Power Up Your Productivity: A practical Roadmap to Time Management Success
by Michael Atlas
ASIN: B00DP8Z8T2
Publisher: Lightening Bolt Book Publishing, 2013
Reviewed by: Julie Garland McLellan*
We have all sat at boardroom tables with directors who seem to have the uncanny knack of picking the important issues and focusing on the critical levers for success. They are also usually the ones who manage a seemingly impossible workload with grace and humour. This book goes some way to describing how they do it!
The book covers everything from personal fitness, through individual productivity techniques to networking and decision-making and is a good resource for any director who is finding life just a bit too busy for comfort. There are useful sections on decision-making and on dressing for success and even an outline of how to use LinkedIn effectively.
It is unashamedly a self-help book and is almost satirical in its insistent enthusiasm but, if you can cope with the relentless positive pace then there is a wealth of common sense and a few valuable practical tips that will help even the most sophisticated soul to become better organised, set priorities and focus on producing results. The advice veers toward `hokey' with quotes such as `7am jog not 12pm email' but that doesn't mean it isn't good advice (although many successful directors have already finished jogging by 7am).
The grammar is a bit clumsy and a good edit would have made this book so much more palatable. The use of hyperlinks to the author's website is a bit intrusive and there is the - alas now common - tranche of testimonials to wade through before you get to the content. A few less pages and the book would take up less of the time it encourages readers to save whilst allowing the simple practical tips to stand out against a less cluttered textual background.
I found the combination of personal and business advice as refreshing as mint sauce on grilled Haloumi. We can't divorce our selves from our ability to do our work; this book acknowledges and celebrates that fact.
Take the book as a challenge and adopt one piece of advice each week for six weeks and you will be more productive. Choose wisely and you will find yourself transformed. Or sit back and stay as you are. The choice is yours.
Available at amazon.com
* Julie Garland McLellan is a professional
non-executive director, board and governance consultant
and mentor. She is the author of
"Dilemmas, Dilemmas: Practical Case Studies for Company Directors"
