Book Review: How To Get More done by Fergus O'Connell

A title like that always makes an attractive proposition. Fergus O'Connell presents a simple system which involves doing more of the stuff you want to do and less of the stuff you don't. Fergus present some NLP techniques, a bunch of questionnaires, some belief change exercises and some tips. It all adds up to a quick read with a few useful reminders.

[amazon.co.uk]

So by not doing:

• the stuff you don't want to do
• the stuff you want to do less of

you have more time to

• do the stuff you want to do
• do more of the 'right stuff'

If your beliefs about 'what you have to do' cause you to do stuff you don't want to then the various questionnaires and the presentation of Dilt's logical levels model may provide some help.

Fergus presents a pragmatic exercise for finding out - what you currently spend your time doing, and consequently how much time you realistically have to do stuff anyway.

This involves tracking how you currently spend your time - I do find this a useful technique to apply so if you haven't tried to track your own time then Fergus' book may provide some justification for doing so.

Fergus presents a simple system to manage your time:

A list of things to do

A way of tracking appointments

A filing system

A way of recording where the time goes

Later we learn strategies for saying 'No' - in case you do get overloaded with things to do because you keep saying 'Yes'.

Some of the advice may have questionable results...

"Deliberately do something which you know will result in disapproval. then try to stop yourself from getting upset. By courting disapproval you'll increase your skill at dealing with it."

You may also hasten your way to a situation where people ask you to do less, or find another job. But you will also find out if anyone even pays attention to all this work that you are overloading yourself with.

In order to make best use of the time that you have so methodically tracked to work out how much 'actual' time you have to spend. Fergus presents a planning approach

• Don't immediately commit - say "I'll take a look at it."
• Figure out precisely what they have asked you to do
• Figure out the sequence of events you have to go through to get it done
• Decide who will do what
• Allow for the unexpected
• Inform the person asking for the work "what you can do"

So this all seems pretty simple - get a handle on what your doing, cut out the rubbish, and focus on the stuff that counts. A useful reminder which doesn't take too long to read, but the questionnaires and NLP work seem a bit like padding.

[amazon.co.uk]