Productivity Book Group

Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things [ https://amzn.to/2Akx9Aq ] by Brian Burke.

Dr. Frank Buck, the author of Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders [ https://amzn.to/2V2H8RL ], and regular speaker on time management, joins me as usual to co-host this summary-review episode on Productivity Book Group.

About the Author (from Amazon)

“Brian Burke is a Research Vice President at Gartner, covering enterprise architecture for the past 15 years. For the past three years, he has been leading research on the emerging gamification trend. As an expert in enterprise architecture, he has worked for decades on understanding disruptive technology trends and their implications for business. He currently leads research in business outcome-driven enterprise architecture, and his groundbreaking work in the development of federated architectures has been implemented in hundreds of organizations in both the public and private sectors. He is also a prominent researcher and speaker in the areas of gamification, enterprise architecture, innovation management and IT strategy. He has been published and interviewed in Wall Street Journal, BBC, USA Today, Financial Times, Inc, The Guardian, Forbes Online.”

About the Book (from the book cover)

“Organizations are facing an engagement crisis.  Regardless if they are customers, employees, patients, students, citizens, stakeholders, organizations struggle to meaningfully engage their key constituent groups who have a precious and limited resource: their time. Not surprisingly, these stakeholders have developed deflector shields to protect themselves. Only a privileged few organizations are allowed to penetrate the shield, and even less will meaningfully engage. To penetrate the shield, and engage the audience, organizations need an edge. Gamification has emerged as a way to gain that edge and organizations are beginning to see it as a key tool in their digital engagement strategy. While gamification has tremendous potential to break through, most companies will get it wrong. Gartner predicts that by 2014, 80% of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily due to poor design.  As a trend, gamification is at the peak of the hype cycle; it has been oversold and it is broadly misunderstood. We are heading for the inevitable fall. Too many organizations have been led to believe that gamification is a magic elixir for indoctrinating the masses and manipulating them to do their bidding. These organizations are mistaking people for puppets, and these transparently cynical efforts are doomed to fail.  This book goes beyond the hype and focuses on the 20% that are getting it right. We have spoken to hundreds of leaders in organizations around the world about their gamification strategies and we have seen some spectacular successes. The book examines some of these successes and identifies the common characteristics of these initiatives to define the solution space for success. It is a guide written for leaders of gamification initiatives to help them avoid the pitfalls and employ the best practices, to ensure they join the 20% that gets it right.  Gamify shows gamification in action: as a powerful approach to engaging and motivating people to achieving their goals, while at the same time achieving organizational objectives.  It can be used to motivate people to change behaviors, develop skills, and drive innovation. The sweet spot for gamification objectives is the space where the business objectives and player objectives are ...

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error [ https://amzn.to/2AnAgr0 ] by Kathryn Schulz.

Dr. Frank Buck, the author of Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders [ https://amzn.to/2V2H8RL ], and regular speaker on time management, joins me as usual to discuss this summary-review episode on Productivity Book Group.

About the Author (her website)

Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and a National Magazine Award for her article on seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest, “The Really Big One,” which was anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Magazine Writing. Prior to joining The New Yorker, she was the book critic for New York Magazine; her writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, TIME, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications. She is the former editor of the environmental magazine Grist, and a former reporter and editor for The Santiago Times, of Santiago, Chile. She was a 2004 recipient of the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism (now the International Reporting Project), and has reported from Central and South America, Japan, and the Middle East. A graduate of Brown University and a former Ohioan, Oregonian, and Brooklynite, she currently divides her time between the Eastern Shore of Maryland and New York’s Hudson Valley.

About the Book (from Amazon)

In the tradition of The Wisdom of Crowds and Predictably Irrational comes Being Wrong, an illuminating exploration of what it means to be in error, and why homo sapiens tend to tacitly assume (or loudly insist) that they are right about most everything. Kathryn Schulz, editor of Grist magazine, argues that error is the fundamental human condition and should be celebrated as such. Guiding the reader through the history and psychology of error, from Socrates to Alan Greenspan, Being Wrong will change the way you perceive screw-ups, both of the mammoth and daily variety, forever.

