Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time - and Energy

This guy basically just got out of school and decided to not work for a year and study is "productivity" and make a blog about it. So pretty much everything in the book is useless as he has no real world experience to base anything off of. All of the advice in the book is stuff that any normal person who's ever had a real job already knows.

There is really nothing of value of here.

One of my great interests has always been productivity. I enjoy reading tips about how to be more productive, and putting them into practice in my own work. Chris Bailey, the author of The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy Better, clearly has the same bug. In fact, his ambition far exceeds my own, to the extent that he spent a year trying out different tools and methods in an effort to increase his productivity. Along the way, he documented everything in a blog: A Year of Productivity, now renamed A Life of Productivity. During the year that he worked on this project, he tried many different ways to increase his productivity, including getting up early (at 5:30 a.m.); eliminating alcohol, caffeine, and sugary drinks; meditating; working longer hours; working fewer hours; exercising; and many more. He chronicles these experiments in his blog, and pulls it all together for the book.

Chris' adventures in productivity are fun to read, but also enlightening. For those who are interested in productivity, they are inspiring and thought-provoking. Chris learned a lot about what works for him, much of which is applicable to any reader. Whether you're trying to write more, or get more done in less time, this book will give you a lot of ideas about methods that you can try to meet your goals. Even for those like me who read a lot about productivity, this book is an enjoyable exploration of the topic. It's well-written and hard to put down. It includes exercises throughout the book, as well as a notes and references section and an index.

I read The Productivity Project during a recent American Library Association conference in Orlando, Florida, keeping it in my tote bag and pulling it out during odd moments when I was waiting for a program to start or at the airport. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in increasing their productivity at work or at home. I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.

Libraries of books have been written on the subject of productivity. They all promise to help you get more done in less time, and they all promise to help you keep up in the fast-paced modern world. The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey could have been just another one of these books of mostly-empty promises. It could have been, but it’s not—it’s something altogether better.

Bailey sets himself apart from the productivity pack in many ways. Most importantly, this book feels personal. It distills the principles Bailey gleaned from a year-long productivity experiment in which he himself was the test subject. He did crazy stuff to himself: cutting out caffeine, spending a whole week just watching Ted Talks, putting in 90-hour work weeks, using his smartphone for only an hour a day for three months, binge-watching Netflix for a month, living in seclusion for 10 days, and more. Basically he went to extremes and then documented it on his blog, “A Year of Productivity.” What makes the resulting book great is that it isn’t a re-hash of old blog posts, instead Bailey uses the experiments as illustrations of timeless productivity experiments. Timeless, timely, personal, and practical are all words I could use to describe The Productivity Project. The “project” of the title is not an objective venture, but a person: first Bailey as the pioneering “project,” and now the reader as the beneficiary “project.”

Also, the book presents a fresh perspective on productivity, even as it harkens back to classics like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Like Covey, Bailey is a believer in values-focused productivity, and he reminds the reader than efficiency is not the goal, but rather focusing time, energy, and attention on accomplishing things that matter. This isn’t new, but the way Bailey makes his case is fresh and inspiring.

Finally, the comprehensiveness of this book is staggering. Bailey covers all the bases: procrastination, task-management, diet, sleep, exercise, meditation, simplification, technology, workflow, focus, dealing with distractions, and more. At first, I found some of the content repetitive, but then I realized what Bailey’s endgame. He isn’t being repetitive as much as self-referential, showing how all these concepts are interlinked, and creating a reference work of sorts on productivity. In the end, there exists a satisfying whole, a big picture that inspires me to get to work on myself, not just on my tasks.

Bailey is an idiosyncratic guy, and it comes through in the writing style. He is funny, warm, and self-depreciating. Each chapter beings with an “estimated reading time” (i.e. “Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes, 52 seconds”), which is something he also does on his blog posts. By the end of the book, especially with all Bailey’s Buddhist musings about being more deliberate and mindful, the “estimated reading times” begin to take on an ironic ring. Was this intentional, or is Bailey really just trying to respect our busy schedules? I find this uncertainty charming.

