This book was received as an ARC from Little Brown Company - Little Brown Spark through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

Get It Done is among one of the many self-help books everyone should own if they want to change their lives. This book's focus is increasing your determination and perseverance on those daunting tasks that we don't necessarily want to do but, need to do. Everyone has an overwhelming list of daunting tasks to do even the most menial one as Ayelet Fishbach proclaims can feel like a hassle. Reading this book clarified the fact that for me the pure motivator is the feeling of relief that comes as a rewards along with many other physical and mental rewards that are a bonus. There are a lot of self-help published that give many different perspectives on this topic and that itself can be overwhelming. This book reflected the fact that YOU have the power to pick and choose what books you read and what people to listen to.

A well-known psychologist sharing her knowledge and point of view on a well-known topic that's insightful and valuable. This book deserves 5 stars.

Have you set a goal? Have you given up a goal? This book gets into the psychology of why goals do or don’t work. Even the simplest change in wording can alter the way you view your goal. The book is broken into four parts; choose your goal, keep pulling, competing goals, social support. Creating a goal that isn’t a chore is the first chapter and the final chapter is about making goals within your relationships. I found this book to be informative, even if there are a lot of mentions of different studies Fishbach worked on which was a little dry. I’ve made goals and not followed through on them, even when I was giving myself incentives. I’d like to follow some of these ideas and try again. A good read for the summer, not a typical time of year for new goals, but why always wait until the New Year?

I just finished reading Get It Done by Ayelet Fishbach. I thought this would be along the lines of time productivity type books, but it was actually more about motivation (yes, I must have missed that subtitle…). I found the information fascinating. Fishbach discusses several different studies and papers which can get overwhelming at times but I appreciated the fact that she was acknowledging the work of others and bringing attention to the fact that this work was not fluff and in fact deeply rooted in research. One concept that intrigued me was the idea of an anti role-model. The idea is that this is someone you have in mind that you will not be like. In a way, this is my parents for me. I am very straight-laced because of my experiences growing up. For example, I vowed at a very early age that I would never touch cigarettes because my parents were such heavy smokers. Another idea is to break down goals into small targets.

This book was an intriguing hidden gem for me. Ayelet discusses goals and motivation in great detail, with a heavy emphasis on the psychology of both. Through her own career, she has numerous studies to add to the data that was very insightful and collaborated other research findings. Many of her conclusions were enlightening in understanding both one's actions and thought process and how they affect accomplishing goals, but also in understanding others. Truly, so many factor affect our goals and our ability to accomplish them. The only disadvantage to this book, for me, was the excessive amount of repetition. It was especially incessant in the beginning half. I'm guessing the author was just trying to drive home the points she was making, but it made it hard to maintain interest once I had just read the same thing, basically verbatim. Overall, I thought this book was fantastic and a very worthwhile read! Ayelet has learned a lot on the subject through her life, career, and research, and I appreciate her condensing it into a more concise format for the reader.

GET IT DONE by Ayelet Fishbach offers "Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation." To address this topic, Fishbach draws on her professional experience as the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and as the past president of the Society for the Study of Motivation. In order to better help her readers identify and effectively achieve the right goals, she breaks the book into four parts: Choose your Goal; Keep Pulling; Competing Goals; and Social Support. Each of those contains several chapters ("Put a Number on It," "Incentives Matter") with end of chapter questions for readers to ask themselves. Fishbach acknowledges the impact of the pandemic, saying, "Like most people, I worry, get distracted, and struggle to stay motivated." She maintains a generally positive, coach-like tone, and further notes that "getting anywhere, as well as sustaining the things you cherish in life, requires a great deal of pulling [motivation]." At school, we have certainly worked to address the difficulties our students have faced with maintaining momentum. This issue was echoed in Michael Luca's recent Wall Street Journal review where he wrote, "had I read GET IT DONE when I was a struggling student, the path to where I am now might have been a lot smoother." Perhaps Fishbach will also craft a version aimed specifically at young adults, similar to Covey’s adaptation, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens?

Professor Fishbach will be speaking (via Zoom) on Tuesday, January 18 at 7:00pm for an event sponsored by Family Action Network (FAN); I am looking forward to that talk especially after seeing the number of positive comments regarding GET IT DONE from authors like Adam Grant, Carol Dweck, and Angela Duckworth.

Link to information on Family Action Network (FAN) event:
https://www.familyactionnetwork.net/events/get-it-done-surprising-lessons-from-the-science-of-motivation/

I've read a lot of books about goal setting, productivity, and the like, so I wasn't expecting to learn a lot from this but I was curious enough based on the description to request it. I did really like Fishbach's approach - she brings together a lot (like A LOT) of research about goals, motivation, psychology, and more in a very accessible way. The book is well-organized, and one of the things I liked best about it was that each chapter ends with a section called "Questions to ask yourself," which provides some effective summary of the chapter and also reframes the concepts into questions you can actually ask yourself. I highlighted a lot in this and made note of a lot of these questions to ask. My only issue with this is kind of odd - for a book about goals and motivation, this felt really very gendered and heteronormative to me. Like, enough that I noticed. It seems like this would have been an easy fix in editing, or Fishbach could thrown in an example scenario about a queer couple, or could have used the inclusive pronouns they/them/theirs rather than just alternating periodically between he/him/his and she/her/hers.

This book was slightly hard to follow. For a productivity book, it needed to be more concise. I felt like the author bounced around with the examples too much. Formatting, like headings, bullets, etc. would be helpful rather than long, difficult paragraphs.

A solid overview of much of the science of motivation and productivity that would benefit anyone who struggles to get things done.