Augusto Pinaud - 25 Tips for Productivity

25 Tips for Productivity.

AUGUSTO PINAUD

Cover Design by: Kenn Rudolph Design

http://kennrudolph.com

Copyright Augusto Pinaud, 2012

Smashwords Edition 2012

All rights reserved. This book or any portion of it may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews or mentions of the book.

A mi mama Quien puso en mis manos el primer libro en este tema e insisti que deba entenderlo, aun cuando no tenia la madurez necesaria.

To my mom Who put in my hands my first book on this topic and insisted that I should understand it, even when I wasnt mature enough.

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

Fiction:

- The Writer

- Putsch. A Hannah Fisher Thriller

Available on Amazon on PaperBack and Kindle.

Foreword by Tara Rodden Robinson

I met Augusto when he joined one of the first meetings of the GTD Virtual Study Group, a twice monthly meeting of productivity enthusiasts that I host. How was I to know that enjoying his Venezuelan accent and warm humor would become such a familiar experience? What could have told me that wed become such close friends--that Id come to think of him as practically a brother? Was there any hint at how thoughtful, intelligent, and savvy he was? Well, yes. That part was clear from the beginning.

Now, all these years later, much has changed in my friends life. Hes become a father. He left sales and is now an accomplished novelist. He moved halfway across the country from L.A. to Ft. Wayne. What hasnt changed is our incredible friendship which has sustained me from afar, more times than I can count. When Augusto asked me to write this foreword, of course I said yes. How could I say anything else? I have been the beneficiary of his guidance for years and years. Besides, to get an advance copy of his first work of non-fiction, his very first book on productivity? That was too good to pass up.

What you have in Augustos 25 Tips is more than just a book of productivity hacks. What you have here is accumulated wisdom. Augusto has a real knack for seeing the inside of things and sharing perspective that can be life altering. I learned so much from this book and his tips gave me new insight into skills that I thought I knew well and practices I thought Id perfected. I believe youll find the same to be true.

There are so many great ideas here that when applied, will make a big difference. Whether its acquiring or improving skills (like typing), making a daily to-do list, or looking beyond the obvious common sense, youll find a wealth of helpful advice, all delivered with Augustos trademark humor and warmth.

Because of his schedule these days, whenever Augusto joins the Virtual Study Group meetings, its a bit of an event. I always get a kick out of how much a celeb hes become to our listeners. Its all much deserved and well earned. Im just grateful to be a part of his fan club. After youve read 25 Tips, youll be a member of that club, too, Im sure.

Tara Rodden Robinson - The Productivity Maven

August 2012.

Introduccion

It wasn't until recently that I made peace with the fact that I am passionate about the topic of productivity, as passionate as I am about writing fiction. It was even more recently (after the first draft of this book was done) that Mike Vardy coined the term "productivityist" as an enthusiast of productivity and I was finally, accurately identified. I am no guru, nor an expert. I am simply a person who has enthusiastically experimented with productivity to ensure that the important and relevant stuff gets done. With that attitude in mind, I wrote this manuscript(even when I didnt consciously understand the concept that I was expressing).

The first book that I remember having read about anything related to productivity was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. I remember how much fun I made of my mother, who made her best effort to instill some of the principles in me, but in the immaturity of the moment I couldn't understand their importance.

Years have passed since those days and I have read many books since then. The writing in these pages has come from the ideas I have gleaned from many authors; maybe a combination of those is what made me compile these 25 ideas. Some have come from my enthusiasm for being more productive, others I have discovered by mistake.

For many years, like many people, I though that you could solve productivity issues just by finding the right tool and those tools taught me some of these tricks. But in reality, the tools by themselves are useless. Outlook, OmniFocus, Nozbe, the calendar or the to-do list are useless unless you understand first, their function and then, the reason for which you are using them and finally, what the tool itself brings to the table. It's not a secret that today my system lives in OmniFocus and as I write these lines, my productivity and systems are contained in an iPhone. But what allows me to be effective using the iPhone isnt OmniFocus. Years ago when my system was housed in Outlook, since my main machine was a PC with a Microsoft System (I think I was running Vista, maybe Windows 7) I wasn't effective because I was on a PC (please add your own joke here) or because I used Outlook (second chance to introduce your own joke). I was effective because I had discovered some of these tricks and it was the tricks, not the tools I used, that allowed me to do the things I did.

In my journey of productivity I have made many good calls and even more mistakes. Maybe that is the reason that when something works, I don't try to change it; that is, I don't try to change it until it stops working. Im not tempted to try out new systems, either. Not because I don't think they might be better options, but because the one Im using works incredibly well. I prefer to use my energy on more productive stuff. I don't use an iPhone because I believe that Apple products are free of problems and limitations (they have both, more than people believe). Instead, I use them because while they don't do everything, what they do, they do incredibly well and without any effort on my part (and that last part is the key).

When I first started out, I used a Palm Pilot, beginning with the the Personal, and updated constantly until the Treo 680. I was able to do things with a Palm that most people consider impossible: reading books, changing calendars when Palm introduced categories and colors (which, in my model, "supposedly" were not compatible), I installed applications, and more. I invested uncountable hours so that the tool would do what I wanted it to do, and in many cases it was a productivity tool and maybe more for distraction and play.

I don't know how many hours Ive spent restoring operating systems. However, one day I finally understood that I could be using that time to accomplish other objectives, and since I realized that I could use the time in a better way, that is one of my objectives.

I have learned not to hunt solutions to problems I don't have, but instead how to reduce, improve, and eliminate those that are real. For example, my iPhone doesnt allow me to place a clock on the background screen but that is not a real problem: I can see the time at the top of the screen or wear a watch. Therefore, I haven't invested a second trying to fix this problem, a thing that without a doubt I would have done in my years on the Palm.

If you browse the Table of Contents, you may have noticed that the chapters go from 25 to 1 instead of 1 to 25. The reason for that isn't to give any of these tricks more importance than any other, but instead reflects how important a personal impact that these things have had in my life and in the results I had obtained. These are the tricks I have learned, that I use and that help me to be a better person, boss, father, husband, and friend.