Introduction to my new book - 10 steps to Ultimate Productivity

We’re about to start pre-launch of my new book - 10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity which is based on my video course. It’s getting real! I’m very excited about this. Here’s the link to my new Amazon author page and to give you a glimpse of what the book is all about, today I’m posting here an excerpt from the “introduction” to the book:

Introduction to 10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity

In this book, you will learn the principles needed to build your very own system for organizing and taking charge of your time. In 10 easy-to-follow steps, I will share how you can quickly and easily realize your goals. Thanks to these rules, I am both happier and more productive.

It wasn’t always this way…

By nature, I am an incurable optimist and a generally disorganized person. That is exactly why I decided to look into the literature on self-management. I knew that I could no longer neglect my deadlines, postpone my meetings, and lose my way in the flood of information and projects that I was responsible for. I needed to finally get organized!

My old way of using a physical planner was quickly becoming outdated and couldn’t keep up with the new, fast-paced environment the internet had created.

Things could not continue like this for me. I was drowning in the sheer volume of things I needed to do. That’s when I decided to study the techniques of self-management. Seeking inspiration from books by authors like Stephen Covey and David Allen, I hoped even a disorganized individual like myself could tidy up their life. I never imagined I would find my life’s passion through this endeavor.

It started out innocently enough

After reading a few books on productivity, I was able to organize my most pressing issues. I already knew some programming, so I created a simple application for private use that enabled me to identify my goals and prioritize them. I gradually worked on my creation, and in February 2007, I decided to show it to the world. I figured that since it helped me, maybe someone else will benefit from it.

That’s how the Nozbe app came to be. Its popularity, especially in the United States, exceeded all of my expectations. Motivated by its success, I left my job at the time and decided to shift my focus onto the tool that I continue to work on to this day. I no longer work alone but with an entire team. Today’s Nozbe works not only in browsers but on all mainstream platforms.

Popularization of the productive lifestyle

Thanks to the development of Nozbe, I was able to meet many fantastic people with whom I continued to learn new ways of organizing one’s time. Together with a friend of mine, Maciek Budzich (author of the blog Mediafun in Poland), we came up with the idea of creating a magazine about productivity. I invited some of my personal gurus, as well as many experts in the fields of time management, business, and technology to work on it. That’s how Productive! Magazine was born, which with the help of my team, I was able to publish for more than eight years in multiple languages.

Meanwhile…

I am still studying and testing new ways of improving productivity. Seeing so many strategies that actually work, and hoping to inspire and help you organize your own goals and time, I decided to write this book.

It’s time to get organized!

The goal of this book is to help you build your own trusted productivity system. My rules of productivity are heavily embedded in Nozbe, so it will be featured in some of the examples. However, you don’t need to use Nozbe to take advantage of the advice and methods in this book. If there are programs or tools you feel more comfortable with, you should by all means use them instead. Of course, I would be very happy if you decide to use my app. What’s most important, though, is that you benefit from the tips mentioned in this book and are able to incorporate them into your own personalized system. Throughout the book, you will also learn about some of the other helpful tools that are available.

How was this book conceived?

The idea of writing this book came after recording my video course, “10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity.” Together with the Nozbe team, I started by making small edits to the existing script for the video course. We invited Nozbe users to help out as well, and together we created a launch team made up of 200 true productivity aficionados. It soon became apparent that simply releasing the written script from the video wouldn’t be enough. Our ambitions were far greater. In order to properly explain all of the subjects, we decided to make even more edits to the script. Some topics that I had merely touched upon in the video course were expanded. A book allowed us to include related examples as well. Not all of them came from my own experiences. Some examples were sent in by other members of the publishing team, and the list of everyone involved can be found at the end of the book. I hope that the fruit of our joint labor results in a practical guide that will allow you to easily master all of the important techniques for increasing efficiency.

Before we begin, let’s look at three common myths about productivity!

Although productivity has become a popular topic — for articles, blogs, and applications — many people still seem to be skeptical about it. The main sources of this skepticism are most likely these three myths that we will put to rest right here…

Read more when you get the book!