"Routine = Results: Plan, Manage & Master your Diary, Time & Life"
Book by Rob Moore
Life is not about hard work, even though society expects of us to work hard. Life is about effectiveness and efficiency. And we all know it down deep inside of us.If you are experiencing a huge overwhelm and fear because of your calendar that is overpopulated with commitments and a full email inbox, maybe you should "Ctr + Alt + Del" it all and have a fresh start at your life. Why? Because when you are drained down mentally, emotionally and physically, it will be that much more difficult to find a way out of your "labyrinth." REBOOT. Find out more about yourself. And then set in place systems that will help you to create a routine that will, in turn, create habits (unconscious behaviour) that will, in turn again, yield the desired results. Make sense, doesn't it?
Rob goes on to give some useful yet very simple tools to measure and thus understand what is going on in your life as far as productivity, effectiveness and efficiency are concerned, i.e.: Work Log, that is to help you to realise what are your Key Life Areas (KLAs), Key Result Areas (KRAs), and Income Generating Tasks (IGTs). It's important to understand it because if you will not fill your life with what is important to you, others will fill it with what's important to them. You have to re-train the world to respect your time. You and others have to know who rules your world. And it has to be you, not others!
That's why one section of the book is designated to expand on how you should manage your diary so that you could actually manage your time and have positive results rather than manage your emotions and reactive decision that bring in (more often than not) negative results. To me, F.O.C.U.S. (Follow One Course Until Successful) was the key in this section. When distracted, you cannot possibly be productive, efficient and effective. Also, the sections on how to time and task batch and how to NeTime (a no-extra-time leverage technique) to focus, stay in the flow and use your energy in a most sufficient way were brilliant (I have to give some more thinking to the idea of hiring a driver! ;) LOL!).
And what is it about ticking things off from the"To-Do" lists rather than getting one thing from that list done well? The "To-Do" lists create more overwhelm generally and tend to never get done. To reprogramme my brain to think about the "To-Do" lists as "Leverage" lists whereby I would be thinking about delegating (leverage) rather than doing everything myself and thus getting less done in the time I have is going to be a challenge for me for now. But I will give it a try!
Last two words that come to my mind after literally "swallowing" this book up in a couple of hours time are CONCISE and ACTIONABLE. I would highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to get out of his/her "labyrinth" of inaction and lack of results. The time of your life (not just work) and your diary CAN be mastered. Let's do it! :)
