination because it’s unconscious. Also, in the book Take the Stairs we mentioned this new type of procrastination that we started noticing not in the lazy people but in the movers and shakers and we call it Priority Dilution. This new procrastination affects the entrepreneurs, the go-getters and yet it’s the same result. At the end of the day our most significant priorities are left unchecked, not because we are lazy but because as our star rises we unconsciously or consciously allow our attention to shift to less important but perhaps more urgent tasks. We decided that topic was such a hot button that we needed to dedicate a few years’ worth of research to solving the priority delusion problem.
Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
Buy Procrastinate on Purpose and Take the Stairs by Rory Vaden on Amazon today
Visit ProcrastinateOnPurpose.com to learn more about the book and watch the special webinar
Follow Rory Vaden on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland
The Now Habit by Neil Fiore
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Procrastinate on Purpose with Rory Vaden appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about The Now Habit according to Neil Fiore: Introduction In this episode Neil Fiore takes a deep dive into his book, The NowRead More
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]]>In this episode Neil Fiore takes a deep dive into his book, The Now Habit, where he reveals all his insights on one of the most effective programs to combat procrastination.
In his book Fiore offers a comprehensive plan and actionable strategies to help you lower your stress and increase your time to enjoy guilt-free play. The goal of the book is to help any busy person start tasks sooner and accomplish them more quickly, without the anxiety brought on by the negative habits of procrastination and perfectionism.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are struggling to get things done in a timely manner and are looking for an effective strategy to become more efficient when it comes to large projects.
The other books come from what I call a puritanical view where you have to work harder and longer. My book works more strategically and psychologically in shifting around motivation and how to talk to yourself in a voice that is a voice of an affective but compassionate manager.
You can jump in where needed.
Focus your mind specifically on a time to start for about 5 to 15 minutes. This will replace the usual getting things done idea or I have to finish idea.
One of the reasons we procrastinate is that we have created a since of a burden that our life is just a long list of to-do’s. The typical way of trying to solve our problems in this society that we live in is to create greater pressure which only creates more rebellion. So one of the big psychological concepts here is that choice is a third place, it’s neither have to or want to. When you look at chapter one, Why We Procrastinate, you are probably going to identify yourself about having a long list of have-to-do’s and being unrealistic about your time.
In chapter two we talk about how we procrastinate. I have a schedule there which is you taking a few days or a week and writing down how you spend your time and where it goes. You will hopefully find some productive time but you will also get a sense of what your default habits are that take you away from focusing on the top priority issues.
In chapter three we go over a major concept of how you talk to yourself. If you are saying you have to, want to or need to, you are not telling your mind and body when to start or what to do.
From there I’ll skip to chapter six which is titled The Unscheduled. This chapter is called the unscheduled because it has two parts. In part one I give you a blank schedule that is 168 hours and you start off by not filling in work but play, meeting time, commute time, and sleep time so that you get down to a possible maybe 60 hours to work on your projects. From there you schedule in more play time so that it’s on your schedule and therefore it’s legitimate. In part two you use your schedule like a time clock and you begin to punch in and out every time you need at least 15 to 30 minutes of quality focused uninterrupted work.
The last chapter in this book is dealing with the procrastinator in your life and it has some very specific recommendations on gaining someone’s commitment rather than forcing them to comply.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 10:40
“Procrastination is not your problem; procrastination is your attempted solution. It’s your attempted solution for dealing with the stress and anxiety of starting or completing a task that is overwhelming or boring” – Neil Fiore
I was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey and that’s relevant because coming from a working class family without a lot of money I started working fairly young. By the time I was in high school I was working 15 hours a week at a local supermarket and in college up to 20 hours. I had to learn how to be a lot more efficient than my fellow students and I learned to start writing right when I was assigned an assignment and flesh it out on the bus going to work and finish on the bus coming home. So without realizing it I started to develop those skills very early.
The Now Habit was written while I was on a new job at the University of California. I was working 40 to 45 hours a week, enjoying California, and putting in 15 to 20 hours a week to work on my dissertation so I was extremely focused while busy. I was attempting to work with doctorial students and graduate students and noticed that they were procrastinating. So I realized that I had something valuable that I had taken for granted and wanted to help other people by sharing it in this book.
Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Buy The Now Habit by Neil Fiore on Amazon today
Visit NeilFiore.com to learn more about Neil and all his books
Follow Neil Fiore on Twitter and YouTube
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Habit Stacking by Steve Scott
SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Let’s Stop Meeting Like This according to Dick Axelrod: Introduction In this episode Dick Axelrod shares his book, Let’s Stop Meeting LikeRead More
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]]>In this episode Dick Axelrod shares his book, Let’s Stop Meeting Like This, where he outlines a flexible and adaptable system used to run truly productive meetings no matter the organization.
In his book Axelrod shows you how to design every aspect of a meeting from the way you greet people to how you wrap up the meeting at the end. The goal of the book is to help you create meetings that create concrete plans, accomplish all tasks, build deeper connections, and move projects forward.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs or small business owners who run an organization and are struggling to achieve productive results from company meetings.
So we thought we had something to say that was different. We had a model that was different and our clients were asking when we were going to write a book about it.
We would like the reader to read from front to back but we realize that for most time is an issue. If there is a particular chapter that is more pertaining to your situation you can jump to it without reading the others first.
I would like the reader to begin to think of meetings as work experiences. If you are the leader you must think about how to make that time a time well spent and a productive work experience for everybody present in the group.
We start with this notion that meetings are places that you can get work done. So the first chapter is about how to get your work done in meetings. And there we talk about the concepts of autonomy, meaning, challenge, learning, and feedback and we ask the reader to think about those when they design their meetings.
Then we have a chapter that introduces the meeting canoe which is our major framework for the design of meetings. The canoe consists of six parts about how you welcome people, how you connect people to each other in the task so these first two parts are about creating environments for productive work. And then we have two parts that we talk about, one about discovering the way things are and listening to people’s dreams. What we found is that decision rules for a meeting really need to be clear and upfront in advance. And the last piece is about how to bring closure to a meeting so that it’s a good experience.
We got an overview of the meeting canoe and then we’ve got a chapter each devoted to welcome connecting each to each other in the task, discovering the way things are, a listening people’s dreams, deciding, and then attending to the end and what makes a good ending for the meeting.
And then we have a chapter called Meeting Basics. And in meeting basics we are talking about the things you need to do ahead of time. The basic question you need to ask yourself is if this meeting is really necessary and worth bringing this number of people together for the amount of time planned.
From there we ask the readers to ask themselves what’s going to be different and what you’re trying to create as a result of bringing people together. When you’re clear about your purpose then a lot of others things tend to fall into place. Once you got your purpose we need to figure out who needs to be in this meeting so that we have the right people present. These are the basic thing that people need to think about when they are conducting a meeting.
The last chapters are devoted to leaders and what leaders can do to be more effective. One thing we talk about is as a leader you must use your power wisely. It’s important to make sure that everyone’s voices are heard and no particular person dominates the meeting.
The last chapter is what we call our Hand off To You which is where we say ok we’ve said all that we can say and now it’s up to you to take this and run with it.
“How people enter a space and how people leave a space is as important as what happens in a space.” – Unknown
I teach crisis leadership at the University of Chicago and my wife and I have a consulting firm where we specifically focus on high participation organizational change. I’m also an author and written several books on organizational change.
One of the inspirations behind this book was our son who happened to be a professional ski instructor in Breckenridge Colorado. One day he called to say that he had been using our meeting canoe technique as a framework for his ski lessons and he was now the most requested instructor on the mountain. Between my son and other client’s success with using this framework I decided I should write a book about it for others to learn from and use.
Productive Workplaces by Marvin Weisbord
Buy Let’s Stop Meeting Like This by Dick Axelrod on Amazon today
Visit AxelrodGroup.com to get more articles, resources, and videos
Follow Dick Axelrod on Twitter and Facebook
For questions contact Dick by email here
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: The Best Place To Work by Ron Friedman | Scrum – The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland | Getting Things Done by David Allen
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Scrum according to Jeff Sutherland Introduction In this episode Jeff Sutherland shares his book, Scrum, where he brings you a thought-provoking bookRead More
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Scrum according to Jeff Sutherland
In this episode Jeff Sutherland shares his book, Scrum, where he brings you a thought-provoking book about the management process that is changing the way we live.
In his book, Sutherland lays out his widely used project management system called Scrum which is a simple framework for solving the most intricate work problems effectively. The goal of the book is to simplify your work life, increase productivity, and get more done in less time than before.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are struggling with managing small teams, increasing performance, and making forward progress with large projects.
If you go to Amazon you will see that this book has moved up to the top of the list on time management. Scrum is about getting things done with teams and teams are much more powerful than the individual.
It’s specifically not designed as a reference book but designed to tell the stories about why Scrum works. Any way you read you will find a very interesting story focused on a critical issue for teams getting work done.
The key issue is that within every person and team is a spirit of greatness that lays untapped and to tap that trying to use a traditional management style will not work. You must become a different type of leader and scrum gives you an organizational structure to bring out from the team that greatness that is within.
The first chapter of the book is titled The Way the World Works is Broken. Research shows that most people hate work. The only thing that is worse than going to work is being sick in bed. The reason I believe is the fundamental driver of this problem is that people can’t get stuff done. The whole idea of teams self-organizing to get great results is key to Scrum. So this chapter explains why things are broken and how Scrum fixes them.
That leads us into the second chapter which explains the origins of Scrum.
In the third chapter we get more focused on the teams. A lot of managers don’t understand that the difference in the best performers and the worst performers as individuals is 1 to 10. But if you look at the difference between the best teams and the worst teams it’s 1 to 2,000. So the team effect is two orders of magnitude bigger than the individual effect. So as a manager if you take a team and try to increase productivity person by person it will take you a long time and maybe forever. If you implement Scrum with a cross functional team and you focus the team on the goal they can double their production in a few weeks. This chapter focuses on how you can get teams to do twice the work in half the time.
The fourth chapter is all about time. You need to measure production instead of hours and in this chapter we show you how to plan.
Chapter five explains what happens when you are focused on measuring hours. If you measure hours you get a lot of waist. People think they have to hang around at their desk and punch their clock by doing nothing. We show systematically in this chapter how to build a cross functional team that gets on a self-improvement cycle that is continually removing waist from the system and accelerating faster and faster.
From there we move in to planning and Scrum uses reality base planning. This chapter gives the entrepreneur the nuts and bolts on how to get this implemented in the company with a lot of stories and examples the planning and implementation.
In the seventh chapter we describe how to get employees so motivated and happy that they never leave your company, they get twice the work done in half the time, they have fun while doing it and they are making sure the company objectives are being met. The bottom line is that happiness drives revenue and we show lots of stories on why that works.
Scrum in the art of getting twice the work done in half the amount of time.
“The entire armed forces need to get agile.” – Unknown
I am a CEO of a company called Scrum Inc. I had a career as a fighter pilot which is part of what led to the book we are going to talk about. I spent 11 years in the air force and what I learned flying over North Vietnam is imbedded in my book. When I got back I completed an advance degree in medical school and was a professor of radiology, biometrics and preventative medicine. I was then hired away from the medical school in to a large banking company and when I looked at what they were doing in software I implemented what I learned from medical school and the military and that resulted in the creation of Scrum.
Several years ago I wrote a book called Software in 30 days and in there we focused mainly on IT and software development. There is still a debate on what works and doesn’t work and I wanted to amplify on that. I also wanted to talk about how Scrum is moving outside of software development and tell all the great stories that I couldn’t get into my software book.
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
Buy Scrum by Jeff Sutherland on Amazon today
Visit ScrumInc.com to learn more about Jeff, his company, and Scrum
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: How To Succeed in 12 Months by Serena Star-Leonard | Getting Things Done by David Allen | Smartcuts by Shane Snow
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Work Smarter according to Nick Loper Introduction In this episode Nick Loper shares his book Work Smarter which provides entrepreneurs with overRead More
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]]>In this episode Nick Loper shares his book Work Smarter which provides entrepreneurs with over 350 online resources to increase productivity. This book is perfect for the entrepreneur in need of the best project management tools to help achieve goals faster and truly work smarter. The best part about the book is that these recommended tools come from over 500 successful people that use them today.
The difference is probably the breath and the curation. These are user tools recommended by top entrepreneurs and more than 500 people submitted contributions to the book.
I recommend that if there is a particular area of your business that you’re interested in you can skip to that section. There are 20 different categories so definitely feel free to jump around as needed.
There are so many in this book that I have used but ScheduleOnce is a favorite of mine.
The main idea behind this and why someone would want to invest the time to read it would be to essentially save yourself some time. It is 350 plus online resources today’s top entrepreneurs use to increase productivity and achieve their goals.
