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In your journey to become more productive you will find that there are lots of great books out there that can help you along your way. To assist you on your journey we have compiled a list of books, along with links to find them on Amazon, that we feel are highly relevant.

We will also link them to blogs reviewing them to help you choose the books that are the most relevant to your needs.

To view the list, simply click on ‘books’ in the site header or you can click here to be redirected!

Would you like to suggest a book to add to the list? Post a comment here and let us know!

San Francisco-based Business Consultant Donna Peck helps creative entrepreneurs such as freelance writers and book authors be more effective in their work. A writer herself, a few years ago she saw a need for someone to help people in the creative community develop or sharpen productivity skills. She set out to fill the gap with her company, Getting Projects Creatively Underway.

“What I’d noticed over the years,” she says, “was that creative people who made a lot of money weren’t necessarily smarter or better writers than those who didn’t. It’s just that the successful writers were organized. They developed a plan outlining their goals, and they stuck to that plan. That meant they got a lot more done”

Most people contact Peck when they’re in a crisis situation: important deadlines loom and they see no way of meeting their contractual obligation. She steps into the breach, determines what needs to be done, and designs a plan that—so far—has always allowed clients to bring the work in on time. But Peck prefers working in non-crisis mode with proactive creatives who, though relatively well-organized, want to improve their work habits. “People are amazed to find that they can earn two or three times more per hour by getting rid of inefficient habits,” she says.

Here are three of Peck’s top tips for improving productivity:

Tip #1: Don’t multi-task. Instead, focus entirely on one thing: the point is to finish the task at hand before turning your attention elsewhere. “If an idea occurs to you while you’re working,” Peck says, “simply get rid of it by writing it down, and then immediately turn your attention back to what you’re doing. That takes the idea out of your conscious mind and keeps it from interfering with your focus.”

Tip #2: Manage your energy. The old productivity modality focused only on time management–getting as much done as possible in a given time increment. Multi-tasking was seen as a positive way to get things done, and stress was seen as an indicator that you were on the right track. “In the end,” says Peck, “that approach has not proven the most highly effective way to work. The newer modality is all about managing your energy and putting it where it can do the most good. For example, if you work best in the early morning, maybe that’s when you should do your most demanding and creative work. And focus, not multi-tasking, is key.”

Tip #3: Utilize technology. “Most writers and artists are actually sole proprietors running a one-person business,” Peck points out. “They’re a combination CEO, marketing department, chief of development, production staff, archivist, and communications head−and that’s just for starters.  The only way to fulfill all these jobs in a reasonable fashion is to use  the best technology available.” To do that, she says, creative entrepreneurs must know about the latest software, applications, and gadgets that can automate tasks and keep them organized. If you build an airtight system to take care of the small stuff, your mind will be free to deal with what’s really important. −SR

You can direct questions to Ms. Peck at donnapeck@sbcglobal.net

According to David Allen, author of the productivity classic Getting Things Done, trying to keep a mental list of tasks is the biggest time-management mistake you can make. You’ll accomplish your goals far more effectively by getting the task out of your head and into the system or tool that works best for you (a To Do list, PIM, PDA, Moleskine notebook-whatever).

Once  your task is in the system, break it down into actionable parts. That is, list the steps necessary to accomplish the task. Give yourself no more than 24 hours to begin taking action. For example, let’s say that one of your primary goals this week is to write a report requested by your boss. Your three action steps might be to gather and compile research, break it down into important points, and then tie it all together.

Taskwise is a great tool to utilize when breaking tasks into action items. You’ll be able to cross off each step as you go, and always know exactly what action must be taken next. Here’s how:

1. Enter the primary goal or task.

2. Indent the next line by pressing the Tab key, and enter the first action step.

3. Press Enter. You’ll see that the next line is automatically indented to be on the same level as the first action step. Enter the second action step.

4. Continue until all action steps have been entered.

5. As each step is completed, check it. This enters a line through the item–which means it’s not only out of your head, but never needs to be dealt with again.

−SR

If you’ve ever spent a 10-hour day at work, but were left feeling like you didn’t get a thing accomplished, you’re not alone. Most workers haven’t reached their potential productivity level.

