The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy

Chris Bailey

Jan 2016 · Random House Canada

About this ebook

A fresh, personal, and entertaining exploration of a topic that concerns all of us: how to be more productive at work and in every facet of our lives.
 
Chris Bailey turned down lucrative job offers to pursue a lifelong dream—to spend a year performing a deep dive experiment into the pursuit of productivity, a subject he had been enamored with since he was a teenager. After obtaining his business degree, he created a blog to chronicle a year-long series of productivity experiments he conducted on himself, where he also continued his research and interviews with some of the world’s foremost experts, from Charles Duhigg to David Allen. Among the experiments that he tackled: Bailey went several weeks with getting by on little to no sleep; he cut out caffeine and sugar; he lived in total isolation for 10 days; he used his smartphone for just an hour a day for three months; he gained ten pounds of muscle mass; he stretched his work week to 90 hours; a late riser, he got up at 5:30 every morning for three months—all the while monitoring the impact of his experiments on the quality and quantity of his work. 
 
The Productivity Project—and the lessons Chris learned—are the result of that year-long journey. Among the counterintuitive insights Chris Bailey will teach you: 
·         slowing down to work more deliberately;
·         shrinking or eliminating the unimportant; 
·         the rule of three; 
·         striving for imperfection; 
·         scheduling less time for important tasks; 
·         the 20 second rule to distract yourself from the inevitable distractions; 
·         and the concept of productive procrastination.
In an eye-opening and thoroughly engaging read, Bailey offers a treasure trove of insights and over 25 best practices that will help you accomplish more.

Ratings and reviews

This book without a doubt holds a spot in the top ten most influential books in my life. Having just finished reading it slowly over the past few months and trying many of the challenges presented in it I have found not only my productivity increased, but my physical and mental health has improved as well. What I find most interesting about this book, is that it does not present anything groundbreaking or radical in any way. This may turn some people off, especially those looking for "hacks" or quick fixes for improving their productivity. What Chris Bailey uncovers and presents is instead the simple beauty of the fact that there are true and often common sense principles of living - backed up by research and his own experience - that improve our productivity and happiness.

Fantastic read! Chris has taken the wisdom of hundreds of experts, boiled it down to an awesome 'greatest hits', but also ran with all of the concepts he learned about in a series of experiments he'd conducted on himself. What I got out of it were some games / challenges that Mr. Bailey had designed, and tried them out in my life. This book gets bonus points for trying to respect your time by having the estimated reading time for each chapter written at the beginning. I think no matter who you are, you're going to find some insight and inspiration from this book!

If you're doing a job where you are paid for your brain, it's a book to read. It give you an other way to look at your time and the way to organise your tasks. It is a great book to start the journey and if you like the subject of productivity, it mention one or two good books to read. Great book.

About the author

CHRIS BAILEY has been intensively researching and experimenting with productivity since he was a young teenager, in an effort to discover how to become as productive as humanly possible. To date, he has written hundreds of articles on the subject, and has garnered coverage in media as diverse as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, GQ, HuffPost, New York Magazine, Harvard Business Review, TED, Fast Company, and Lifehacker. The author of The Productivity Project, Hyperfocus, and How to Calm Your Mind, Bailey lives in Kingston, Ontario. ChrisBailey.com