I picked this book up as a "productivity" book to help me get some tips on how to focus on the things I want to focus on. A bulk of the book is tips and exercises that should help one make time for the things that are important. However, the side effect is that most of the exercises will also just make you a better person. Turns out all this "make time" stuff isn't just for things on your to-do list. There are so many great concepts, ideas, cartoons, etc. in this book. I earmarked all the stuff I want to try first. Quick, fun, easy read with over 80 tips to make time. ( )

Gran libro para recordar y llevar a cabo una realización mejor del tiempo que tenemos. ( )

I like the framework put forward in this book. As a long-time reader of productivity material, it doesn't feel particularly new but it is fun and engaging. I will recommend this to friends and colleagues. ( )

People LOVE meetings where I work. They continuously mistake it for doing actual work, as opposed to just talking about doing work. Meetings are the biggest time bandit in my job - it's not unusual to have 5-6 a day. Planning for the meeting, attending the meeting, taking on all of the work agreed at the meeting, then catching up on all of the work you've missed because *drum roll* you've been in meetings.

When the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote “On The Shortness of Life”:

“Nihil minus occupati est quam vivere” (Nothing belongs less to the busy man than living.)

Let's not forget that famous Formula 1 Driver who immortally once said (I'm paraphrasing from a faulty memory): "I invested most of my money and life in women and drink. The rest I just pissed away."

Since peasants have the same 24 hours in a day as kings we can't really manage time, only fill every minute. As we try to cram more activities into this finite space the futility of it all becomes apparent. More people are unemployed and those that do have jobs are overworked. It's time that we seriously considered job sharing solutions.

Existence and the meaning of work - It appears to me that most people are looking for distraction... That's why we have smart 'phones. But there are also people who want to create. And in all honesty, the creative process is a distraction too, but a challenging one. It has a goal. Becoming better at minimizing the impact of “administrivia” works for the focused, but if you have no focus (get one!), or you're in a situation that calls for “presenteeism”, being able to execute these strategies ain't going to help you if you don't have some imagination too: hack your job, grow, find a reason to be present in your work, tough as that may be.

The real questions that need to be answered first are to do with our attitudes, beliefs and behaviours around what we should be using our time for. Dealing with your inbox in 10 minutes less does not help if actually we should be doing something completely different. Really effective people, both professionally and personally, make decisions about what to do before investigating how to do them best. This book seems to think that time management is stuck on techniques around task management, whereas most of the interesting thinkers in this field spend much more time discussing what should be done.

As with all the different strands of self-help, time management is an industry. Its proponents invite us to spend time worrying about how best to spend time, leading to a negative cycle of further procrastination. Sometimes it's really no more complex than do what you can and not worry. But unfortunately that doesn't fill an hour long talk or 287 page book. Don’t waste your time reading books like these. Nothing new here. Move on.



NB: One thing is for sure, there are not many tombstones in the graveyards with 'Here Lies Manel - he wished he'd spent more time at work' written on it!! ( )

I got really excited about this book when I first saw it online. At first pick-up, I read 70 some pages. I wish I could say that the book left me changed or inspired by the content but it really didn't. I'm always trying to evaluate how I plan my time and schedule my days and was hoping this book would help me improve on that but it certainly did not. ( )