Our next reading selections

Show Notes/Quotations

(Please listen to understand the context of the resources provided. If we missed something, please comment on the episode and let us know!)

The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chablis and Daniel Simons

Learning How to Learn

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, MD

Expert accused of ‘millennial bashing’ says the generation is under TOO much pressure to succeed – and reveals why they think they deserve a promotion after a year in their first job

Please visit ProductivityBookGroup.org and find out the details and the schedule for upcoming book discussion calls; check out the schedule on the “Upcoming Books” page.

Please feel free to visit Apple Podcasts / iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or whichever podcast directory or app you prefer to access Productivity Book Group…and

Productivity Book Group [ http://productivitybookgroup.org ] discussed The 80/20 Principle, Third Edition: The Secret to Achieving More with Less [ https://amzn.to/2MWKwLg ] by Richard Koch.

Enjoy the discussion!

Here’s an interview where Richard Koch speaks about The 80/20 Principle, to get a feel for what he’s driving at in his work.

Richard Koch  is a former management consultant, entrepreneur, and writer of several books on how to apply the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) in all walks of life. Richard has also used his concepts to make a fortune from several private equity investments made personally. Richard’s investments have included Filofax, Plymouth Gin, the Great Little Trading Company and Betfair. Previously he had been a consultant at Boston Consulting Group and later a partner at Bain and Company, before leaving to start management consulting firm L.E.K. Consulting with Jim Lawrence and Iain Evans.

Amazon Book Description

Be more effective with less effort by learning how to identify and leverage the 80/20 principle: that 80 percent of all our results in business and in life stem from a mere 20 percent of our efforts.The 80/20 principle is one of the great secrets of highly effective people and organizations.Did you know, for example, that 20 percent of customers account for 80 percent of revenues? That 20 percent of our time accounts for 80 percent of the work we accomplish? The 80/20 Principle shows how we can achieve much more with much less effort, time, and resources, simply by identifying and focusing our efforts on the 20 percent that really counts. Although the 80/20 principle has long influenced today’s business world, author Richard Koch reveals how the principle works and shows how we can use it in a systematic and practical way to vastly increase our effectiveness, and improve our careers and our companies.The unspoken corollary to the 80/20 principle is that little of what we spend our time on actually counts. But by concentrating on those things that do, we can unlock the enormous potential of the magic 20 percent, and transform our effectiveness in our jobs, our careers, our businesses, and our lives.

And, here’s another video of Brian Johnson from PhilosophersNotes giving an under-10-minute summary of Koch’s The 80/20 Principle.

Our next reading selection IS:

September 28, 2019 – Atomic Habits by James Clear

Show Notes:

(Please listen to understand the context of the resources provided. If we missed something, please comment on the episode and let us know!)

The 80/20 Principle, Third Edition by Richard KochGetting Things Done by David AllenCours d’Économie Politique by Vilfredo Pareto

Productivity Book Group Author Interview Series is an opportunity to learn about new and interesting productivity books and authors. I’ll be interviewing some of the authors that we have read or will be reading here on Productivity Book Group as well as other authors. These shorter podcast interviews will be injected between our normal discussion-format episodes that are published here on Productivity Book Group.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Erik Fisher, Social Media Manager at Social Media Examiner, podcast host of the acclaimed Beyond The To-Do List podcast, and author of Ready Aim Fire!: A Practical Guide To Setting And Achieving Goals (Beyond The To Do List Book 1) [ http://amzn.to/2zYcenG ] with his co-author, Jim Woods. Enjoy the interview!

The Amazon book description states:

* You’re ready to make progress.

Enough spinning your wheels, it’s time to REALLY move forward.

Ready Aim Fire is the tool to get you back on track!

What is included?

* A step-by-step plan to set and achieve goals that fit your life

* Direct action steps to guide you every step of the way

* Real life examples to provide clarity

* Intentional times of rest to maximize success and avoid fatigue

* A DISC-based personality test, Myers-Briggs based test, and a Strengthsfinder based test

 

Our next reading selection IS:

June 29, 2019 – 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

September 28, 2019 – Atomic Habits by James Clear

Show Notes:

(Please listen to understand the context of the resources provided. If we missed something, please comment on the episode and let us know!)

