For the past three years, I’ve been through numerous productivity products and books. And up until now, not a single one of them inspired so much excitement about productivity as “Bill’s Im-perfect Time Management Adventure”. There is a reason for it.
One thing that makes this book stand out
There is a big difference it, one that is so large in scope that it literally makes it a master piece. Some people aren’t used to reading manuals and self-help literature. When they think of a book, they think of a novel, and this is exactly it.
How the story goes…
A mysterious email starts running around the office giving heads up to people that if they don’t up to their time management game, that the management has a list of people that they are going to fire.
Bill gets one of these emails and his name is appearing on the list. Bill is a regular family guy with a lot of bills to pay, and a mortgage behind his back. It is a critical time for him and he can’t afford to lose his job.
In an effort to fix his time management he goes out and buys a “Brain Phone” as the author likes to refer to it. But instead of using his phone powers to improve he essentially becomes even more distracted.
He gets appointed to a new team within a company, where his supervisor is applying “Master Time Method”, which is a concealed name for GTD. His supervisor is a Nazi-like and wants the system to be applied word for word, even though it leads to redundancies.
Bill gets translocated temporarily to another company, where he learns the new approach to time management…
Finding yourself in this story…
The book is written in a way that everyone can recognize himself in some of the aspects. A lot of book characters from the book are archetypes of different time management personalities and types.
It puts an emphasis on different types of Time Management that people already poses, and not necessarily each and every one of them is wrong.
The book explains that there is no “single method” that will help us overcome all the problems.
Ideas that will help you grow
Author Francis Wade kept in touch over time, and exchanged a few ideas, there is even a guest post written by him on Alpha Efficiency. You can read it here. Interesting enough, both of us have similar viewpoints on time management, and we were coming to a conclusion that there is not really a rigid system or structure that forces you to act in a certain way.
We inherently already poses time management skills that we acquired through our life. Some aspects are stronger than the others.
Final thoughts
It took me forever to read this book, and I am not really sure why. But I am glad it went that route, as it allowed me to really dig deep into Francis’s thoughts and get the most out of it. I would read a chapter a day, and throughout the rest of the day I would contemplate about the actions character took their goals, and agendas. Over the time I would see myself implementing these thoughts and ideas into my own routines.
If you want to see a new approach to time management and different kind of book, you won’t be disappointed. Bill’s Im-Perfect Time Management Adventure will crawl under your skin, and you will turn every page in anticipation of “what is coming next”.
It is exciting, inspiring and very well written. Completely worth your money and time.
