Grip

Simple, practical, and direct to the point.

You can start doing the tips and advice while reading the book.

It is like a manual in organizing your work habits. The book doesn’t felt overwhelming because it was designed from the most basic methods to a more complex approach in decision making.



Highly recommended to individual who is starting to work in a company. To new managers, supervisors or leaders who found themselves overloaded with tasks.

I wish I had read this book at the beginning of my career. I live and die by my calendar, I love to-do lists, and being efficient is very important to me, so this was basically written for me. There are three main parts to the book. Part 1 is about optimizing your calendar, the best way to use a to-do list, dealing with email, and generally being more mindful about how you approach your time. All the advice is practical and as I was reading I had my laptop out and was "fixing" my calendar based on the advice. This was my favorite part of the book because it had so much stuff that I could do right now, and it was almost all relevant to me.

Part 2 of the book is about being more intentional about your life, both at home and at work. This part wasn't quite as compelling for me, but only because I've already read a bit about this. I'm excited about trying out the "Year Plan Day" though, and added a block to my calendar to do this.

Part 3 of the book is a little bit of a mishmash, about taking a critical look at your self-image, how to listen, how to think strategically, and how to tackle big projects. Again I think a lot of this is covered in other books, but having it here makes this book a "one stop shop" for those who want to explore several topics before reading deeper. I liked the part about scheduling time to think in order to be more deliberate about it.

Finally there are some bonus chapters, including keeping better notes, how to handle going on vacation, and managing a team. I don't have a great memory for what goes on in meetings and I am not in the habit of taking notes. Sometimes I look back at emails I wrote myself and don't even remember what I was talking about. For this reason I'm excited to try out the ideas in the taking notes chapter.

Overall this book is fantastic! I plan to go back to it regularly to follow the prompts for planning and thinking through big problems. Thank you to the author Rick Pastoor, HarperCollins, and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.