What can you buy for $9.50 these days? Not a lot. What if I said you could buy something that could possibly change your life, would you buy it? What if I told you it was an eBook, would you groan and say "˜I'm not an eBook kinda person'? Well I would say it's time to become an eBook kinda person and read this 83 page eBook by one of the top bloggers in the Personal Development field. At $9.50 you could organise your life and become the productive person you've always wanted to be.
What's all the fuss?
You've probably already heard of the eBook ,"˜Zen to Done' by Leo Babauta, by now as it has spread round the net like wildfire and has had some attention from the A-list bloggers like Darren Rowse. So I thought I would give it a read and read what everyone is talking about.
Who is Leo Babauta?
Simply put he's the most productive person I know. A father of six, an A-list blogger, an Author, a writer for 6 other blogs, a dayjobber, a husband, and a runner.
How the hell does he fit all this in his life? Simple, he just does it and simplifies it so it always gets done. And that's what his eBook is about.
What is "˜Zen to Done'
Zen to done is a blueprint for managing your time and tasks in the simplest way possible. It's not about using fancy gadgets to organise your time, it's not about being tied to the computer, it's simply about changing your habits one habit at a time which, over time, will drastically increase your productivity and give you time you need for leisure.
The book centre's on 10 habits:
- Collect
- Process
- Plan
- Do
- Simple, trusted system
- Organize
- Review
- Simplify
- Routine
- Find Your Passion
And in true minimalist style Leo cuts down these ten habits to just 4 for those feeling a little overwhelmed by 10 new habits in a year:
- Collect
- Process
- Plan
- Do
Leo walks you through all the 10 habits and describes them by way of personal and practical examples.
Having Goals
Unlike other books "˜Zen to Done' focuses on your goals in a subtler way. In other goal setting books you are asked to pick a goal and go for it. In "˜Zen to done' you are asked to have goals in mind but clear the debris first.
My problem with all my goals are that my mind is literally cluttered with ideas and projects that I struggle to know where to start. For example my online goals just now consist of:
- Writing for Change your thoughts (personal)
- Writing for a property blog (a paid position)
- Building and writing landing pages for affiliate marketing
- Looking for ideas for affiliate marketing
- Writing an eBook to sell on Clickbank
- Social media marketing
- Getting as many subscribers as I can
- Marketing
- Reading and writing in forums
- Writing adword campaigns
- Researching and split testing affiliate campaigns
- Reading all I can about productivity, marketing, copy writing, blogging, and personal development.
And that's only the headings, under each heading comes a whole new set of tasks.
This is really overwhelming on some days. However with the Zen to Done way I can organise the "˜big rocks' and get them out of the way first and do the other, smaller, tasks. For example writing for the two blogs would be my most important tasks (MITs) so I would get them out of the way first. I would concentrate on them excluding all other distractions and then work through the other tasks and have a plan for doing this.
It sounds like common sense but you know how easy it is to get distracted when doing anything like this.
Implementing it
I have started to use the methods in this book and what I have noticed is that my mind is a lot less cluttered as I write ideas and thoughts down into my moleskin notepad. I have also noticed there is a bigger sense of achievement when I tick off my task list. I have only started using it but already it has made a difference.
If you would like to buy the book you can buy it here:
or head over to Leo's site for more info:
Click here to view more details