How to be a Productivity Ninja - FREE SAMPLER: Worry Less, Achieve More and Love What You Do

By Graham Allcott

THIS IS A FREE EBOOK SAMPLER. IT INCLUDES THE FIRST 42 PAGES OF THE FULL BOOK. If you would like to purchase Graham Allcott's How to be a Productivity Ninja in full, you can do so with all good ebook retailers.

In the age of information overload, traditional time management techniques simply don't cut it when it comes to overflowing inboxes, ever-expanding to-do lists and endless, pointless meetings. Thankfully there is a better way: The Way of the Productivity Ninja.

Using techniques including Ruthlessness, Mindfulness, Zen-like Calm and Stealth & Camouflage you will get your inbox down to zero, make the most of your attention, beat procrastination and learn to work smarter, not harder.

Written by one of the UK's foremost productivity experts, How to be a Productivity Ninja is a fun, accessible and practical guide to staying cool, calm and collected, getting more done, and learning to love your work again.

If you enjoy this free sampler why not check out the complete book and learn the ways of the Productivity Ninja!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Icon Books
• Release date: Jan 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781848317482

Book preview

Front coverPNinja_TP.tif

Printed edition published in the UK in 2014 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [e-mail]

www.iconbooks.net

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Icon Books Ltd

ISBN: 978-184831-684-3 (ePub format)

Text copyright © 2012, 2014 Graham Allcott

The author has asserted his moral rights.

Originally published in longer form by READ Press.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset by Bernadette McDonagh and Marie Doherty

Cover logo and illustrations by Burrell Design

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Graham Allcott Graham Allcott is a productivity trainer, social entrepreneur and founder of Think Productive. Think Productive run public workshops throughout the UK and also run in-house workshops for staff at a diverse range of organizations including the Cabinet Office (UK government), The National Trust, eBay, Heineken, BT, GlaxoSmithKline and the University of Bristol.

Think Productive workshops include:

Getting your inbox to zero

Email etiquette

How to get things done

Making meetings magic

Smells like team spirit

How to be a productivity ninja

Prior to founding Think Productive, Graham’s career has been primarily in the charity sector and focused on social action. He ran community volunteering projects for the University of Birmingham before becoming Chief Executive of the charity Student Volunteering England and then setting up his social enterprise consultancy, Fruitful Consulting.

He was also co-founder of Intervol, the founding Chairman of READ International and has advised Governments, both red and blue, on youth and community issues, most notably The Russell Commission and National Citizen Service. He is a trustee of the youth homelessness charity, Centrepoint.

Despite an intolerance of failure elsewhere in his life, he is an Aston Villa season ticket holder.

Graham lives in Brighton, UK.

For Chaz, my Ninja partner-in-crime

CONTENTS

Title page

Copyright information

About the author

Dedication

PREFACE

1. THE WAY OF THE PRODUCTIVITY NINJA

2. WHY WE GET STRESSED

3. ATTENTION MANAGEMENT

4. NINJA EMAIL

5. NINJA PRODUCTIVITY: THE CORD PRODUCTIVITY MODEL

6. THE CAPTURE AND COLLECT HABIT

7. THE ORGANIZE HABIT

8. THE REVIEW HABIT

9. THE DO HABIT

10. NINJA PROJECT AND MEETING MANAGEMENT

11. MOMENTUM

APPENDIX:

Five other books you need to read

Buy a book, change a life

Bring a project ninja to your office!

Contact information

DEAR HUMAN BEING …

Do you want to do everything and change the world, yet also find yourself feeling quite lazy from time to time? Yes, me too. We humans are hunting animals that have evolved to such an extent that we no longer need to hunt, so we perhaps have a right and an excuse to be lazy. Yet that doesn’t stop us being ambitious

Reviews for How to be a Productivity Ninja - FREE SAMPLER

[pdcread · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Alcott is offering here a solution to the email overload, the tedious meetings, the office politics and the general bedlam that is the modern working life.

He offers methods of dealing with your working challenges in todays office. There are solutions for getting you email to zero, the best way to run a meeting, methods of getting organised and suggestions on the best way to deal with your work load.

A lot of it is very similar to the GTD religion method as developed by David Allen, but Allcott brings a British slant and humour to his book. As a business book it is readable, as similar books can be humdrum and frankly dull, and this isn't. A useful book, in some ways, and one I may yet buy.

[theidlewoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fun, engaging, with plenty of diagrams and a perky British sense of humour, this is one of the better productivity books I've come across. As others have noted in reviews, I felt that Allcott relied quite heavily on principles developed by earlier writers - David Allen's "Getting Things Done" loomed large, as always - and there's a far amount of simple common sense. Nevertheless, he brings it together in a playful fashion that is very much aimed at a UK audience. I always really appreciate this, as I've found many of the American books in this genre to be over-earnest and not really applicable to anything but a conventional office workplace. It's currently (2017) pretty much up to date in terms of the apps and technology it recommends, and it's good that it does suggest specific programs because David Allen's "Getting Things Done" deliberately steers away from this. However, that does mean it'll date pretty quickly. I don't think I'm committed enough to buy into the whole Ninja thing myself - I prefer making up my own system - but Allcott has some bright ideas, reinforcing and encouraging some of the principles I've picked up from elsewhere. Worth a look for a bit of light relief, or a more down-to-earth approach than some of the US offerings.

[datrappert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Allcott's engaging book on productivity is a bit overlong, but his methods are mostly commonsense and easy to apply. He freely (with acknowledgements) borrows good ideas from elsewhere, such as the Zero Inbox, Big Rocks, and so on and weaves them together into a useful toolbox that you can pick and choose from--for the most part. You do need to adopt his CORD method--collect, organize, review, and do, however. Among the best tips here is the idea of a second brain, i.e., a to-do list of some sort, which could be a paper planner or an online/app productivity tool such as Toodledo, which he recommends, and which I ended up picking for myself after experimenting with a few alternatives. The key to the second brain (again, commonsense) is just to record those other nagging things you may need to do so that you can get back to the task at hand. This includes all those things sitting in your inbox that you are using as a proxy for a to-do list. Instead, process the ones that take less than a couple of minutes, add the others to your to-do list, leave your inbox at zero--and get back to work!Allcott's writing is not overbearing, but also not overenthusiastic and annoying. It is very British, however, and hasn't been adapted for an American office. I hope you know that when he is referring to having biscuits at meetings--which he mentions multiple times--he is talking about a crunchy cookie.

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lost a few points for not being particularly applicable to my job, but it did make me think about stuff and how to organise my work life better. I read this in short bursts and I did find it interesting and thinking fodder. I am in the middle of a stressful change path in work and needed this reminder to stop and breathe and just keep going.

[booksgaloreca · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I requested a copy of this book to review even though I am not normally a fan of this type of book. I have a lot of different things on the go lately and they have been overwhelming my life, so I was looking for tips on how to streamline things and get better organized.I really liked the book. It is easy to read and has many practical tips on how to get the most out of your time. One of my favourite tips was to schedule your daily tasks around the times of day where your brain in normally the most active (or inactive). This has saved me time from trying to write book reviews when I think I should and save them for when my mind is more alert and can focus on them better. ;-)This book is easy to read and I would recommend it if you are looking for easy ways to get better productivity out of your day.

[hjvanderklis_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Many books are written and courses are given about time management. Graham Allcott wants to go beyond that and learn you how to think and act like a Productivity Ninja. Allcott merges Getting Things Done (David Allen), The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey), The War of Art (Stephen Pressfield), Meeting Together (Lois Graessle, George Gawlinski, Martin Farrell), Linchpin (Seth Godin) into his own practice, worth sharing. In the age of knowledge work and a neverending stream of information inputs you have to make smart choices. Think of Clay Johnson’s Information Diet as a starter.Graham learned it the hard way. After writing and teaching these principles over and over again, he discovered how much his own productivity could be improved. Still room to improve left. He doesn’t want to be imaged as some kind of guru. So, don’t focus on some of his jargon like mindfulness, inbox zero, stealth and camouflage, or zen-like calm. Unlike other time management the aim is not just to show how much more you can do in any given time, but to stay calm and in control. That’s where e.g. the review moments of Getting Things Done (GTD) are so important. Attention management is one of the key features in this book. Avoid distractions, schedule time to act on the really important tasks, begin with the least attractive or most difficult ones to avoid procrastination. Worry less, achieve more and love what you do.Learn how CORD (Capture & Collect, Organize, Review and Do) as new habits set can help. Perform the exercises provided at the end of each chapter. Reconsider the use of email, calendar, task and note applications. Let this all work for you instead of getting imprisoned by the requests of others. Maybe it’s good to apply the stealth techniques for a while, learn some lifehacks or to spend that first hours to collect all your to-do lists and ‘projects’ in a single ‘system’ to start all over. I enjoyed to see so much known principles and practices collected here, offering me fresh insights as well.