Productivity likely is and will remain the problem of the information age. With more and more information flowing, services trying to grab your attention and distractions coming from all directions, managing your time and focus in order to consistently achieve results has become an essential skill.
Countless studies have shown that your brain’s evolution is not adapted to an age with that much information to process, that many relationships (real or virtual) to maintain and nurture and that many things to accomplish in a fixed period of time.
Entrepreneurship is one of the most stressful jobs you can think of and also the most prone to the pitfalls described throughout this book because of the very volatile nature of the work. Entrepreneurs need to get stuff done quickly (and vastly imperfectly) before switching to another thing. This constant context switching makes it hard to maintain focus and achieve meaningful results.
Experience and careful analysis of their own behavior has enabled many entrepreneurs to realize how biased their behavior was and how to correct course in order to regain some control.
This book has tried to summarize most of the key ideas that you should be aware of through concrete examples for you to directly relate.
I thought this was better than to list countless methodologies, techniques and tactics that are hard to put in place. For more general information, I advise you to check Productivepedia which contains a large collection of articles, interviews and reviews of the latest books, tools and methodologies.
If your time is limited, I would advise you to check out a few books that have paved the way of numerous people wanting to change their behavior: “Getting Things Done” from David Allen, “Deep Work” from Cal Newport, “Make Time” from Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky and “The Power of Habits” from Charles Duhigg.
It is crucial that you understand that productivity is not about working more but about working intelligently. To stay in control of your time and to better allocate it to what matters.
This book has introduced a lot of tools that have been designed to help you navigate these pitfalls. With that in mind, remember that productivity is more a question of mindset than the tools you use.
You can be very productive equipped with a piece of paper and the right system in place. You can just as well use the most advanced tool and feel like you are always fighting against an ever-growing list of todos.
Next time you are working on a specific item, try to analyze a little bit your behavior and put it into the context of this book. I bet you will find yourself exactly in one of the situations that have been depicted.
Take the time to understand why and try to enforce some rules to change your behavior one step at a time.
Good luck!
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