📚 3 Books That Changed My Life
In this blog, we are talking about the productivity system I use to run my companies - that you can follow step by step.
And these are the same books I used to become financially free at 27 last year
For those that don't know me - I am a productivity nerd.
And actually, these days I'm a more tame version of what I used to be.
But from when I was 22 to 25 I read over 100 books just on productivity, time management, business, and leadership.
And yes quantity doesn't mean nearly as much as quality because we probably all know someone knows a few people who have read all the books and done all the research but have taken no action.
We don't want that.
But - reading this many books did give me a sense of what was fluff and what was tactical and it also gave me a chance to apply a lot of different tactics to see which ones worked better than others.
So there might be something to it
You can hopefully take some of the learnings from me - instead of having to read 100 books to figure out which ones apply to you.
Before we talk about what the books are, let's talk about why they matter.
The most successful people I know, are usually the ones with the best systems. And I don't know about you, but when I was in school or in my first job, I wasn't learning much about systems.
I was learning about spending time in meetings, checking email, and if there was training, it was some corporate BS training about a product.
So I wanted this list to be a crash course in productivity but productivity with a system.
And I didn't start out as a productive person - so don't worry if you feel scattered at the moment because I was probably in the same situation.
But once I realized how important it was to be successful and how much easier life felt because of it - it kind of became addicting.
This is a must-read in the world of productivity
There are so many concepts from this book that have been recycled into other books and concepts but the main one I took from it and we will talk about a little within these tools is 1 main inbox or essentially a way to brain-dump your ideas and store them safely
David Allen refers to this as ‘capture’. David believes the mind is for having ideas not for storing them.
He explains that people are most creative and best at solving problems when they have a clear mind, not when they are worried about what day their laundry is ready for pickup.
In the book, he talks about the process of getting everything out of your head into one place so that you can start fresh and begin planning and prioritizing instead of playing catch-up every day
By doing - he explains - you will see what's important, what's not important, what can be delegated, and what can be done at a later time.
The tool you use to do this can be as complicated or simple as you like - obviously simple is recommended. For example, we use notion and apple notes but David just uses a plain piece of paper and a pen.
There was also a term David used for people who do not do this - he says they carry what's called ‘ambient anxiety’.
Basically, they are a low grade of stress all the time and don’t know exactly why.
He explains this is why people have blowups or feel like they are always behind. Its because they have hundreds of ‘open loops’ that are not captured and may never get done
He believes the more of these you have - the more stressed, unhappy, and unproductive you will be.
So if you take anything from GTD - I think it should be to capture all your ideas, to-dos, and notes in a central place that you can review and prioritize often.
It will give you way more clarity.
2. The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
This is such an important business book for so many reasons. But the main point I took from the book and applied to our system is - measuring things.
I'm not sure if he first said it but the famous line from the book is :
“”What gets measured gets managed.””
Basically, this means - in order to improve things, you need to track them - and understand why they are happening.
Peter Drucker explains that most executives fill their days with meetings. Most of the time - they don't know why they are in these meetings but they feel busy. When in reality they are not productive at all
If you are still in the corporate world, this may resonate with you more than others but in corporate America from my experience - people have too many meetings - and specifically pointless meetings, and they are one of the biggest productivity killers. Because it really does feel nice to get together to ‘figure stuff out but usually nothing gets done
And after a day of meetings, you’ll probably feel tired, but think back and ask yourself - what did I actually accomplish today
So after reading the effective executive - I started to track my time way more closely.
I was tracking things like time on social media - and started setting limits, I reviewed my calendar daily and weekly to see how many meetings I was having and what was the point of these meetings and also made sure all meetings had agendas.
I also stopped taking hour meetings unless there was a very specific reason.
This is also when I started seriously time blocking - what this means is that you chunk out parts of your day to do your most important work - and nothing else can be done in that time.
Only after I get my most important work done in that time can I do my other stuff like checking social media, checking email, and taking meetings
This is the first book I read that introduced the concept of time blocking that I still use today
3. 12-week Year by Brian Moran
And the last book that ties these first two together for me is The 12-week year by Brian Moran.
The main concept I took from this book was to shorten the timeline of your goals to force yourself to get more done quickly.
It's like - if you ever have a goal for the year and you haven't been productive for 11 months but somehow you find a way to get it done with a month left in December.
I know not everyone functions this way but I think a lot of people do. We procrastinate as long as possible until we put ourselves in a corner and we need to be productive.
Instead of setting goals for a full 12-month year - Brian talks about setting goals for a 12-week quarter.
By doing this - there is an immediate urgency to take action and start working on the goal.
The book also talks about and outlines a scorecard to use to track your goals weekly in relation to your quarterly goal.
And what I really like about the scorecard from this book - is that it talks about measuring activity instead of outcomes.
Most people measure how many pounds they lose when they are trying to lose weight - but Brian would say that's incorrect.
You should actually be measuring how many days you ate clean that week and went to the gym.
And only reward yourself for hitting your activity goals - not your outcome goals
Here is an example of what that scorecard looks like:
Here are the main concepts I took from those books/systems and combined:
From Getting things done - Tracking your thoughts and requests on your time.
From The Effective Executive - measuring your time and tracking your calendar effectively.
From a 12-week year - shortening the timeline on your goals and having a clear scorecard to focus your attention and plan your weeks and recruiting accountability to swap scorecards weekly.
Guys, I promise if you just follow a system like this for 90 days and stay consistent you might be in a completely different place than you are now.
I was not a naturally productive person - I actually have ADD and get distracted really easily.
That's actually WHY I use these tools - to trick myself into being more productive.
But here they are
The one thing - this book finally helped me focus.
4-hour work week - I re-read this book once a year and it totally changed my life. It helped me start delegating
The Magic of thinking big - this book helped me realize setting a big goal and a small goal are really not that different - so you might as well go big.
