Allcott - How to be a Productivity Ninja

Do you want to do everything and change the world, yet also find yourself feeling quite lazy from time to time? Yes, me too. We humans are hunting animals that have evolved to such an extent that we no longer need to hunt, so we perhaps have a right and an excuse to be lazy. Yet that doesnt stop us being ambitious and driven either.

I would define productivity as the ability to achieve what you want to achieve, for the least effort. Certainly I dont want to burn myself out and I definitely like still having time for relationships, friendships, passions, hobbies, rest and whatever else floats my boat.

Just over a decade ago, while juggling a hundred and one things some paid, some voluntary; some work-related, some not I developed a new obsession in my quest to change the world: productivity. Creating the most change or impact whatever that means for you for the least effort is what this book is all about.

I want to thank you for buying this book. By choosing to read How to be a Productivity Ninja youve already shown a desire to make things happen, make an impact and find easier and better ways to do what you do. Since I founded Think Productive in 2009, weve been working with some of the worlds biggest companies, government organizations and charities to help them eliminate the information stress that seems so endemic in the modern workplace.

My approach to productivity is 100% human. Too often, we label those who achieve great things as being somehow separate from us mere mortals. The great figures of our history all undoubtedly had unique talents, charisma and vision. However, none of them were really any different from you or me in a whole host of ways: even the bravest get scared, even the strongest leaders occasionally lack direction and even the greatest human beings suffer from bouts of self-doubt or have other hidden character flaws. And yet theres a common theme running through so many time management books and business books, through the wider personal growth industry and indeed through much of our society: its the cult of celebrity, the cult of personality.

As we go on to explore the characteristics of the Productivity Ninja in this book, well look at how a Ninja creates a mindset of Zen-like Calm, Ruthlessness, Weapon-savviness, Stealth and Camouflage, Unorthodoxy, Agility, Mindfulness and Preparedness. But I hope one of the loudest messages is that in order to be a Productivity Ninja, you dont have to magically become a superhero.

Too many people buy these kinds of books and never even make time to read them. Too many others just indulge in the cult of personality and get lost in the dream of perfection that is presented by the guru figure. They spend time fantasizing about being the person writing the book and buying into the often impossible dreams the guru presents, rather than planning and implementing changes for their own lives.

So just to be ultra-clear, there is no perfect guru specimen to worship here. For all my moments of productive genius there are moments of self-doubt, me screwing it up, procrastinating or doing things less than efficiently. The difference is that now I recognize these bad habits and work at changing them.

Part of what I hope makes my experiences and insights all the more valuable to you is precisely the fact that I dont pretend not to know what failure looks like. Hopefully youll see that as an assurance of authenticity and an opportunity to learn from some of my mistakes and not as a reason to ditch this book and go looking for some guru escapism instead. And of course I really hope youre motivated by the idea of boosting your productivity and discovering the way of the Productivity Ninja. This book is in many ways a manual for your work and life. Its also a celebration of achievement. And its a celebration of the fact that behind every extraordinary achievement lies an ordinary human being, just like you.

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Thomas Edison

Ever thought you should get better at managing your time? Have you spent ages wondering how some people seem to be able to get so much more done than you, or how you can learn to cope with the endlessly growing volume of emails and other things that need to be done? Do you wonder why there just never seem to be enough hours in the day?

Its often thought that good time management is the key to productivity, success and happiness. There are hundreds of books on time management, mostly written by guru types who seem to have it all so perfectly and succinctly summarized: prioritize the right things, start the day with a list of what you need to do and then systematically tick them off, from the most important at the start of the day through to the least important at the end. File things away, make short-term, medium-term and long-term goals, organize the clutter around you and manage complex projects with long but perfectly written project plans. It all sounds so easy and so perfect, doesnt it?

Well, lets get one thing clear straight away. I am not writing this book because Im some kind of time management guru. Im not one of those naturally organized people. In fact, my natural style of work is quite the opposite: flaky, ideas-based, more comfortable at the strategic level than the doing level, allergic to detail, instinctive, crazy-making and ridiculously unrealistic about whats achievable in any given time period. All of these characteristics are, in their own way, among what you could call my strengths, and have made me successful in things Ive done. Theyre part of who I am. I play to these strengths and also recognize them as the crippling weaknesses that they are. Changing my own bad habits and developing strong, positive new ones gave me the ability to help others do the same. But in grappling with my own unproductive demons and working hard to become more productive and gain more control in my work and in my life, Ive come to an important conclusion: time management is dead.

TIME MANAGEMENT IS DEAD

Somewhere along the line, the game changed. We now live in an age of constant connection and information overload. We are bombarded with new information inputs and from several different sources at the same time in a way that would have been staggering to comprehend even ten years ago. In the old time management books, dealing with new inputs was simple enough: they came in the form of paper letters, delivered to the office first thing every morning and perhaps again first thing in the afternoon if you were really popular. Dealing with and reacting to the new was a self-contained, limited activity that would take no more than an hour a day. According to the old time management principles, this left you free for the rest of the day to get on with the real work, which could be planned out early in the day via a simple daily to-do list and ABC priority system.