When I read the word length of Peter Bergman’s 18 minutes, it sounded a bit too long for a self-help novel, but the bite-size chapters, make it a really fast read.
The book focuses on elimination of distraction, time management and finding your focus. It does not overwhelm you with heavy words or phrases like most books, but instead in a very light-hearted way tells you about the choices that make difference.
18 Minutes by Peter Bregman has 3 core parts to it.
Distractions
18 minute tells you to take a Pause and look at your goal and the things you are doing daily, are you really working towards your goal, and if you are, are you doing it right, Sometimes we get so involved in things that we lose track, but when you take a pause you can look at where you are headed and work on a plan.
Finish working before even before you have your lunch, so you have the entire day for yourself instead of working late and sleeping less when the deadline is closing.
The Goal
Most of the time we are overwhelmed with things at hand. It gets really difficult to know what you need to do. Everything we do has an impact on us daily and in the long run. Things that we want to do, people that we want to be and task that will help us get there in the long run should be our first priority.
In that way, we can prioritize what you want and organize your to-do list.
Daily Run
Getting distracted is very easy. So, to avoid distraction Bergman tells you to create distractions, proactive distraction, so when you get distracted you fall into doing something useful instead of wasting your time.
Suppose your long run goal is being a photographer, keep your camera near your desk, so you end up looking through the lens instead of starting to scroll down a screen.
The bits of advice mentioned in the book are not the one’s a reader must not have read or heard earlier, but the first person perspective accompanied with different case studies and a lot of mild humor is the one thing that sets the book apart.
18 Minutes by Peter Bregman
book review by Pervaiz “P.K.” Karim CalcuttaKid.com
An elected Member of Parliament, former Minister of State for External Affairs and former Under-Secretary-General to the United Nations, Dr. Shashi Tharoor is the prize-winning author of fourteen books, including the classic The Great Indian Novel (1989), India from Midnight to the Millennium (1997), Nehru: The Invention of India (2003) and most recently Pax Indica: India & the World of the 21st Century (2012).
A widely-published critic, commentator and columnist, Dr. Shashi Tharoor served the United Nations during a 29-year career in refugee work, peace-keeping,communications and public information and earnestly worked in the Secretary-General’s office. In 2006, he was India’s candidate to succeed Kofi Annan as UN Secretary-General. He has won India’s highest honour for Overseas Indians, the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, and numerous literary awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