1. Stop checking your e-mail. Studies show that some workers check their e-mail up to three times per hour. Unless you’re waiting on something time-sensitive, stop clicking on that in-box. It just ads unnecessary distractions from the task at hand.

2. Don’t answer the phone. Being so connected with cellphones and BlackBerries is actually hampering your productivity, because you’re wasting time on unimportant details. If you’re mid-project, let the phone go to voice-mail for awhile. Then return important calls when you’re finished. You’ll be surprised—a number of them won’t even require a return call. Most calls are just relaying information that can just as easily (and more quickly) be done over voice-mail.

3. Stop putting out fires: Start preventing them. If your day feels like an endless parade of must-do emergency items, then it’s time stand back and assess, then solve the bigger problem. Are the contract mechanics never where they say they’re going to be? Fire them and find better mechanics. Do the processing machines always go kaput at the wrong time? Proper maintenance can prevent this. Even small details like keeping supplies on stock can free up huge amounts of time in the long run.

4. Eliminate meetings. In most cases, meetings take up large quantities of time and very little gets accomplished. Things that are decided on rarely see follow-through. And because they’re largely a bore, they don’t boost morale the way management intends. The time is better spent by each worker tackling their own tasks. There are lots of ways to avoid meetings and still convey information and get feedback.

5. Do one thing at a time. See each task through to completion and you’ll be surprised how many things get stricken from the To Do list by the end of the day. You’ll feel (and look) much more productive than if you’re halfway through everything on your list. Because you don’t need to re-focus and re-familiarize yourself with each project when you approach it repeatedly, you save yourself lots of time as well.

Do these things and you’ll find that not only are you getting more done throughout the day, but you’ll have a little time leftover. Not only that, but management will notice and reward someone who can get things accomplished. It just requires focus, dedication, and concentration.

Getting Things Done (GTD) is built on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.

It can be summarised as “I have a list with all the actions I need/want to accomplish organized by context and priority. If start working on those actions then I will achieve a lot of things.”

While this true for a while, after a period of time people usually start to see their action-lists getting longer and longer, rather than shorter and shorter as more and more tasks get added to the list.

When we realize that our lists are starting to become overloaded, we start doing the easiest and shortest actions in an attempt to reduce the amount of actions. This is what is known as the ‘Next Items List Trap’ because the easiest and shortest tasks are usually the less important ones.

When we are in this scenario we have transformed a system that is designed to take the stress our of our days into a system that stresses us out a lot as we get stuck in a ‘urgency’ mode trying to nail down lots of small tasks.

What can we do? The solution at this point is to stop, take a deap breath, review and reorganize!

The first thing we need to focus on at this point is to review our goals so we can decide exactly what our they are. This is usually best done by brainstorming (or writing a ‘mission statement’) as it lets us re-define whats important to us using a clean slate.

When our goals become crystal clear, we can then start afreash and define a new set of actions that will help us to accomplish our goals. This process involves deleting items from our GTD list that are no longer urgent or critical and then re-grouping our tasks and lists based on our goals.

This process is not that complex, it’s really a housekeeping and is something that any productive person should do on a regular basis. It helps us to clean out the cobwebs and shed some light on what really needs to be done so we can stay efficient, effective, motivated and on-point!

GTD is a great system and helps to get things done, however it doesn’t help us to really see what we need to focus on or what our ever-changing big picture is. That part is up to us!

The 2 minute rule is a great guidline to follow when reviewing your tasks for the day. As defined by David Allen in his book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” the 2 minute rules states that:

If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.

When put in context, following the 2-minute rule will really help you to get the most out of your day. By helping you to accomplish the small things and get them out of the way, thereby freeing up your time to focus on larger tasks.

Time management is commonly defined as the various means by which people effectively use their time and other closely related resources in order to make the most out of it, but in a 2001 interview David Allen observed:

You can’t manage time, it just is. So “time management” is a mislabeled problem, which has little chance of being an effective approach. What you really manage is your activity during time, and defining outcomes and physical actions required is the core process required to manage what you do. - David Allen

Time management can refer to all of the practices that individuals follow to make better use of their time