Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life – the second book of David Allen, famous productivity guru. Here you’ll find two parts of review. Each of them describes one major area of productivity, according to Ready For Everything.
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Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life – the second book of David Allen, famous productivity guru. The universal problem of today’s world of work–too much to do–is the very thing Allen aims to help you handle. His tack is this: you can do more and be more productive if you relax and use his methods. His methods are all about doing the objective things, like making lists and cleaning up the small stuff, that clear your mind to be relaxed, creative, and free of stress. This is an excellent self-development program, one that is up-to-the-minute in its use of metaphors like “mental RAM” and “open loops” and others drawn from our computer/network age. It speaks to the most contemporary issues in managing tasks, projects and energy. It draws on the best ideas of various traditions but is not merely a rehash of them. It sparkles with solid insights. It’s worth listening to over and over. Here you’ll find two parts of review. Each of them describes one major area of productivity, according to Ready For Everything.
TRIZ is a methodology, tool set, knowledge base, and model-based technology for generating innovative ideas and solutions for problem solving. TRIZ provides tools and methods for use in problem formulation, system analysis, failure analysis, and patterns of system evolution (both ‘as-is’ and ‘could be’). TRIZ, in contrast to techniques such as brainstorming (which is based on random idea generation), aims to create an algorithmic approach to the invention of new systems, and the refinement of old systems.
Many people, myself included, have used PowerPoint to make important presentations. Did you just throw boxes on the screen or did you think about your audience and your message? I know that I am usually too overwhelmed by color and animation choices to put much thought into how each page should be designed. Stephen M. Kosslyn, chair of the Department of Psychology and John Lindsley Professor at Harvard University, has written a book to elucidate the process. In Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Creating Compelling PowerPoint Presentations, Kosslyn presents eight simple principles, based on modern science about perception, memory, and cognition, that will make any presentation work. In the original article below Kosslyn provides some tips to get you started.
The big mystery to me is: why don’t more people start startups? If nearly everyone who does it prefers it to a regular job, and a significant percentage get rich, why doesn’t everyone want to do this?
GTD® is the popular shorthand for “Getting Things Done®“, the groundbreaking work-life management system and book by David Allen that transforms personal overwhelm and overload into an integrated system of stress-free productivity. Sophisticated without being confining, the subtle effectiveness of GTD lies in its radically common sense notion that with a complete and current inventory of all your commitments , organized and reviewed in a systematic way, you can focus clearly, view your world from optimal angles and make trusted choices about what to do (and not do) at any moment. GTD embodies an easy, step-by-step and highly efficient method for achieving this relaxed , productive state.
Nearly 25 years ago a former Rhodes scholar and doctor, from an Anglo-Maltese family, had a new theory as to how the brain works. Might it be possible, he asked, to generate new ideas on demand, artificially, instead of waiting around for inspiration? His answer was yes.
