Ready for Anything

David Allen

What’s in the book for you?

If you want to be productive in life, you should be ready to face anything that comes along your way. According to Allen, a person who has mastery in dealing with impediments, oppositions, distractions, etc. will be more productive in life. So, a productive person will be able to enjoy the work done.

In this book, Allen shares the tactics he has implemented in his life to deal with obstacles, and to follow his intuitions and thoughts and thereby lead a more creative, flexible, and relaxed personal and professional life.

There are mainly four strategies to be productive; completion, focus, structure and action. Let’s look at different tactics to implement these strategies in our life.

Completion and Clarity

Creative work requires lots of mental effort. We need to ponder and evaluate the different aspects of the work before creating an effective action plan. This requires a clear and balanced mind. Complete the task assigned before you start a new task. This helps you  have enough storage space in your mind for the details of your new work. Bombarding your mind with a lot of information may hinder your creativity. So, wipe off the unnecessary and mundane details from your mind. 

The best way to free your mind is to note down the ideas that come to you. Thus, your mind will be free from an overload of details. This will also avoid the risks of you forgetting relevant ideas at the right time. Writing down your ideas will help you analyze the flaws and give more clarity to your idea so that you can develop it into a full-fledged plan.  

Clear Focus on Tasks

Be conscious about your job, goals and tasks you have committed. Writing down your commitments and tasks will help you to decide on the important tasks and will help to schedule the required time for each work. A clear idea of your daily schedule will provide you the possibilities of postponing an unimportant task or assigning any of your work to your workmates such that you can have some spare time for personal interests. 

Maximum productivity results from an action plan that has the potential to deal with obstacles and crises. You must prepare to deal with the impediments right from the stage of planning.  If your timetable doesn’t incorporate time for unexpected delays, you may fail to complete your task within the scheduled time. A well-organized plan can give you maximum productivity in less time. This will give you spare time for being creative.

Structure Work for Steady Growth

You may not be able to allocate the required time for any of your personal long term goals when you have a busy daily schedule. So, break down your long term goals into short actionable steps so that it can be incorporated into your daily schedule. For example, if you have a plan to write a poem, you can break it down into small steps like selecting a theme, choosing a title, writing each stanza each day, etc. You can find time to complete these short steps in between your daily schedules. This will eliminate your frustration from postponing your interests. This will translate to more focus on your work as well.

If you are working in a team, ensure your team’s productivity by enabling fluent and reliable communication between the team members. Each member should be aware of the importance of their responsibilities for effective communication. They should be responsible for keeping each other informed about their progress in their tasks. Delay in information from one team member can affect the functioning of the entire team. Assign one team member as the in charge of the whole team’s output. His responsibility will urge him to conduct regular supervision and this will increase the team’s productivity.

Get into action

Rather than focusing too much into organizing your daily schedule, get into action. Controlling even the minute aspects of your life will waste time and energy better preserved for your work. Over concentration on organization will deflect you from focusing on your work. Therefore, you won’t be able to finish your work as per your schedule. 

Moreover, a tightly packed schedule can make you inflexible to unexpected events. A rigid schedule leaves you no time to relax and free your mind. This will impair your creativity.

Try out these strategies and do a weekly review of your progress to have a productive and joyful personal and professional life.

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