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A review by t_shaffner
The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy by Chris Bailey
3.0
In some ways I feel bad for giving this book only three stars. The content overall was quite thought-provoking, and as a survey of a fairly wide variety of topics related to or touching on productivity it was fairly effective! Ranging from meditation to biorhythms to energy management to scheduling to caffeine intake to sleep, the topics covered were fairly comprehensive. And I have to say a number of points in the book I found inspiring or thought provoking or useful!
At the same time, as evidenced by how long it took me to read the damn thing, it just didn't particularly grip. Sections would be inspiring now and then but it didn't all flow together and a fair number of the exercises were uninteresting or left me rolling my eyes a bit in the way the self-help genre often does.
This is a bit unfair I think because much of becoming more productive is really about the accumulation of small changes. As a particularly useful section near the end discussed, making small changes to habits is likely a far more effective approach long-term than much else one might do, and the accumulation of all these things is likely where real value lies! This fact means that gripping quick-fix changes aren't really possible, detracting from the enjoyment a bit. This is a somewhat unsatisfying fact though so to some extent the frustration with the book is likely just a frustration with reality.
That doesn't change the end result though, which is to say if you want a survey of topics related to this that's relatively good and thought provoking but hardly a speed-read this will do. And the treatments of the various topics will be quite good but you won't encounter anything earth shattering in this, and the end result is still that many factors matter in conjunction.
A few thoughts on the most useful takeaways:
1. The habits section is particularly good, with one of the main takeaways being mentioned above.
2. Similar to [b:How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life|17859574|How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Kind of the Story of My Life|Scott Adams|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1369823209l/17859574._SY75_.jpg|25002298], this book advocated a particular focus on energy as one of the more useful metrics to focus on. I continue to find this a useful idea as it collapses many different important things into a single factor that is useful.
3. Building on 2, the author discussed high and low energy points throughout the day, and I must say this is one of the most useful concepts I took from the book. A recognition of these points, the impact they have on ability to think clearly or be productive, and the impact adjusting to understand this biorhythm effect and accommodate it is large! For this reasons this book merits the diverse-interesting-learning shelf despite being only three stars.
For these and a few other topics I might even come back to this book at some future point, and I'll be curious to follow the author in his future work as well.
At the same time, as evidenced by how long it took me to read the damn thing, it just didn't particularly grip. Sections would be inspiring now and then but it didn't all flow together and a fair number of the exercises were uninteresting or left me rolling my eyes a bit in the way the self-help genre often does.
This is a bit unfair I think because much of becoming more productive is really about the accumulation of small changes. As a particularly useful section near the end discussed, making small changes to habits is likely a far more effective approach long-term than much else one might do, and the accumulation of all these things is likely where real value lies! This fact means that gripping quick-fix changes aren't really possible, detracting from the enjoyment a bit. This is a somewhat unsatisfying fact though so to some extent the frustration with the book is likely just a frustration with reality.
That doesn't change the end result though, which is to say if you want a survey of topics related to this that's relatively good and thought provoking but hardly a speed-read this will do. And the treatments of the various topics will be quite good but you won't encounter anything earth shattering in this, and the end result is still that many factors matter in conjunction.
A few thoughts on the most useful takeaways:
1. The habits section is particularly good, with one of the main takeaways being mentioned above.
2. Similar to [b:How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life|17859574|How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Kind of the Story of My Life|Scott Adams|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1369823209l/17859574._SY75_.jpg|25002298], this book advocated a particular focus on energy as one of the more useful metrics to focus on. I continue to find this a useful idea as it collapses many different important things into a single factor that is useful.
3. Building on 2, the author discussed high and low energy points throughout the day, and I must say this is one of the most useful concepts I took from the book. A recognition of these points, the impact they have on ability to think clearly or be productive, and the impact adjusting to understand this biorhythm effect and accommodate it is large! For this reasons this book merits the diverse-interesting-learning shelf despite being only three stars.
For these and a few other topics I might even come back to this book at some future point, and I'll be curious to follow the author in his future work as well.