John Acuff (books)

* Beyond the To-Do List podcast

Please visit ProductivityBookGroup.org and find out the details and the schedule for upcoming book discussion calls; check out the schedule on the “Upcoming Books” page.

Please feel free to visit Apple Podcasts / iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or whichever podcast directory or app you prefer to access Productivity Book Group…and subscribe. Also, please feel free to review us on Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher! This helps expand our readership and bring new discussion callers into the fold. Thank you.

We have a digital community where we can discuss the books we’re reading, share new book and article recommendations, and ask questions of our fellow book lovers. You can access it on the Web, as well as via Android and iOS apps, and we’re very excited to have you join us there. Please visit http://productivitybookgroup.org/community and you will be taken to the new digital community to join. See you there!

Finally, all podcast episodes are archived at ProductivityBookGroup.org under “Episodes” so if you missed a call and want to review it, feel free to head over and give them a listen.

And with that, thanks, everyone for listening to Productivity Book Group.

I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. Here’s to your productive life!

Note: All registered service marks,

The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People’s Lives Better, Too) [ https://amzn.to/2tWNDdu ] by Gretchen Rubin.

Dr. Frank Buck, the author of Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders [ https://amzn.to/2V2H8RL ], and regular speaker on time management, joins me as usual to co-host this summary-review episode on Productivity Book Group.

About the Author (from Amazon)

Gretchen Rubin is “the author of THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, HAPPIER AT HOME, BETTER THAN BEFORE, THE FOUR TENDENCIES, and [her] new book OUTER ORDER, INNER CALM release[d] March 2019.”

“[She] also [has] a popular, award-winning podcast, “Happier with Gretchen Rubin” (search in your favorite podcast app) and a blog (GretchenRubin.com)….”

“Before turning to writing, [she] had a career in law. A graduate of Yale and Yale Law School, [Gretchen] clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. [She lives] in New York City with [her] husband and two daughters.”

About the Book (from amazon)

“In this groundbreaking analysis of personality type, bestselling author of Better Than Before and The Happiness Project Gretchen Rubin reveals the one simple question that will transform what you do at home, at work, and in life. 

“During her multibook investigation into understanding human nature, Gretchen Rubin realized that by asking the seemingly dry question “How do I respond to expectations?” we gain explosive self-knowledge. She discovered that based on their answer, people fit into Four Tendencies: Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels. Our Tendency shapes every aspect of our behavior, so using this framework allows us to make better decisions, meet deadlines, suffer less stress, and engage more effectively.

“More than 600,000 people have taken her online quiz, and managers, doctors, teachers, spouses, and parents already use the framework to help people make significant, lasting change.

“The Four Tendencies hold practical answers if you’ve ever thought…

·         People can rely on me, but I can’t rely on myself.

·         How can I help someone to follow good advice?

·         People say I ask too many questions.

·         How do I work with someone who refuses to do what I ask—or who keeps telling me what to do?

“With sharp insight, compelling research, and hilarious examples, The Four Tendencies will help you get happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. It’s far easier to succeed when you know what works for you.”

Our next reading selections

March 30, 2019 – The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey

June 29, 2019 – 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

Show Notes/Quotations

(Please listen to understand the context of the resources provided. If we missed something, please comment on the episode and let us know!)

Empowerment Takes More Than Minute

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time [ http://amzn.to/2kD36Nk ] by Brigid Schulte.

Dr. Frank Buck, the author of Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders [ https://amzn.to/2V2H8RL ], and regular speaker on time management, joins me as usual to co-host this summary-review episode on Productivity Book Group.

