Book Review / The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey

A fresh, personal, and entertaining exploration of a topic that concerns all of us: how to be more productive at work and in every facet of our lives.
 
Chris Bailey turned down lucrative job offers to pursue a lifelong dream—to spend a year performing a deep dive experiment into the pursuit of productivity, a subject he had been enamored with since he was a teenager. After obtaining his business degree, he created a blog to chronicle a year-long series of productivity experiments he conducted on himself, where he also continued his research and interviews with some of the world’s foremost experts, from Charles Duhigg to David Allen. Among the experiments that he tackled: Bailey went several weeks with getting by on little to no sleep; he cut out caffeine and sugar; he lived in total isolation for 10 days; he used his smartphone for just an hour a day for three months; he gained ten pounds of muscle mass; he stretched his work week to 90 hours; a late riser, he got up at 5:30 every morning for three months—all the while monitoring the impact of his experiments on the quality and quantity of his work.

The Productivity Project—and the lessons Chris learned—are the result of that year-long journey. Among the counterintuitive insights Chris Bailey will teach you:
·         slowing down to work more deliberately;
·         shrinking or eliminating the unimportant;
·         the rule of three;
·         striving for imperfection;
·         scheduling less time for important tasks;
·         the 20 second rule to distract yourself from the inevitable distractions;
·         and the concept of productive procrastination.
In an eye-opening and thoroughly engaging read, Bailey offers a treasure trove of insights and over 25 best practices that will help you accomplish more.

Published:     5th January 2016
Publisher: Crown Business
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone  Non-Fiction
Source:  Bought

MY REVIEW

At the beginning of this year I said to myself that I would make sure I pick up more non-fiction books, having hardly read any in 2017.  When I think of non-fiction, I tend to gravitate more towards personal development style books like this one.  Productivity is my main goal for the year.  Finding a way to spend less time doing things that don't need doing and finding more time to do more fun things in life.

I felt this book was more geared towards people who either run their own business or run their own time.  For those like me who work a full time job and doesn't really have much control over the time you spend at work, you could get some really useful tips for this but there are parts of this book that really don't apply.

What I enjoyed the most was learning more about the author and more about how he dealt with particular situations in his life and thinking how it would apply to mine.  At the end of each chapter you also have little tasks you can do, which I did, and I gained a lot of new ideas from that.

A fun read that although geared more towards those who run their own business or run their own time I learnt a lot and discovered new ways of organising my life.