For a bigger deep dive check out the full transcript here
I was surprised with the ones that rose to the top, a couple that I have never even heard of. Sona is a project management software online that is free for up to 15 members of your team. Any small business that is just getting started can use this software and this was one of the most popular answers in the whole study we did. Another one was PicMonkey which is an online editing software. I am going through all these tools as well and testing them out for myself.
I am the chief side hustler at sidehustlenation.com where I get to experiment with a bunch of different part-time business opportunities trying to make money outside of your traditional 9-5 job and I help other people do the same. I have been running that for a little over a year, it’s been an absolute blast and so if you’re interested in trying to develop some job-free income streams of your own, come on over and join me.
The inspiration for me is the joy of discovery, that new tool that’s going to help you save even just five minutes a day.
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Buy Work Smarter by Nick Loper on Amazon today
Visit WorkSmarter.co to learn more about the book
Subscribe to the Side Hustle Show on iTunes
Follow Nick Loper on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less by S.J. Scott | The Suitcase Entrepreneur: Create freedom in business and adventure in life by Natalie Sisson | Smartcuts by Shane Snow
Relevant advice and tips: 7 Productivity Tools For Entrepreneurs To Make Life Easier | The Advantages of Technology in the Life of an Entrepreneur
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Getting Things Done according to David Allen Introduction In this episode, best-selling author, David Allen provides a deep dive into his bookRead More
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]]>In this episode, best-selling author, David Allen provides a deep dive into his book Getting Things Done. In his book Allen gives you a step-by-step guide to create a model and methodology to approaching and addressing the world we live in today. Through his 5 stages you will learn how to set an idea or project under control ensuring that your productivity is not costing you dearly. This book is a must have for all entrepreneurs who are in need of some guidance for crafting a well-organized work ethic.
My book is relatively timeless, meaning the principals are as old as dirt and they tend to be true no matter who uses them. This methodology starts with where you are, not with where you should be.
Your head is for having ideas, not for holding them.
I start out by talking about why the old methods really don’t work very well given the kind of world that we are in these days. I spend some time talking about why we need a model or methodology to approach and address the kind of world that we are in today.
There is a chapter in the beginning where I talk about the five stages that you need to engage in in order to get something under control. It turns out that there are five stages we all go through in order to be able to really get something under control and to be able to make it work. The first stage is to be able to collect the things that have your attention. What is it that’s on your mind? The second stage is how to process the things that you’re captured by. Stage three is how to organize the results of that thinking.
Stage four is how to step back and review and how to engage with these lists that you have collected.
Stage five is how to make the appropriate choice out of all the options of calls you have to make, errands you have to run, and things you need to handle. Once you have a project or a situation I introduce people to what you call a nature planning model. Our brains naturally plan and they do it automatically but the natural model is not the normal model. So the first part of the book is a way for people to get a quick grasp of what this methodology is if you were to apply that. As simple as those things sound, we are not born doing any of that.
In part two I tell you if you were to buy in to this idea, how would you go implement it, what would this really look like? I walk people through the coaching process that I developed over 20-30 years and describe what that process is.
The last part of the book is oh by the way because a lot of people want the model but I couldn’t resist saying there is a lot more to this that meets the eye. There are a lot of incredible and powerful things that start to happen once people start to implement these fairly simple behaviors that goes way beyond what you might think.
“Your head is to be freed up to make intuitive decisions about your options, not to remember or remind them.” – David Allen
I wrote a book called Getting Things Done after 20-25 years of doing the work that the book is about in my own consulting practice and in the corporate training/coaching world. I have a small company still doing coaching and training around the world and that’s my professional of who I am and what I am doing.
It took me 25 years to figure out what I figured out. I found things that really worked and I also wanted to create a model that worked for everybody so that it didn’t matter either what level you were at or what kind of industry you were in. Overtime I discovered that it didn’t seem like anybody came up with the same model I did and the model turned out to be bulletproof.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Buy Getting Things Done by David Allen on Amazon today
Visit GettingThingsDone.com for an interactive look inside the book
Follow David Allen on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Habit Stacking by Steve J Scott | Work Smarter by Nick Loper | Smartcuts by Shane Snow
Relevant advice and tips: 7 Productivity Tools for Entrepreneurs to Make Life Easier | The Advantages of Technology in the Life of an Entrepreneur
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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