Get Everything Done

Just to let people know: I awoke this morning in the US to find that Mark's latest book had been delivered to my Kindle (I pre-ordered it when he announced it).

Just skimming the Table of Contents, I see many pearls of productivity wisdom that Mark has shared (repeatedly!) for the last 10 years that I've been following his work.

Congratulations on the publication, Mark, and I look forward to reading it!

Enjoying the book, great to see so much that has be mentioned in this blog talked about depth.

Also many things I never saw on the blog!

Just hit chapter 9. I thought it was fun that it started with a quote by Mark Forster, a quote from David Allen, and one by Khatzumoto which surprised me. I google it and it's footnote 8 of part 2 of a blog series, as seen here: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/what-it-takes-to-be-great-2-ajatt-and-malcolm-mcdowells-outlierswait

I used to post some of his articles about timeboxing and I think I brought it up again recently talking about language learning. I just thought that was cool... Evidence that maybe Mark has looked at a few articles at ajatt.com at some point. (I used to try to follow a lot of his methods a lot, a few years ago.)

I didn't expect that much cross-fertilization but actually a lot of the ideas are very compatible. The article is basically about little and often (but preferable a lot and often, hence the same of the site "All Japanese All the Time", but I digress) along with 10,000 hours which Mark mentioned once so far in the book.

I've got my KIndle edition, and started dipping in. I expected to find that most of the book would be reinforcing and restating themes that are familiar on this site. Well, maybe that's true - I don't know yet - but the first thing I read was Chapter 36, "Beat your average, not your best" and that 's completely new to me. It's given me plenty of food for thought and action already.

"Beat your average, not your best"

Whoa. You just blew my mind. I shall order this book forthwith.

"as far as time boxing is concerned I was writing extensively about it more than 15 years ago"

I think I ran across it first on Merlin Mann's site circa 10 years ago, also not called "time boxing" yet, but "(10+2)*5": http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-1025

I guess I'll have to check out Get Everything Done. It's the only one I haven't read yet (besides the rest of "Secrets of Productive People" of course).

Khatz had a series of posts (15 parts) in 2011 just experimenting with varying the time boxes, like having them increase or decrease in time each iteration: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/series/timeboxing-trilogy

"10,000 hours on the other hand is neither his idea nor mine."

For sure. I ran across that first in "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle (2009), "Talented is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin (2010), and of course "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell (2011). Somehow Gladwell was the one who popularized it the most, but I think "The Talent Code" explaining it much better, in terms of what's really required.

I forgot to write my main point: I wasn't trying to imply that you were copying him. I just thought it was cool that you had quoted him and read his stuff as well. :)

On my second read through, first time was fast over view with some implementations.
Thanks Mark.

Just bought the book on Google Play. Look forward to reading it!

Done!

Amazon (USA) says it is not available for purchase.

Samir:

Seems to work for me: http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Productive-People-Techniques-Yourself-ebook/dp/B00OGLKJUU/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1442653861&sr=8-1

Kindle version is available for immediate purchase, paperback can be pre-ordered and will be shipped on November 17th.