The Productivity Project

Publisher's Summary

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 listen, Bailey offers a treasure trove of insights and over 25 best practices that will help you accomplish more.

©2016 Chris Bailey (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Excellent Book on Personal Productivity

Really enjoyed this audio book but it is not without a downside - I hope to properly convey my feelings.

I love the youthful exuberance that the author has. His passion and energy will inspire all who listen. I also enjoy that the author took this on almost as a science project. Although many of his experiments produced subjective data, he does back up with real science where he can.

There are so many takeaways and personal experiments, and that's what leads into the downside of this audio book. This is not a book you can just "zone out to" on your commute to work. I started off with pen and paper and then tried using the bookmark feature on Audible and ultimately just said that I'm going to have to relisten or buy the book. A pdf with the authors challenges and other key points would be nice; however, it does not warrant a lower rating on the book.

73 of 78 people found this review helpful

Informative, Positive, Realistic and Fun. At last!

Really, truly enjoyed this book! Fun reading by the author. I bought the physical book to make notes.
Practical advice, and quite realistic to anyone's lifestyle. I appreciate that he advocates for embracing one's natural life rhythms (i.e., if you really hate waking up at 5am, don't do it), as well as making as many lists as you want.
Nice structure of chapter info followed by tasks.

31 of 33 people found this review helpful

Some life lived would aid

It's difficult to take productivity advice from a person who has yet to hold a 9 to 5 career while juggling kids. His advice for facing aversive tasks? Do them at Starbucks! Ok.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

New Title: I <3 Mila Kunis

What made the experience of listening to The Productivity Project the most enjoyable?

I enjoyed this book overall and I really enjoyed Chris Bailey's speaking voice but I got the feeling that he was trying way too hard to make us believe that he is cool. The information in the book seems pretty interesting and probably helpful, but I got distracted counting the number of times he says the words "sexy" and "Mila Kunis." Maybe I noticed it more because I listened to the book straight through, but in general I feel like Chris was trying way too hard to connect with the dudebro audience.

27 of 30 people found this review helpful

Summary of Productivity Methods

The book highlights the key points of popular productivity methods, such as work on your top 3 things (select 3 things for year, month, week, and day), logging your energy level (give up sugar, caffeine, and alcohol and try to naturally wake up... yikes), checking your email only once or twice a day instead of 50 times (another yikes), and stop multitasking. While the concepts are simple and the author goes through them quickly, you should practice the method for a week or more to see if it increases your productivity before discarding it and trying another method from the book.

27 of 30 people found this review helpful

thank God it's over

a painful amount of time akin to sitting in the dorm room listening to a geeky dry humor guy read you his master's thesis would rather read all the books he mentions myself and gain more valuable insights

12 of 13 people found this review helpful

Good content, lacking performance

Chris' hasty in-breath before every sentence almost had me quit at some point, but the content is interesting so I kept at it. I'd say it's worth it.

22 of 26 people found this review helpful

Gets better as you go

As a fan of Chris's blog, I have been eagerly anticipating this book for a while. It doesn't present anything groundbreaking. Consumers of productivity books will be familiar with much of what Chris says. But there is power and wisdom in Chris's synthesis of content. By the end he has provided you with a fresh new take on productivity by distilling the techniques and strategies that actually work. I'm going to listen to it again!

39 of 47 people found this review helpful

Long winded

There are good ideas in here, but one has to wade through so much excess verbiage to get to it. The chapter on time management is cluttered up, and take a nap, buy a history of the way we perceive time from farming to where we are now. Why do we have to sit through this? Can't we just get to the point? And the authors attempted humor with jokes about crack pipes and cocaine simply aren't funny. I can't really recommend this – very very hard to get through even half of it

63 of 77 people found this review helpful

A diary of a young adult experimenting with productivity

Found it hard to take this book serious as it mainly is based on one young man's experiments with trying to be productive. The scientific basis of the book is largely ideas picked up by other productivity bloggers which he try to apply on himself. It may be inspiring for a college student or the like but not for anyone looking for more fact based advice.

9 of 11 people found this review helpful