What To Do When There's Too Much To Do: Reduce Tasks, Increase Results, and Save 90 a Minutes Day [Paperback]

Laura Stack (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 26, 2012

The “Work Less, More Success” Guide to Managing Your Time

Are you tired of productivity consultants—or worse, your boss—pushing you to do more with less? You’re in luck. Laura Stack knows your to-do list is already packed to capacity, so she shows you how to accomplish more by doing less. Yes, you read that right. Stack’s innovative time-management system lets you work less and achieve more.

Following Stack’s step-by-step Productivity Workflow Formula, you’ll organize your life around the tasks that really matter and—this is crucial—let go of those that don’t. Dozens of practical strategies will help you reduce your commitments, distractions, interruptions, and inefficiencies. You’ll shrink your to-do list and save time—around ninety minutes a day—while skyrocketing your results and maintaining your sanity.

“With the world spinning faster every day, Stack’s advice is especially timely. Her easy-to-implement system will get busy workers off the treadmill and on the right track.”
—Harvey Mackay, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive

“Practical. Precise. Pithy. Stack’s finest work to date. This book provides a productive path to a satisfying life.”
—Dianna Booher, author of Creating Personal Presence and Communicate with Confidence!

“Finally, a guaranteed method to lose weight—the weight of thousands of issues dragging you down and slowing your progress. Stack turns you into a lean, mean performance machine. You will want to put this book down—so that you can hurry to get your life back in order.”
—Alan Weiss, PhD, author of Million Dollar Consulting and The Consulting Bible

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Stack’s incredible book shows you how to get organized better and get more done faster than you ever thought possible.”
—Brian Tracy, author of Eat That Frog! and No Excuses!

“This book will save you time, money, and—most of all—your sanity. In our fast-moving, multitasking world of now-now-now, Laura Stack is an extraordinary resource for you, and her expertise is delivered with this book.”
—Tim Sanders, bestselling author and former Chief Solutions Officer, Yahoo!

“I don’t know anybody who is more organized or who has more energy and has more fun getting things done than Laura Stack. No kidding. She doesn’t just write about what she knows; she writes about what she lives. If you feel like there’s too much to do, read this book for tips, tactics, and strategies that will decrease the time you invest and increase the results you enjoy.”
—Mark Sanborn, author of Up, Down, or Sideways and The Fred Factor

“Laura Stack improved our work flow, communication, coordination, documentation support, and teamwork. Her touch to our business made and continues to make a lasting change for the better. I can’t say enough about how helpful her knowledge and training have been.”
—Montague Boyd, Senior Vice President, Investments, UBS Financial Services

“I am a raving fan of Laura Stack because she is the absolute master of teaching me how to do less and achieve more. For me, like so many others, time has become the new currency. I can always make more money, but I can’t make more time. Laura teaches me to make much better use of the time that I have so that I can do more of what I want to do. For me, that’s priceless. This book will motivate you to do the simple yet powerful things that can make your work and your life immeasurably more productive and fulfilling.”
—Joe Calloway, author of Becoming a Category of One

“Leadership, strategy, and business acumen are essential for being successful in business today. At the heart of Laura’s effective productivity system are strategies to maximize these essential business skills. Read this book! Adopting her system will unleash your strategic thinking potential and productivity in your business and maximize your results. It has worked for us, and I guarantee it will work for you!”
—Mike Howard, Chief Security Officer, Microsoft Corporation

“If you have so much to do that you’re not sure what to do, here’s the first thing to do: buy Laura’s book!”
—Randy Gage, author of Prosperity Mind

“Are you overworked, overstressed, and overwhelmed, yet still you’re underproducing? Laura Stack can help you. Buy this book and devour it. You can do less, stress less, and still achieve more. It’s possible! Learn how inside.”
—Darren Hardy, Publisher, Success magazine, and New York Times bestselling author of The Compound Effect

About the Author

Laura Stack is president of The Productivity Pro, Inc., 2011-2012 president of the National Speakers Association, and a popular keynote speaker on the topics of efficiency improvement, personal productivity, and time management. She is the author of four previous books, including Leave the Office Earlier.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (June 26, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781609945398
• ISBN-13: 978-1609945398
• ASIN: 1609945395
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #183,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Business & Investing > Business Life > Health & Stress

More About the Author

Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, has consulted with Fortune 500 corporations for over 20 years in the field of employee productivity. She advises leaders, teams, and professionals on developing high-performance cultures and creating Maximum Results in Minimum Time®. She is the president of The Productivity Pro®, Inc., which specializes in productivity improvement in high-stress organizations. As a dynamic speaker, Laura's keynotes and seminars focus on increasing profitability by improving output, reducing inefficiency, and saving time in today's workplaces. Laura uses both high energy and high content to educate, entertain, and motivate audiences to skyrocket their organizational and individual results. She was the 2011-2012 President of the National Speakers Association (NSA) and is the recipient of the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, NSA's highest earned designation.

