The Crazy Busy Cure: A Productivity Book for People With No Time for Productivity Books

  • 2h 20m
  • Zena Everett
  • Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
  • 2021

UK BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS WINNER 2022 How we spend our time is one of the greatest indicators of how successful we will be. We achieve our goals when we ruthlessly prioritise tasks and people that are important to us.

If we focus our time, energy and attention on the wrong things we will never achieve the success or happiness that we aspire to. The problem is that these wrong things, the low value, low impact tasks that distract us from our priorities, are hard to ignore. They scream out at us all day: digital distractions, other people's urgent demand for 'five minutes' that's never five minutes, the meetings that you shouldn't be in, the pointless email chains, the reports you write that don't get read.

We get a dopamine hit from ticking these tasks off a list. It's got us hooked on crazy busyness. But all we are doing is scratching off a layer of fake work on top of the real, valuable work.

The Crazy Busy Cure is full of intensely practical tips to save people from this addiction and instead become productive again. Jammed with practical productivity solutions to use immediately, the book introduces concepts such as being like lions and chasing antelopes not field mice; Lawn Mower Managers who clear the path not clog it; the PIMP process for prioritisation and the Head Space model for understanding where your time goes.

In this lively read, executive coach and organisational psychologist Zena Everett draws from her many thousands of hours and coaching and speaking to people and organisations about productivity blockers and how to shift them. She advises how to manage other people's work as well as your own and explains how these practices apply to virtual working, including chapters on staying energised and productive when working remotely and influencing on Zoom.

The chapter on neurodiversity also offers productivity hacks for people with learning and thinking differences like dyspraxia and attention deficit disorder.

About the Author

Zena Everett is as executive coach and popular speaker on Crazy Busyness and overwhelm. She delivers Crazy Busy personal effectiveness sessions in organisations around the world and for Cranfield School of Management and Henley Business School. She is a speaker for the London Business Forum has coached on the Executive MBA programme at Oxford University's Said Business School.

An organisational psychologist and psychological coach, Zena is ex-recruitment entrepreneur who has worked with thousands of professionals to ensure that how they spend their time reflects their career goals.

In this Book

  • How Certifiably Crazy Busy are You?
  • Who Do You Want to Be?
  • Introduction: Crazy Busyness Destroys Productivity and Happiness
  • How You Became Hooked on Crazy Busyness
  • What Eats Up Your Time?
  • Summary (If You Don’t Have Time to Read a Book)
  • Start With the Future You Want to Create and Work Backwards
  • Know What Your Boss Wants from You
  • Chase Antelopes, Not Field Mice
  • One Thing at a Time
  • Get High on Work
  • Meetings: Much to Say About Nothing
  • Email Less, Talk More
  • Corridor Kidnappers and Drive-By Distractors
  • What Aristotle Would Say About Cat Videos
  • The Dopamine Hit of a List
  • Quit Faffing and Trying to Be Perfect
  • Don’t Wait to Feel Motivated, Just Start
  • Invisible Productivity Problems
  • Zoom Zombies and Flexible Working
  • Are You a Control Freak, Superstar or Mother Hen?
  • Lawn Mower Management
  • Performance Comes from Trust
  • Reclaim the Workplace for, Like, Actual Work
  • Spot the Red Flags of Burnout
  • Crazy Busy Bullying
  • If You aren’t a Crazy Busy Person Anymore, Who are You?
  • References
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