About the Author / BOOK (from Amazon)

“Overwhelmed is a book about time pressure and modern life. It is a deeply reported and researched, honest and often hilarious journey from feeling that, as one character in the book said, time is like a “rabid lunatic” running naked and screaming as your life flies past you, to understanding the historical and cultural roots of the overwhelm, how worrying about all there is to do and the pressure of feeling like we’re never have enough time to do it all, or do it well, is “contaminating” our experience of time, how time pressure and stress is resculpting our brains and shaping our workplaces, our relationships and squeezing the space that the Greeks said was the point of living a Good Life: that elusive moment of peace called leisure.

“Author Brigid Schulte, an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post – and harried mother of two – began the journey quite by accident, after a time-use researcher insisted that she, like all American women, had 30 hours of leisure each week. Stunned, she accepted his challenge to keep time diary and began a journey that would take her from the depths of what she described as the Time Confetti of her days to a conference in Paris with time researchers from around the world, to North Dakota, of all places, where academics are studying the modern love affair with busyness, to Yale, where neuroscientists are finding that feeling overwhelmed is actually shrinking our brains, to exploring new lawsuits uncovering unconscious bias in the workplace, why the US has no real family policy, and where states and cities are filling the federal vacuum.

“She spent time with mothers drawn to increasingly super intensive parenting standards, and mothers seeking to pull away from it. And she visited the walnut farm of the world’s most eminent motherhood researcher, an evolutionary anthropologist, to ask, are mothers just “naturally” meant to be the primary parent? The answer will surprise you.

“Along the way, she was driven by two questions, Why are things the way they are? and, How can they be better? She found real world bright spots of innovative workplaces, couples seeking to shift and share the division of labor at home and work more equitably and traveled to Denmark, the happiest country on earth, where fathers – and mothers – have more pure leisure time than parents in other industrial countries. She devoured research about the science of play, why it’s what makes us human, and the feminist leisure research that explains why it’s so hard for women to allow themselves to. The answers she found are illuminating, perplexing and ultimately hopeful. The book both outlines the structural and policy changes needed – already underway in small pockets – and mines the latest human performance and motivation science to show the way out of the overwhelm and toward a state that time use researchers call … Time Serenity.”

Our next reading selections

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing [ https://amzn.to/2EeQN29 ] by Marie Kondo.

Dr. Frank Buck, the author of Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders [ https://amzn.to/2V2H8RL ], and regular speaker on time management, joins me as usual to discuss this book for this summary-review episode on Productivity Book Group.

Marie Kondo has skyrocketed to success lately with her best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, as well as by starring in her new Netflix series, “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo.” We hope you enjoy this episode where we discuss the KonMari Method and whether it fits (or doesn’t fit) your lifestyle and decluttering needs.

About the Author (from Amazon)

“Marie Kondo is a Japanese organizing consultant who developed the KonMari Method, which consists of gathering everything one owns by category and keeping only those things that ‘spark joy.’ Kondo’s method transcends the typical ‘tidying how-to,’ as it aims to cultivate a lifestyle that encourages one to cherish the things that bring true joy–a refreshing alternative to today’s mass consumer society.

“Marie has captured her years of consulting experience in her best-selling books, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy, which have sold over seven million copies worldwide, been published in more than 40 languages, and been listed as a New York Times’s bestseller for 99 weeks.”

About the Book (from Amazon)

(Read from the back book cover)

“The #1 New York Times bestselling guide to decluttering your home and the inspiration for the hit Netflix show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.

“Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles?

“Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).

“With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house ‘spark joy’ (and which don’t), this international bestseller featuring Tokyo’s newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home—and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.”

Our next reading selections are:

Show Notes/Quotations:

(Please listen to understand the context of the resources provided. If we missed something, please comment on the episode and let us know!)

* Decluttering at the Speed of Life –...

Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff [ https://amzn.to/2xgghaS ] by Dana K. White. Dr. Frank Buck,

Get Momentum: How To Start When You’re Stuck

Productivity Book Group Author Interview Series is an opportunity to learn about new and interesting productivity books and authors. I’ll be interviewing some of the authors that we have read or will be reading here on Productivity Book Group as well as other authors. These shorter podcast interviews will be injected between our normal discussion-format episodes that are published here on Productivity Book Group.