If you are a student of productivity best-practices, you will find this book invaluable. You will also find it disturbing, in a good way. Instead of hacking work tasks, you end up hacking yourself—which makes all the difference.

Please Note: This book was gifted as a part of the Blogging for Books Reviewers Program in exchange for my unbiased review of this work. This has in no way influenced my opinion or review of this work.

The productivity and time management genre has long been one of the most popular fields in business books. Bailey’s contribution is notable for his strong research, experimental approach and helpful exercises. In this review, I will discuss various aspects of the book that I found helpful and interesting.

The Three Productivity Factors: Time, Attention and Energy

In the modern knowledge economy, there are three key personal factors that drive productivity. Bailey explains that time, attention and energy are key input factors to manage. At first glance, some people describe productivity as simply another label for time management. This book shows that time management per se matters yet it is not the most important factor. Self-management makes a huge impact to our attention and energy. The productive value of an hour varies considerably based on your current state.

Let’s illustrate that with an example based on sleep habits. When I manage to only get 5-6 hours of sleep, I find that life is much more difficult to manage. A type of mental fog filled with above average amounts of negative emotions cloud my whole day. In contrast, I find that I am in a better mood and better able to sustain productive activity based on a full night’s sleep.

Bailey’s Experimental Approach

I first came across Chris Bailey’s outstanding blog – A Life of Productivity – a few months ago and I was immediately impressed. Bailey’s commitment to long form writing, analysis and experimenting with different approaches attracted my attention. His willingness to track results, numbers and share his findings reminds me of Tim Ferriss’s earlier work on productivity. The world needs more experimentation and validation for productivity ideas, so I hope Bailey continues his work.

In some ways, the most valuable insight from the book is to apply an experimental perspective on your daily work. Throughout the book, Bailey provides a number of productivity challenges to the reader. There’s nothing new to exercises or workbook elements to a business book. Bailey’s innovation is to provide a rating (e.g. the fun rating for this challenge: 8/10) and estimated time for completion. Whether you adopt his specific experiments, I think there is great value in adopting an experimental approach to your work. You can use proven habits and routines 80% of the time and tinker with new methods the remaining 20% of the time.

Chris Bailey spent a year experimenting with and blogging on productivity, and has now released a subsequent work entitled //The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy// offering advice and methods he still uses (noted in a concluding chapter a year after completing the formal manuscript) to be more productive—not to be confused with //busy//. Chris lays down his initial foundation by defining productivity as “how much you //accomplish//” (13), not how much you //do//, thereby pointing out that being //busy// is not necessarily being //productive//. Thereafter, Chris begins by asking his reader to determine what he or she truly values—think about it and write them down—because that’s where one should invest time, attention, and energy in being productive. This is key because it will determine the way in which the rest of the book is used.

With a slight Buddhist influence, which itself is very inward and self-focused, Chris’s motivation for being productive is to be able to do more for himself and eliminates things that get in the way of that or simply do not make him happy (e.g., he notes the number of hours per week he intentionally spends on various aspects of life in order to be productive, and little priority is given to relationships, but he continues to eat foods and drink alcohol that reduce productivity because he enjoys them and will not give up certain pleasures for the sake of 100% efficiency—perfectly okay, but indicative of his value system). I imagine most of my readers will not share Chris’s worldview nor use his methods in the same way, but that does not mean they are unhelpful and cannot be applied. Again, he begins with values for a reason, and we’re all going to differ there from the start.

I appreciate much of what Chris has to offer, especially his points on //energy// management versus //time// management—no one can control or manage time any more or less than anyone else! I will certainly be paying more attention to my energy cycles and adjusting when (if) I use caffeine for best effect, whether to be energized or prepare for a crash to get better sleep.

Whether one measures productivity in achieving a daily word count (Chris) or developing relationships some may perceive as counterproductive encouraging a decrease in happiness, Chris’s insights can be helpful in making better use of one’s time and energy toward those ends. This book will likely be most helpful to those who have flexible control over their lives (young, single, childless, and self-employed, like Chris), but anyone can use it. I think it would actually benefit employers an entrepreneurs in better understanding their employees and molding business around people’s strengths rather than a traditional 9–5 push (or whatever the case may be).

