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 The Practitioner’s Guide to Product Management according to Jock Busuttil: Introduction In this episode Jock Busuttil takes a deep dive into hisRead More
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]]>In this episode Jock Busuttil takes a deep dive into his book, The Practitioner’s Guide to Product Management, where he provides a roadmap for mastering product management and avoiding product failure.
In his book Busuttil shares real-life stories and experiences of other companies who are successful at product management and know what it takes to meet customers’ needs. The goal of the book is to help you improve product management skills, understand what a product manager does, know the difference between good and bad products, and increase the success rate of a product.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are new to the product management and looking for a step-by-step guide to creating, promoting, and selling a product that customers will love.
The main difference is that most product management books are telling you about the process and while there are values in those kinds of books I also felt the need to explain to the reader the realities of product management as well.
Each chapter is self-contained so if you want to read the five chapters in different orders you can.
First and foremost it has to be empathy, the ability to put yourself as a product manager into the shoes of your users, the customers, the people in your organization that help you create this fantastic product. And understand what their needs are over yours because ultimately you are not going to be the target market.
The purpose of chapter one is about understanding what exactly product management is and what it all involves. It’s thinking about this concept of bouncing what I call three rings which refers to a diagram that divides up the practices of product management into three main areas. The three areas are user’s experience, technology, and the business and in the center of it all is the product manager. Really what all that means is that you are balancing very different needs of the user experiences needs and problems with the needs of the business and then also bouncing that with the technology and the people who are building and creating that particular product. Product management is one of those things that a lot of people have heard about but not necessarily know exactly what that means.And then we talk a little bit more about how product management evolved over the last 60 or 70 years to where we are now. With that is understanding that people’s individual parts in product management aren’t necessarily direct. It comes down to product management is really about the fundamentals of understanding users and their problems and being able to solve them with a viable, sustainable, profitable product.
That takes us into checking to make sure you are on the right path. We talk about the problems and the questions that you need to ask about whether there is a market for that particular product. Product management is not so much about managing product but it’s actually about managing the people involved in your product. We go through a variety of different people you’ll be most likely working with such as developers and designers. And then we talk about marketing and sales and what tough jobs they have and understand that they each have their own interesting quirks. It’s important to understand that you are working with all different specialists and without them you’d never be able to achieve the product you have.
From there we go into thinking about success and failure. So even if you do the right things there is still always that chance that your product won’t succeed. There are a number of things to increase your chances of success but it doesn’t necessarily ensure success.
The last thing we cover in the book is time management which is one of these soft skills that is so important because you are juggling all these different things and you need to be able to organize yourself.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 04:05
“Good designers can take the complex and make it profoundly simple. Great designers will also stir your soul bewitch you with the beauty of their design.” – Jock Busuttil
I have been a product manager for over a decade and working in software for a few years longer. I have worked for a variety of different companies over the years ranging from small startups to huge multinational corporates and learned a great deal along the way. More recently I decided to branch out on my own and now running my own product management consultancy called Product People.
This was the book I wanted most myself when I was starting out in product management. Most of the books that were available told you about how to go about doing it but it didn’t tell you what it was really like. This book was a way for me to tell my story to others from someone who has actually been through the process personally.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
Buy The Practitioner’s Guide to Product Management by Jock Busuttil on Amazon today
Visit iManageProducts.uk to read more articles by Jock on his blog
Follow Jock Busuttil on LinkedIn and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
The Maker Movement Manifesto by Mark Hatch
Disruption by Design by Paul Paetz
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 Stuff I Wish I’d Known When I Started Working according to Fergus O’Connell: Introduction In this episode Fergus O’Connell takes a deepRead More
The post A Preview of Stuff I Wish I’d Known When I Started Working with Fergus O’Connell appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>In this episode Fergus O’Connell takes a deep dive into his book, Stuff I Wish I’d Known When I Started Working, where he provides the tips and tools you need to work faster.
In his book, O’Connell teaches you how to avoid the common mistakes of other aspiring business goers and skip a few rungs on the corporate ladder. The goal of the book is to help you be more effective, more accountable, more visible, and less afraid.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who want learn from the mistakes of other successful people and need a fast-track guide to getting more done in less time.
We looked and found that there were no other books out there that came at work from this particular angle.
This is a jump in and jump out kind of book.
It’s not talent that gets people where they want to be its commitment and perseverance.
In the book we have identified 24 areas where I have written the kind of stuff that I learned along the way. A couple of the chapters are about things like aiming high and a second chapter is about appreciating life. It’s all right to have very ambitious dreams but you have also got to live in the moment. There is another chapter about why it is good to be creative and another on why it’s good to fail. There are 8 to 10 chapters that take an idea and try to sell the reader on that particular idea.
In one chapter I talk about the four things that I have learned about bosses. The first thing that I learned is that bosses are actually human and since they are human they will make mistakes. A second thing about bosses is that they like to have their problems solved. I’ve also learned that bosses tend to be delusional. And lastly bosses seem to think that long hours are productive which is not true.
We have chapters in the book which are how-to chapters and for example there is a chapter on common sense. The seven principles of common sense are firstly that many things a simple. The second principle is the importance of knowing exactly what you are trying to do. The third is planning and figuring out the sequence of events in advance. The fourth principle is that stuff doesn’t get done if there aren’t people to do them. The fifth principle is that things rarely turn out as expected. The sixth thing is that things either are or they aren’t. And the last principle is the golden rule of looking at things from other people’s point of view because if we did we would get a much clearer understand rather than just seeing it through our own eyes. I encourage the reader to spend a week or two applying these ideas and seeing the world through this prism.
“Commitment gets you started and perseverance keeps you going.” – Fergus O’Connell
I graduated with a degree in mathematical physics and then I went in to software development and worked in that for about 10 or 12 years. In 1992 I started my own project management consulting and training company and that’s one of the things I’ve been doing ever since as well as writing books in the area of project management and time management. I have this alternative life as a novelist as well.
I was thinking one day about how I’d like to be 19 again and to have all the knowledge and wisdom I have now. I was thinking of it in terms of life generally but then I thought a book which thought from the perspective purely of business might be a good thing to do.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner
Buy Stuff I Wish I’d Known When I Started Working by Fergus O’Connell on Amazon today
Visit FergusOConnell.com to learn more about Fergus and all his books
Follow Fergus O’Connell 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 | People Tools For Buisness by Alan Fox | Habit Stacking by S.J. Scott
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 Stuff I Wish I’d Known When I Started Working with Fergus O’Connell appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
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