Tweets by JodiWomack

We have the pleasure of having on the show with us, Jodi Womack, the CEO of the Get Momentum Leadership Academy and the founder of No More Nylons, a coaching program providing women business leaders with professional networking expertise. She co-founded Get Momentum with her husband, Jason Womack, who we spoke with in the last episode…so if you didn’t hear it yet…go check that out. Jodi and Jason’s latest book entitled,and Get Momentum: How To Start When You’re Stuck [https://amzn.to/2E9stB1] was published in May 2016.

Enjoy the interview with Dr. Frank Buck!

Download a raw, text transcript of the interview here.

The Amazon book description states:

A powerful and personalized process to improve your life and advance your career

Do you sometimes feel stuck, despite real efforts to gain momentum on goals you’ve set?

Momentum means you’re doing more than simply getting things done. It’s that feeling of satisfaction, the belief that you can achieve big goals and complete important projects that fulfill you both personally and professionally. Get Momentum coaches you in the mindset, skill set, and toolkit required to make progress on the items you have on your life and work goals faster and easier, while living a less stressful, more meaningful life. The authors, Jodi Womack and her husband Jason Womack, provide valuable insights into the psychology of change and how to direct your focus to experience fulfillment at work and in life.

The authors share what they know having built a successful executive coaching firm together, as well as facilitating leadership workshops in their home town and more than twenty countries around the world. Contrary to the promise of many self-help/business books, they believe there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for success.Get Momentum teaches you how to make proactive changes based on the solid foundation of your own “quality of life” criteria. Jodi and Jason offer clear, step-by-step guidance on how to define your personal criteria so that you can Get Momentum, improve your life and enhance your career.

You will learn how to:

* Answer the Call (What to do when you say “Someone should do something about this!”)

* Organize a Team and Gain the Perspective of People You Trust

* Measure Something (Just Not Everything At Once)

* Experiment Specifically and Practice Deliberately

* Build Momentum, Recognize Your Wins, and Pay It Forward

With kindness, accountability and encouragement, Get Momentum will help you tap into your natural way of being to achieve professional goals and personal experienc...

Your Best Just Got Better by Jason Womack – Author Interview

Productivity Book Group Author Interview Series is an opportunity to learn about new and interesting productivity books and authors. We interview productivity book authors here on Productivity Book Group and discuss their books and work.

We have the pleasure of having on the show with us, Jason Womack, author of Your Best Just Got Better [https://amzn.to/2NhSbT3] and Get Momentum [https://amzn.to/2E9stB1], founder of Get Momentum and The Womack Company.

Tweets by JasonWomack

Dr. Frank Buck had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Womack, and Jason has two phenomenal offers during the podcast, so listen carefully to take advantage of both exceptional opportunities!

Enjoy the interview with Dr. Frank Buck!

Download a raw, text transcript of the interview here.

The Amazon book description states:

Imagine if your best just got better every single day

In Your Best Just Got Better, productivity expert Jason Womack teaches readers that working longer hours doesn’t make up for a flawed approach to productivity and performance. Workers need to clarify their habits, build mindset-based strategies, and be proactive. Womack’s signature “workplace performance” techniques offer specific strategies to consistently and incrementally improve performance.

Readers will:

Understand the fundamentals of workflow and the principles of human performance

Arm themselves with the tools and the processes to get more of their work done, on time, with fewer resources, and with less stress

Making your best better won’t happen overnight, but learning how to effectively manage just a few critical success factors lead to an effective workday and an overall successful professional career.

Please visit ProductivityBookGroup.org and find out the details and the schedule for upcoming book discussion calls; check out the schedule on the “Upcoming Books” page.

Please feel free to visit iTunes, Stitcher or whichever podcast directory or app you prefer to access Productivity Book Group…and feel free to review us there! This helps expand our readership and bring new discussion callers into the fold. Thank you.

Finally, all podcast episodes are archived at ProductivityBookGroup.org under “Episodes” so if you missed a call and want to review it, feel free to head over and give them a listen.

Note: All registered service marks, trademarks and other copyrighted materials mentioned on the podcast are that of their respective owners. This group is not affiliated with or officially endorsed by those copyright owners.