I decided since I was giving away this book at the end of the month I would do a book review for you. There is still time to enter the giveaway. You can either enter on the blog or email me. I know I have a few readers that would rather email. See the details of this giveaway on the post about my March goals.
I really think this book is amazing. It doesn't matter what you do. If you are still working then it applies to you, if you are thinking of starting your own company it applies to you, and if you are a stay at home mom (guess what?) it applies to you too! There are so many great ideas, quotes and advice in this book that I want to share with you. This book review will be a bit different in the fact that I am just going to provide you with a list of my favorite quotes and ideas/advice.
Bare with me. I wanted to type out the whole book because the whole thing is amazing, but the points below are all fantastic and you will get something from each and everyone of them.
Quotes I loved:
"What we fear doing most is actually what we most need to do." - Isn't that true? It is for me.
"The level of competition is thus fiercest for 'realistic' goals, paradoxically making them the most time-consuming and energy consuming..... There is just less competition for bigger goals." - This one made me scared a little bit, because I know it is true. Timothy (the author) dives into it more.
"Being busy is a form of laziness-lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective-doing less-is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest." - This is so true and I wish everyone thought like this. There are a lot of bosses in the workforce that want hours and as long as you are busy (or in other words "look busy") then they are happy. I hear many people complain about this all the time.
"How is it possible that all the people in the world need exactly 8 hours to accomplish their work? It isn't. 9-5 is arbitrary." - I was talking to my dad about this the other day because again this is a HUGE frustration with a lot of people in the workforce. My dad completely agreed with me. We were saying that you could give 3 people the same task and get the same result, but one might take 4 hours, one might take 6 hours, and the other might take 10 hours. 9-5 was set up for manufacturing companies because guess what 9-5 is 8 hours and 8 hours can go into 24 hours 3 times. So that makes scheduling shifts easy. However, for some reason it stuck for all industries and it has become the norm.
"The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus." - I love the way he breaks this down in the book. There are so many good points he makes with this one sentence. However, the main point he makes is that if we are given 24 hours to complete a task then we cut out the unnecessary steps. If we are given a week then we start making a bigger problem of it. If we are given a month then we stress about it for at least 3 weeks and then get it done when we are down to the wire.
"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency." - He was talking about this in regards to delegation. NEVER NEVER NEVER delegate something that is inefficient. It will only make the inefficiency worse.
Great ideas/advice:
In regards to talking about being effective vs. being efficient he said, "1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important. 2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important." - When I read the above comments I laughed out loud. Seriously, my one of my biggest pet peeves is when people take SO. MUCH. TIME. doing something that is so silly and since it took so much time they try and make it seem important. The two points above spoke to me because they are so very true. Even in my personal life this can get me.
He talks about the "80/20 principle". This is not new news. I know that. It has been a "law" for more than 100 years. Basically 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes or 80% of results come from 20% of the effort and time. It can be broken down many, many ways, but the main point is that you need to trim the fat. You need to get rid of the things that are not making things happen.
He talks about certain things we can set up on our computers so that it will lock us out of a website after we have been on it for a certain amount of time (the time is set up by us). I think that is a great idea. Think of all the time spent on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest. It could all be controlled. (I know we should be able to use self control, but really, who actually uses that all the time.)
Another piece of advice that he gave and that I have applied into my work and personal life and it is giving me tremendous results in both areas is to only check email twice a day. Guess what? The best time is not right when you get in the office either. That blew me away.
He goes into great detail on how to make your own ideas or products come to life. There are so many great resources and spreadsheets that he provides. It is jam packed with amazing knowledge and information. He has case study after case study where what he is talking about has worked for many many people.
The main point he wants readers to get out of this book is that he wants people to live like millionaires without having to be a multi-millionaire. He wants you to enjoy "mini retirements" instead of hopefully having a good retirement when you actually get to that point in your life.
He does not say anything about shirking responsibility and not being a great representative to yourself, your company or the company that you work for, or even your family. He wants his readers to be amazing members of society that help make the economy thrive. I love this book. I am sure you can already tell that.
If you can, enter for the giveaway and hopefully you can win. If you don't win then the book then pick up a copy for yourself. It is not that much money for the amount of knowledge that is packed in between the covers of the book. I hope you enjoy it.
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