Laura has authored or co-authored 10 books and numerous video, audio, and online programs on leadership execution, time management, and productivity. Her newest work, Execution IS the Strategy, is due in 2014; her other titles include What to Do When There's Too Much to Do (2012); SuperCompetent (2010); The Exhaustion Cure (2008), Find More Time (2006), and the bestselling Leave the Office Earlier (2004), which was hailed as "the best of the bunch" by the New York Times. Her books have been published in over 20 countries and translated into seven foreign languages, including Japanese, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Italian, and Romanian. Laura is a columnist for Training, Productive, and Success magazines, and her popular weekly electronic productivity newsletter has subscribers in 38 countries. Laura is Microsoft Corporation's Certified Application Specialist in Outlook. Her MBA in Organizational Management focused on the interaction between productivity and employee retention.

Widely regarded as one of the leading experts in the field of employee productivity and workplace issues, she has been featured nationally on the CBS Early Show, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, O Magazine, Entrepreneur, and Forbes magazine, to name a few. Laura has been a spokesperson for Microsoft, 3M, Skillsoft, Office Depot, Day-Timer, and Xerox. Her client list includes top Fortune 500 companies, including Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Aramark, Heinz, GM, MillerCoors, Lockheed Martin, Wells Fargo, and Time Warner, plus a multitude of associations and governmental agencies.

Laura lives with her husband and three children in Denver, Colorado.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Did I miss "Increased Results, Saving 90 Minutes Per Day"... somewhere? August 27, 2012

By Maxamillion

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

As an avid reader of Time Management books, and an all-time Brian Tracy fan[atic] ;) I bought this book actually as a recommendation from Brian, as one of his subscribers to his YouTube Channel. I own 80% of all his books so I guess I'm just spoiled with his way of explaining matters.

I just wasn't that impressed with this book in particular.

One of the few points that seemed to be the best, "choicest morsels", are found on pages 43 and 146, which all of us can appreciate...

Page 43 reads, "Establish daily routines for common work tasks, such as checking e-mail or organizing your day. This allows you to make fewer decisions, reducing your energy expenditure."

and

..Page 146, "When you have no choice to overwork yourself, try to do so in short bursts separated by longer periods of normal work - or rest... Otherwise your productivity will diminish sharply."

The forward is excellent and the story behind the book is compelling, but what didn't impress me is the fact that it's too conceptual and doesn't deliver much in the way of a thinking process, behind the actual practice of time management.

The one factor that would have impressed me most, is if the book held to (1) the theme and (2) the promise of linking back to (quote) 'increased results and saving 90 minuted per day.'

These two points were found maybe a few times over the course of 166 pages.

Maybe I just need to go back and re-read the book one more time, and draw out some of the finer points I may have missed.

"Time Power" by Brian Tracy and "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" is more of my cup of tea and highly recommended for any who have made it this far, reading my long winded review of Laura Stack's approach to time management.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Probably great for people who can already focus February 19, 2013

By Heidi Waterhouse

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I thought this book was well-researched and well-argued, and there are some great concrete tips, especially about managing the inflow of documents and email. It will probably change the way I triage email, at least a bit.

I also agree that the principal of doing one thing at a time and doing it well is something we could all stand to do better. Multitasking is not the greatest productivity aide ever. Rather the opposite.

This part was written especially for me and my email process:
"Indecision. We don't determine whether tasks are in or out or even relevant or not, so we leave them on our lists, which causes us to have to repeat the evaluation process again-- putting them back into our `decide later' consciousness, lengthening our to-do lists, filling our inboxes, and expanding our perceptions of how much we have to do."

Also, I actually did this with my boss, and it was enlightening:
"If you made a list of the top ten things you believe you're responsible for, and then asked your manager to do the same, and compared the two lists, would they be the same? If not, you have a problem, because you aren't spending your time in ways that are valuable to your best customer."

HOWEVER. I thought it was catastrophically judgy about attention span. Stack assumes that people can just bear down and work, and that this is a matter of willpower. Those of us on the ADD spectrum, who get in a guilt loop about trouble Just Focusing, are ill-served by this attitude.

On the bright side, I had one datapoint confirming my theory that I would be made less irritated by a productivity book written by a woman than the ones written by men.

Read if: You are looking to become an Outlook ninja. You like the idea of recapturing time leaks.

Skip if: You can't deal with "just focus" advice. You are not working a desk/computer job.

Also read: Watership Down, my favorite book on leadership.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Just one tip, fully implemented, is all it takes! August 20, 2012

By Linda Keith

Format:Paperback

There are so many good tips...here is mine. Pick the most important one and implement it. My pick was the empty email inbox. Since I have been emptying the inbox every time I check email, several times a day, I have improved efficiency and reduced that nagging worry that something is in there I SHOULD be doing.

If you think, "I couldn't do that" ...fine. Pick ANY of the 100's of practical tips in this book and implement it thoroughly. Once you see the difference it makes, I am certain you'll go back to the well and pick another.