*I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Interesting format and approach and better than most on this topic. Bailey had the luxury to try out a number of productivity experiments on himself and he reports his findings in the volume. The attentive reader will notice that the hacks, insights, observations, and attitudes of the productive person become mutually reinforcing and overlapping. Anyone with a superficial knowledge of the subject will not have a eureka moment, but the reinforcement and inter-relationships between the constituent parts are useful. Bailey doesn't preach and he notes where he slips, falls, or fails often with grace and humor. Recommended.

Chris Bailey has an unusual obsession, and took his study of it to an unusual depth. His obsession is productivity. And to know more about it, he didn't just read the best books and research papers about it. He didn't just interview experts. He actually lived all the advice he could find on the subject. For a year. He shares his insights in this book, The Productivity Project.

So, how far did he go? He worked 100 hours a week. He worked 14 hours a week. He woke up every day for a month at 5:30 AM. He avoid caffeine and alcohol, and watched everything he ate. He ate whatever he wanted, woke up whenever his body naturally woke up. He went to crazy extremes for a year to find out first hand what changed his productivity. He documented whether it got better or worse, and by how much.

The result of his effort, "A Year Of Productivity" (AYOP), is this book, The Productivity Project. It combines real academic research on the subject of productivity with his own first hand experiences living them out. It's insightful and humorous. An enjoyable read full of wisdom and grounded in the real world.

I recommend it for anyone interested in exploring the limits of their own productivity.

Everyone wants to be more productive, right? So while I don't often pick up nonfiction books for the blog, I decided I would give this one a try. If nothing else, I figured it might help me stay on top of the blog work (as well as my work everywhere else)!

What we get here is kind of a mixed bag. Chris Bailey presents a way of thinking about productivity that goes beyond what we get done. It focuses on time, energy, and attention as the things that impact productivity. He also encourages readers to think about focusing on high-impact tasks and being aware of their energy levels throughout the day. There are many tactics and strategies presented in the book that can help in isolation or combination. And while it doesn't seem too novel or profound, as I've thought about it some more, I am starting to think about the ways I work a bit differently.

The key things that the author provides are brief challenges to put some of the tactics in practice. While he says early on there are only a few of these, almost every chapter has one. I did many of them, but there were some that I just read and internalized rather than actually practicing them as I went along.

The book does provide some great food for thought, even if it's not a total game changer. I also encourage readers to get past the beginning to get into the actual substance of the book. I was a little put off by what appeared to be the author's need to assert his heterosexuality (mentions of attractive women, relaying Mila Kunis fantasies, and more than one reference to having a girlfriend). The mentions seemed unnecessary, but it was easy to set them aside as completely irrelevant to the text.

[Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.]

We all know that being more productive will ultimately lead to a better life, but in this book Chris Bailey goes deeper than that. He qualifies and quantifies taking on productivity as a "project" and documents the process in this book. It's a quick read and is often conversational as well as informative.

Not many people live purely with productivity in mind for a year (or more). Bailey has done that, loves the depth he's gone into the productivity realm, and it shows in this book. If you want to up your productivity game and/or are fairly new to making a solid effort in improving your productivity (especially as he defines it), then you'll enjoy The Productivity Project.

