A compassionate, very practical blueprint for getting things done.
Systematic guidelines to achieving and maintaining productivity.
The problem is procrastination, writes Rettig at the outset of her book. “Many people think they procrastinate because they’re lazy or undisciplined, but that’s wrong,” she contends. “We procrastinate because we haven’t been taught the attitudes and habits of productive work.” In these pages, Rettig, an expert on time management and productivity, outlines those attitudes and habits for readers at all stages of the work-flow process. She focuses both on procrastination and on perfectionism, elaborating on each in chapters filled with stories, numbered and bulleted points, and plenty of highlighted main points. Procrastination, she explains, is both a habit and a form of self-protection (the procrastinator fears facing either unpleasant tasks or negative reactions from others). Its opposite is what she refers to as sitzfleisch, the German word for the ability to sit still and stay focused on a task. She details her Timed Work Intervals method of building sitzfleisch, in which a person prepares a bit of work, eliminates all visible clocks, sets a kitchen timer for some discreet short interval, completes that bit of work, then takes a break and repeats the process until the whole task is finished. And in discussing perfectionism’s valuing of outcomes over process, she urges her readers to become “nonperfectionists” who avoid both the “noisy habits” of procrastination and perfectionism in favor of the pragmatic, holistic approaches she so appealingly describes. On every page, Rettig provides not only lucid, forceful prose, but also copious research into all aspects of productivity. Procrastinators who habitually beat themselves up for their own failings will find this book revelatory.
A compassionate, very practical blueprint for getting things done.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780989944090
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Infinite Art
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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