The Productivity Project

Chris Bailey's The Productivity Project is a trenchant and entertaining year-long examination on a topic that concerns just about everyone at some point in their lives: how to be more productive at work and in every facet of your life. Chris Bailey has been fascinated with the subject of productivity since he was a teenager. While pursuing his business degree, he researched every paper and read every book available on the topic. After graduation, he embarked on a year-long project, interviewing many of the world's foremost productivity gurus, from Charles Duhigg to David Allen, while conducting a series of productivity experiments on himself, from getting by on little sleep, to waking up at 5:30 every morning for a month, from avoiding caffeine and sugar to working 90 hours a week, and monitoring the impact of each experiment on his ability to get things done. He created a blog about the project, and as people heard about the project, traffic grew exponentially and beyond his wildest hopes. This book and the lessons and insights Chris discovered are the result of that year-long journey. Among the many counterintuitive insights Chris writes about in the book are removing or shrinking the unimportant; the rule of three; striving for imperfection; scheduling less time for important tasks; the 20-second rule to distract yourself from distractions, and the concept of productive procrastination. He offers over 30 best practices that will help every one of us accomplish more.