Are you lacking common sense? This is the book for you! Do you have better common sense than the average Joe? Then you’ll be able to pull out the techniques that can improve your daily habits and smile, shake your head, and mutter, “Duh,” at the less-than-brilliant advice.
This book is great for the single, floundering, college graduate who’s trying to shape their life into some semblance of what they were told their existence should like post commencement ceremony. Not so great for… well, anyone else. Sure there are some key ideas that could improve pretty much anyone’s life (exercise more, limit your time online, get rid of distractions) but again, that whole common sense thing. If you have a family with children, a career that requires spontaneity, or some other element where rigidity just isn’t going to work, then you’re definitely going to have to be creative in incorporating these experiments into your daily life.
According to the text on the inside of the jacket, Chris Bailey turned down lucrative job offers in order to pursue this lifelong dream of studying productivity. Wouldn’t it have been a better experiment to accept one of these lucrative offers and then analyze how a lack of sleep and dietary changes affects performance instead of taking a year off to blog about those effects? It seems like that would have been a more sincere study of what impacts the quality and quantity of one’s work.
Still, even if the only things you take away from picking up this book are the four main tips from the back cover, all is not wasted. (In case you’re wondering, those four guidelines are: 1. Consume caffeine strategically, not habitually. 2. Work on your hardest, highest-return tasks at you peak energy time of day. 3. Focus on one task at a time. Multi-tasking is simply less productive. [All the other stay-at-home-moms can join me in a hearty laugh here.] 4. Compartmentalize email and social media to specific times during the day.) These are genuinely valid and helpful points. However, it is important to keep in mind that this is basically a pet project done by a solo male college-graduate blogger. It would be very interesting to see him revisit this project when he’s a middle-aged, corporate cog with a family.
One note on the physical functionality of the book: Under the jacket, the hardcover is WHITE. I’m not a fan of book jackets and generally take them off during the course of reading, but this one needs the jacket whenever it’s handled. It picks up every finger oil, grease mark, and dirt smear within ten feet. Sure, they’re hidden when the jacket is put back on, but I know that they’re lying under there, smirking at me in all their filthy glory.
I received this book for review courtesy of Blogging for Books.

I love this book! I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version of this, read by the author. His passion for the material comes through so well on the audio, and gets you excited about the material too, because he is. This book covers productivity from A to Z. This may be the best book I read in 2016. I read 30 books in 2015, and this one ranks up there with my favorite I read in 2015: Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. (read that one too - also audio version, read by author) I look forward to seeing how Chris Bailey's career develops! He's a talented author and teacher.

Although much of the advice in this book is based on well known, practical advice (get enough sleep, eat right, exercise, etc.); Chris Bailey has done an excellent job of researching each one of these issues and many, many more to provide substantiation for the things that will boost (and detract) from your productivity. While I might have known a lot of this information before, reading it in detail allowed me to refocus on that information and re-examine my life to see if I was applying all of these principles. The end result is that it has increased my awareness to several things that enhance productivity.
In this book, Chris details a variety of different experiments he conducted to determine the impact of different elements on productivity. For example, he limited his smartphone activity to only one hour a day. He spent ten days in isolation without other people. He shifted his schedule to get up at 5:30 in the morning. He tested these elements and many more to see how it would impact his level of productivity. In addition to his personal experience, he researched each area extensively to provide a deeper perspective about how these different variables can impact productivity. This book is a quick and easy read. It seems like he summarizes 100 different research studies in just a few sentences sprinkled throughout the book. I love the fact that he also summarizes the key takeaway point at the beginning of every chapter and tells you exactly how long each chapter should take to read.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the Blogging For Books program from WaterBrook Multnomah in exchange for my fair and unbiased review.

After an year of research on productivity, I stalled. Amongst others, one of my reasons was that this is all old wine in a new bottle. The Productivity project changed that for me. This is not a productivity book. It's Chris's journal! Don't read this book with an intent to increase your productivity. Read the book with an intent to do something different at the end of it. Everything that Chris has done to write this book is something ONLY he has done. There is no history of someone taking off an year to watch TED talks or monitor eating habits and sleep patterns. This book provides a philosophy that productivity has long needed. Thanks Chris!
-Srinath

Checked this out a library. I don't think I can recommend the book. It's long for what it is and I skimmed the whole thing. I would recommend his site though. There is a lot of this info on there, but much more condensed, precise, and useful.

As a longtime reader of Chris Bailey's Year of Productivity project, I was excited to dig into this book and ended up really enjoying it.

The book's eight parts come together to form a great overview of personal productivity, and I appreciated the balance of results from personal experiments (many of which I could never bring myself to do), research, and interviews with other experts.

Chapters also end with a challenge to help you put their concepts into action. While I'm typically not the kind of person who will immediately jump into these kinds of challenges (I'd rather keep reading onward), I do appreciate them, as they often become the seeds for challenges I create for myself down the road.

Finally, it's less than 300 pages. I'm a fan of a shorter length for books of this type; however, Bailey also provides a lot of notes you can use to jump off into further research.

Half memoir, half productivity guide, Chris Bailey recounts his year of living productively experiment for the benefit of those who will engage his book. He doesn’t break any new ground but does document his individual forays into the arena of productivity, testing the hypotheses of various GTD methods, lifestyles and health choices. Eminently readable, Bailey takes on the role of guinea pig alternately putting in 90 hour weeks or cutting caffeine to zero and then gives his account of the results.

The experiments are interesting but ultimately, in an era of productivity hack stratification and tribalism, few who are familiar with the methods/choices will be swayed by the author’s results. Will I stop working past the number of Bailey’s maximum hours? No. Meditate? Maybe. The book is engaging and serves as an excellent survey for those new to productivity literature but it might not have the power to bring about change.

In the Productivity Project, productivity specialist Chris Bailey spent a year personally researching and testing various aspects of the subject from interviewing other experts, did yoga, slept in and got up early, worked various lengths of the day and days of the week, kept various types of calendars and reminders, etc. All this effort led to a book that delivers a well organized book where each chapter focuses on various aspects of productivity and time management. Some of the best chapters are about the distractions to productivity and how to quiet one's mind. Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises for the reader.

Though much of this book covers things that may seem like common sense as you read it, we often forget about them in the moment; this book will serve as a reminder for those times and should also deliver some new insight into the topic.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

I'm not usually into books about productivity, but this one was so much more than a book about how to get things done! It's a guideline for how you can be more effective in doing the things you want to do - regardless of what that is. This book is extremely well written and highly engaging. The author manages to pack in a ton of really useful tips about how to work more effectively while weaving in an interesting story throughout the book. I'd highly recommend this for anyone looking to be more effective - entrepreneurs, students, and people with more structured jobs can all benefit tremendously from this book. And you'll definitely enjoy yourself in the process!

I was given a preview copy of this book to help me prepare for interviewing Chris on my show.

Let me just say... Wow.

The book is almost as impressive and inspirational as the man himself.

An incredible book with actionable and easy to digest tips and hacks. Really approachable, unlike so many other books in the field.

I actually teach a course on productivity and wrote a book of my own... But even so, Chris is someone I look to when I'm struggling with issues of productivity - or just to be inspired.

This book will pay for itself 1000 times over. Buy it!

"The Productivity Project" by Chris Bailey is a good title for anyone wanting to get more out of their life by being more productive. The book is around 270 pages and some of the topics covered include:

1. Question why you want to make changes in your life.
2. Devote more time and energy on your most important tasks.
3. Suggestion for identifying your most important task(s).
4. The Rule of 3.
5. Focus more on managing your attention and energy and less on your time.
6. Have a maintenance day when you can do tasks when you have lower energy and attention (for example, running errands).
7. Suggestions for improving your attention span.

Nothing really new or earth-shattering - I've read many of the concepts in other books - but seems to be an okay read.

This is a must-have book for anyone interested in boosting their personal and professional productivity! Chris does a great job at breaking down his advice into actionable steps (something rare in the self-help industry) so you can start taking action immediately.

I really enjoyed this book during my last vacation. As an entrepreneur, I'm trying to read "productive" books and coach myself in a good way. This book helped to focus me especially on how I can improve my work and my time. I really like the approach of a lot of "self assesments" Chris did and how he described in an hones way that it was not always easy and sometimes also not successful. I made many notes and I'm trying to change a few of my daily behaviours,bc I read this book. If that happens, it's always a good sign for me. Really well done & written.

It's more about the author than about teaching you to be productive. There are tips and techniques I am willing to believe work, but no evidence beyond anecdote is presented. The book needs editing badly. It reads like a university paper where the author was trying to hit a word count.

Saw that Fortune Magazine recommended this as one of their books of the new year, and decided to pick it up (it hit shelves early in Canada.) I see my work, and productivity, completely differently after diving into this book. This book is fresh, counterintuitive, and actually entertaining (as much as a book about productivity can be, that is). If you value your time, these is so much crammed within these pages that will help you become more productive. I highly recommend it.

It's a book about the author and his productivity project, buy it if you want to know about it, but this book won't teach you much about productivity.
I found it little useful, there were just few good points about productivity and way too much elaboration on them. I had to skip a lot of it, because it wasn't interesting to read so much about what the author thinks about himself.

This book is written in a perfect manner. I could not imagine doing every single thing that Chris Bailey did to achieve the results he did, but I am so glad he did. His experiments allowed me to choose which ideas and practices I wanted to take and apply to my own life. The rule of 3 is one that especially stood out for me and allowed me to wittle my to do list down to something more manageable and to do more without become overwhelmed like so many of us do every day!

This is one of my favorite self improvement books. After implementing a few of the things I learned, I've definitely made PROGRESS. That's what you hope for but don't get out of most self improvement books.

Read this and Organize Tomorrow Today.

Great book. Very easy to read. I felt smart reading it, not necessarily because of the way it was written, but because the content was so easy to relate to! Has helped me very much in my life. Thanks buddy

The author specializes in productivity, which seems to be both a vocation and an avocation. The premise of this slim book is that he invested a year to find the best methods to increase personal productivity. He read all the latest research, interviewed experts, practiced yoga, worked longer and shorter hours, slept later and earlier, kept calendars and set alarms, and the upshot is this collection of brief chapters, often followed by exercises for the reader. It's set up neatly enough, with each chapter having a sidebar to tell you how long it will take to read and summarizing the takeaway of the contents. The problem, for me, is that just about everything he reports as effective is based on common sense. There are no new insights or inspiration. It's almost as if, instead of "What I Did On My Summer Vacation", he wrote "What I Did When I Graduated College". Many of his techniques are suitable for single, entrepreneurial types. It's very nice, for example, to focus on work when you have the most energy - if you're not tied to an office on a set schedule that doesn't care whether you're a morning person or a night owl. It's great to value your time and delegate - if you earn enough to pay someone else to do your chores. I'm sure we'd all love to reduce dawdling - if there are no toddlers on hand who want us to read a book five times in a row. The people who will get the most from this book are those who are not yet mainstreamed with their jobs and families; I'd recommend it for college students who may be juggling odd schedules, odd jobs, and too much socializing.

Many people may find it difficult to relate to this author since he doesn't work in an office, doesn't go to school, and doesn't have a family, so his time is more unstructured than most. His writing style is conversational, and, well, young. Some concepts that he describes as mind-blowing are old hat to anyone who has read even the basics of time management, such as prioritizing by importance instead of perceived urgency ("first things first" in Covey speak). He asserts that working 20 hour weeks is nearly as productive as 90 hour weeks, but we have no examples of the types of work accomplished or how productivity was measured. Read further and we learn that the ideal work week is somewhere between 35-45 hours--in other words, most of us are already doing that.

Clearly he has done considerable research and he includes interesting background and statistics. While the background info and detours were interesting, I was looking for more meat, and ended up skipping over a lot of the filler in the interest of time. Time management is an interest of mine, one that I don't spend much time on, but I have read The Seven Habits, Getting Things Done, and Eat that Frog and follow many Flylady tenets as well. Any of these books will offer more and better information in a much more concise way. I sat down to this book with highlighter in hand, but found that it wasn't needed.

To paraphrase Andrew Marvell, "Had I but world enough, and time," I might enjoy reading every word of this book. As it is, I read the first 100 pages and skimmed the rest. It offered me some motivation, but little that was new.

Excellent, easy to read and adopt tips and challenges. I really love this book. I feel like his simple suggestions for improving productivity are really actually effective and easy to adapt and integrate into your habits and schedule. The verbage and tone of the book is excellent and enjoyable to read. If you're looking for a productivity book - I highly recommend this one.

After an year of research on productivity, I stalled. Amongst others, one of my reasons was that this is all old wine in a new bottle. The Productivity project changed that for me. This is not a productivity book. It's Chris's journal! Don't read this book with an intent to increase your productivity. Read the book with an intent to do something different at the end of it. Everything that Chris has done to write this book is something ONLY he has done. There is no history of someone taking off an year to watch TED talks or monitor eating habits and sleep patterns. This book provides a philosophy that productivity has long needed. Thanks Chris!
-Srinath