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I'm student of Computer Science. I'm in need of good guideline about Time Management. Please suggest which book to read. It will be great If that book is enough famous to be available in India. Though @robrambusch advised to read Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency I didn't found it in any big bookshops.. Please recommend books on Time management. |
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Try this website: http://www.43folders.com/howto. |
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Getting Things Done is one that is popular. The site that @EllenL mentioned, 43Folders, has some resources on it as well. |
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'Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-free Play ' That's a book by Neil Fiore.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Now-Habit-Overcoming-Procrastination/dp/1585425524
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I recommend the Pomodoro Technique - http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ I use it and GTD. For an amusing alternative, check out Structured Procrastination - http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ - I got it from @sebschmoller |
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Structured Procrastination -- what a great idea! And it turns out to be what I've been doing all along. In fact, I'm doing it right now. From "The Chronicle of Higher Education" (http://chronicle.com/article/10-Ig-Nobels-Awarded-/129224//) last September: 15 Years After an Essay on Procrastination, a Philosopher Wins an Ig Nobel First published in 1996 in The Chronicle, the article established the principle of "structured procrastination," which holds that "the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely, and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important." Mr. Perry, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Stanford University and an active professor of philosophy at the University of California at Riverside, won the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday for the ideas set forth in that essay. "One day I was deeply depressed about procrastinating, and I thought, It's kind of funny because everybody at Stanford thinks I'm somebody who gets a lot of stuff done," he said. "How can that be?" He realized that in the course of avoiding seemingly important duties that he'd laid out for himself, he had diverted his energy to any number of other tasks and had inadvertently become quite productive. "All my fantastic contributions to understanding the human condition as a philosopher seem to have had minimal impact compared to this thing," said Mr. Perry, who receives a couple of confessionary e-mails each week from fellow shirkers. [Administrivia: this would have been a comment, but it exceeds the comment length limit by 22 characters.] |
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Thank you guys.. Keep telling good books if you know any better.. |
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Here's a good review of research about self-control: Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy Baumeister & John Tierney, Penguin Press 2011 It's an easy read, and available for Kindle. |
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Zen To Done is also an excellent read: it's based on Get Things Done but enhance the concept quite a bit by making it less constraining and at the same time more efficient (eg: instead of having to sort your tasks several hours per week, you only sort 5/10 minutes a day - the management of tasks being the major hassle of GTD). http://zenhabits.net/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-productivity-system/ There are also several other great books by Leo Babauta on zenhabits.com, I particularly recommend:
As well as a huge repository of free articles and advices, so be sure to check zenhabits.net But I think that nowadays technology can help a lot in this field, so I would advise to use softwares if you are not reluctant, such as:
Note: only Astrid, MyLifeOrganized and Toodledo on the list above have a algorithm to sort the priorities of tasks. For the others (and the majority of softwares out there), you will either rely on your own, or the program may even be unable to prioritize at all (even manually). And if you are reluctant to technology, you can anyway use either:
Anyway, whether method you choose, remember that the best method is the one that works for YOU. Here are a few general advices that should help in any case:
Also if you have some problems to focus on things and procrastinate a lot, you might be having an Attention deficit with or without hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), so you might check about that, and anyway advices for ADHD persons are generally good for anyone, so be sure to check these as well. Good luck. 1
I can't remember the source of this story (it may have been David Allen of GTD):
A consultant asked a room full of generals what their productivity strategy was. Only one of the 20 or so present had one. She said "I make a list of the ten or fifteen things I need to do today in priority sequence. Then I cross out all but the top three."
That makes pretty good sense.
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The room-full-of-generals story appears in Baumeister & Tierney's book Willpower but without attribution:
The only general who managed a response was the lone woman in the room. She had already had a distinguished career, having worked her way up through the ranks and been wounded in combat in Iraq. Her summary of her approach was as follows: "First I make a list of priorities: one, two, three, and so on. Then I cross out everything from three on down."
I remembered it the same way @robrambusch reported it -- keeping the top 3 -- but by this account she only kept the top two. And she was only giving a summary, so no doubt there was more to her system.
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I just published a book on the subject: It Takes An Egg Timer, A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life, that offers a simplified approach to the subject. |