Book Title - Do It Today: Overcome Procrastination, Improve Productivity, and Achieve More Meaningful Things
Author - Darius Foroux
Genre - Personal Development and Self-Help
Number of Pages - 117 (3 Chapters)
Reading time - (2 hours 35 minutes as per Kindle suggestion)
My Ratings - 🍪🍪🍪
Introduction
This book is for you if you are looking for a sensible and logical approach to fulfill your goals and dreams. The author talks about being responsible for your life and doing things you say you would do - today, not tomorrow. He says we need to defeat the inner enemy called, 'Resistance' daily. To defeat this enemy we need to have a system, a routine in place to live a productive, happy, and purposeful life.
The author uses simple language and is an easy to read book filled with some great suggestions to follow immediately. There are three main chapters, with ten posts in each and can be read in any random fashion. As each post is an independent article in itself.
These days we get so lost in the humdrum of our daily chores and responsibilities that we end up complaining of not having the time or the right resources to fulfill our dreams. But the author Darius says, 'Consistency is key. We only make real progress and achieve big things by doing small things every single day.' So create something, improve, and progress by 0.1% daily.
May this single thought inspire you to be independent, to learn more, and do more.
I read the Kindle edition and having recently subscribed to Amazon Prime account. I got access to their Prime reading library, which allows me to borrow 10 books for free at a time. How cool is that! So, I'm making the most out of this offer! Now back to the review.
Main Takeaways
The author wants us to learn to delay gratification by finishing the assigned work first in order to become a respectable leader.
He says, 'If your mind can conceive it, you can achieve it! We cannot change unless we take action. There is no outcome without action. '
All strength comes from repetition, without it we tend to forget things easily. This basic knowledge is how you'll achieve your full potential.
If you want to get physically stronger or manage your weight - exercise daily - repeat it - every single day. If you want to be a writer, practice writing daily; similarly, if you want to be a singer, painter, dancer, teacher, etc. practice every day.
The author does quote numerous other authors in his book that helped him improve his productivity. One such book he mentions is 'The War of Art' by Steven Pressfield. In that book, the author Steven quoted the difference between an amateur and a pro.
He says, 'The amateur-only works when inspiration strikes. The pro sits down every day and puts in steady work.' Our author Darius in this book wants to remind his readers that the key is to put in steady, consistent work every single day. Not irregular or extreme but steady.
Ideas and Suggestions
Like any self-help book, the basic premise is that the reader makes an earnest effort to inculcate the ideas and suggestions in order to improve and change their life. Similarly, this book is no different it suggests the following:
To stop wasting time and start improving your personal effectiveness - the author suggests maintaining an hourly activity log to measure your time.
Write down what you've done during the past hour. Do it preferably for a day, then two weeks, then you'll have a month of recorded activities.
This will help you gauge and understand where you're spending most of your time. Start by eliminating those time-wasting activities and replacing them with some useful work.
Start saying 'NO' to a million things and yes to a few things. Because if you keep saying yes to a million things and no to a few things, you're living someone else's life.
How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.
For every 30-45 minutes of work, you should take a 5-minute break. You can walk around, drink water, stretch your back, do anything that will take you away from the computer or smartphone screen. This activity will make you more productive than ever as it will help you reevaluate and help prevent fatigue and worry.
Improve your mental toughness by practicing Stoic and Pragmatism philosophy. This philosophy was designed to help people live their best possible lives with virtue, tolerance, and self-control. It provides immediate, useful, and practical strategies to find peace, happiness, and even improve one’s strengths of character.
Awesome Quotes
Do it today! What you do today determines where you will be in a week, month, year, two years, and even ten years from now. That's why I always do it today-especially the important things like reading, exercising, investing, saving, spending time with loved ones, laughing, booking a holiday, enjoying life. And yes, even paying the bills. I do the important things today-not tomorrow.
One of my personal rules is this: Never complain. Another one is: read and exercise every day. Close the day every evening by setting your next day's priorities.
Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others. If you want to get anywhere in this world, you need to educate yourself, and to educate yourself you need to read a lot.
Read books that are close to what's going on in your life. There's a book for everything you can think of: struggling teen, an aspiring artist, broke entrepreneur, new parent, etc.
Q) How to beat procrastination when willpower doesn't work? A) What you really need is a system for doing work. You need rules, daily routines, systems, and frameworks to get things done.
My Ratings: 🍪🍪🍪
I gave this book 3 out 5 because most of the productivity hacks mentioned we all are aware of, nevertheless, it was a great reminder. It's a good read book, no doubt the author has spent a lot of time writing and editing the articles. He also gives us some great suggestions to emulate in our current life.
There were just two points that I couldn't really come in terms with;
Believing that I'm an immortal being and having all the time in the world would motivate me to do the work slowly and steadily. I feel that thought would, in fact, make me procrastinate even more and defeat the whole purpose of reading this book.
According to the author the phrase 'Think outside the box' meaning step outside one's comfort zone is just a story where only some people get motivate not all. He says, 'There's no magic involved once you step outside of your comfort zone what awaits you is just some more additional work.
You don't need to agree with everything the writer says. I like to remember the following quote when I am faced with such a situation.
You should have as much sense as an old cow: eat the hay and spit out the sticks.
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