Sometimes luck just doesn’t work out for you, does it? Serendipity was looking the other way when this book ended up being selected to run immediately after The 4 Hour Work Week on our bookclub (link).
Let’s start with the positives. The advice in this book is solid, sensible and relatively easy to implement. If time management is a challenge in your business it’s hard to imagine that following the advice in this book wouldn’t make a difference- and the thousands of people who swear by these methods are a great testimonial for their effect.
In any other month this book would likely have received an unequivocally positive review…… however it suffers badly by comparison to the significantly more nuts, but braver and more inspiring 4 Hour Work Week. Whilst it is simply, and well, written, for me this book lacks pizazz, and just didn’t feel that engaging. I can’t help thinking that the author’s biggest mistake is that he starts the book by providing a one-page review of what to do to implement the main lessons of the text; I didn’t feel the rest of the book added much from that point on. Unless time management is a significant and crippling issue for you, you could make many of the improvements you need after reading the handy page one summary.
I think you are a little harsh on this book Isla. I have not read the 4 hour work week so can’t compare it to that but I read this book a few years ago and I still find some of the things I learnt from it quite useful. In particular, I loved that it tells you not to bother prioritising! It is so true when you think about it- you can only achieve a certain number of things in a day so you need to plan to do those and the order you do them in doesn’t really matter (except that psycologically it may be better to get the more unpleasant things done first). Anyway, I will try to read the 4 hr work week too and maybe I will change my mind then!
Hi Kirsty and Rosie, thanks for your comments- I don’t disagree with either set of points, so somewhat unfairly my critique of this book is largely based on comparison to another book on a similar topic which I enjoyed more. When it comes down to it, I’d agree that in it’s own right this book contains a useful approach and some great tips…… it’s just not very exciting! 4HWW is much more bonkers, challenging, annoying and cult-y, but still a more interesting read in my view!
Well I had taken a couple of months off the book club but was intrigued enough by this series of comments that I read both this book and four hour week one after the other sot see what you were all going on about.
I have commented on Tim Ferriss’s book earlier.
As for this one, although it certainly is more traditional than Four Hour week, i enjoyed the advice and information in this small book ( even if it wasn’t written in as an engaging or nutty a style). At first I thought this might be a re run or re hash of familiar ideas but was pleasantly surprised and really liked the idea of Closed Lists which was a new one for me. So much so that I implemented that one straight away and had an amazingly productive two days ( before a weekend!)
And while he keeps on about how it isn’t about prioritising, his ideas do actually fit with this ( what I think as ) useful approach provided you do something once you have prioritised rather than just work through an open list.
I will keep referring back to this I think and shall be recommending both books on my management and leadership programmes.
Actually I do love the closed lists concepts too – forgot to mention that in my review- it really does help some days. And I also think the principle that there is no point prioritising if everything needs to be done is a useful one too.
I also find some of our clients benefit from using techniques like the Pomodoro technique, just to apply some structure and minimise procrastination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
I loved his other book – Get Everything Done. Brilliant techniques without the faffery of GTD.
Just started reading it
Has anyone else read this?
Sometimes luck just doesn’t work out for you, does it? Serendipity was looking the other way when this book ended up being selected to run immediately after The 4 Hour Work Week on our bookclub (link).
Let’s start with the positives. The advice in this book is solid, sensible and relatively easy to implement. If time management is a challenge in your business it’s hard to imagine that following the advice in this book wouldn’t make a difference- and the thousands of people who swear by these methods are a great testimonial for their effect.
In any other month this book would likely have received an unequivocally positive review…… however it suffers badly by comparison to the significantly more nuts, but braver and more inspiring 4 Hour Work Week. Whilst it is simply, and well, written, for me this book lacks pizazz, and just didn’t feel that engaging. I can’t help thinking that the author’s biggest mistake is that he starts the book by providing a one-page review of what to do to implement the main lessons of the text; I didn’t feel the rest of the book added much from that point on. Unless time management is a significant and crippling issue for you, you could make many of the improvements you need after reading the handy page one summary.
I think you are a little harsh on this book Isla. I have not read the 4 hour work week so can’t compare it to that but I read this book a few years ago and I still find some of the things I learnt from it quite useful. In particular, I loved that it tells you not to bother prioritising! It is so true when you think about it- you can only achieve a certain number of things in a day so you need to plan to do those and the order you do them in doesn’t really matter (except that psycologically it may be better to get the more unpleasant things done first). Anyway, I will try to read the 4 hr work week too and maybe I will change my mind then!
Hi Kirsty and Rosie, thanks for your comments- I don’t disagree with either set of points, so somewhat unfairly my critique of this book is largely based on comparison to another book on a similar topic which I enjoyed more. When it comes down to it, I’d agree that in it’s own right this book contains a useful approach and some great tips…… it’s just not very exciting! 4HWW is much more bonkers, challenging, annoying and cult-y, but still a more interesting read in my view!
Well I had taken a couple of months off the book club but was intrigued enough by this series of comments that I read both this book and four hour week one after the other sot see what you were all going on about.
I have commented on Tim Ferriss’s book earlier.
As for this one, although it certainly is more traditional than Four Hour week, i enjoyed the advice and information in this small book ( even if it wasn’t written in as an engaging or nutty a style). At first I thought this might be a re run or re hash of familiar ideas but was pleasantly surprised and really liked the idea of Closed Lists which was a new one for me. So much so that I implemented that one straight away and had an amazingly productive two days ( before a weekend!)
And while he keeps on about how it isn’t about prioritising, his ideas do actually fit with this ( what I think as ) useful approach provided you do something once you have prioritised rather than just work through an open list.
I will keep referring back to this I think and shall be recommending both books on my management and leadership programmes.
Actually I do love the closed lists concepts too – forgot to mention that in my review- it really does help some days. And I also think the principle that there is no point prioritising if everything needs to be done is a useful one too.
I also find some of our clients benefit from using techniques like the Pomodoro technique, just to apply some structure and minimise procrastination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique