Getting Things Done

Oliver Burkeman turns decades of self-help advice on its head and paradoxically forces us to rethink our attitudes towards failure, uncertainty and death. It’s our constant efforts to avoid negative thinking that cause us to feel anxious, insecure and unhappy. What if happiness can be found embracing the things we spend our lives trying to escape? Wise, practical and funny, The Antidote is a thought-provoking, counterintuitive and ultimately uplifting listen, celebrating the power of negative thinking.

Popular blogger Cal Newport reveals the new key to achieving success and true meaning in professional life: the ability to master distraction. Many modern knowledge workers now spend most of their brain power battling distraction and interruption, whether because of the incessant pinging of devices, noisy open-plan offices or the difficulty of deciding what deserves their attention the most. When Cal Newport coined the term deep work on his popular blog, Study Hacks, in 2012, he found the concept quickly hit a nerve.

Throughout history, there's been one indelible quality that great leaders, makers, artists and fighters have shared. The Zen Buddhists described it as inner peace, the Stoics called it ataraxia and Ryan Holiday calls it stillness: the ability to be steady, focussed and calm in a constantly busy world. This quality, valued by every major school of thought from Buddha to Seneca, John Stuart Mill to Nietzsche, is urgently necessary today. And, Holiday shows, it is entirely attainable.

Getting Things Done is David Allen's framework for keeping track of and organizing your projects and tasks. But it's no run-of-the-mill to-do list. Its purpose is to give you a system that you can trust completely and that will gather your ideas, projects, and to-do's in a way that is thorough, actionable, and uncomplicated. The BookSuma summary of David Allen's Getting Things Done brings you the main takeaways from the book in less than half an hour!

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distil vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Life isn’t about “finding” fulfillment and success - it’s about creating it. Why then has creativity been given a back seat in our culture? No longer. Creativity is a force inside every person that, when unleashed, transforms our lives and delivers vitality to everything we do. Establishing a creative practice is therefore our most valuable and urgent task - as important to our well-being as exercise or nutrition. The good news? Renowned artist, author, and CreativeLive founder, Chase Jarvis, reminds us that creativity isn't a skill - it's a habit available to everyone.

Getting Things Done for Teens will adapt its lessons by offering a fresh take on the GTD methodology, framing life as a game to play and GTD as the game pieces and strategies to play your most effective game. It presents GTD in a highly visual way and frames the methodology as not only as a system for being productive in school, but as a set of tools for everyday life. Getting Things Done for Teens is the how-to manual for the next generation - a strategic guidebook for creating the conditions for a fruitful and effective future.    

Faced with tumultuous economic times and rapid technological change, staying ahead in your career depends on continual learning - a lifelong mastery of new ideas, subjects and skills. If you want to accomplish more and stand apart from everyone else, you need to become an ultralearner. Scott Young incorporates the latest research about the most effective learning methods and the stories of other ultralearners like himself - among them Ben Franklin, Judit Polgar and Richard Feynman, as well as a host of others....

Our attention has never been as overwhelmed or in demand as it is today; we've never been so busy while accomplishing so little, and we've grown uncomfortable with boredom and a lack of stimulation and distraction. In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey - described by TED.com as 'the most productive man you could ever hope to meet' - provides profound insights into how we can best manage our attention. He reveals how the brain switches between two mental modes - hyperfocus, our deep concentration mode, and scatterfocus, our creative, reflective mode - and how the surest path to being our most creative and efficient selves at work is to combine them both. 

After extensive original research and a decade as the world's highest-paid performance coach, Brendon Burchard finally reveals the most effective habits for reaching long-term success. Based on one of the largest surveys ever conducted on high performers, it turns out that just six habits move the needle the most in helping you succeed. Adopt these six habits and you win. Neglect them, and life is a never-ending struggle. We all want to be high performing in every area of our lives. But how?

Discover David Allen's powerful productivity principles and vastly increase your ability to work better, not harder - every day. He asks listeners what's holding them back and shows how all of us can be "ready for anything" - with a clear mind, a clear deck, and clear intentions. This is the perfect audiobook for anyone wanting to work and live at his or her very best.

Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their successes over and over? People like Martin Luther King, Jr.; Steve Jobs; and the Wright Brothers might have little in common, but they all started with why. Their natural ability to start with why enabled them to inspire those around them and to achieve remarkable things.

Have you ever found yourself struggling with information overload? Have you ever felt both overworked and underutilised? Do you ever feel busy but not productive? If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is to become an essentialist. In Essentialism, Greg McKeown, CEO of a leadership and strategy agency in Silicon Valley who has run courses at Apple, Google and Facebook, shows you how to achieve what he calls the disciplined pursuit of less.

If you are a professional, manager, student, entrepreneur, writer, or homemaker, this audiobook will help you achieve your goals more rapidly, whether they are large, complex challenges or the small, essential tasks of everyday life and work. If you now work effectively, even though you have too much to do and too little time, The Now Habit will show you how to prioritize your goals to allow more time for guilt-free play.

Cal Newport's clearly written manifesto flies in the face of conventional wisdom by suggesting that it should be a person's talent and skill - and not necessarily their passion - that determines their career path. Newport, who graduated from Dartmouth College (Phi Beta Kappa) and earned a PhD from MIT, contends that trying to find what drives us, instead of focusing on areas in which we naturally excel, is ultimately harmful and frustrating to job seekers.