Get it Done

Dr Ayelet Fishbach is one of the world’s leading experts on goals research. What sets this book apart from the multitude of books on how to improve your productivity is that it teaches you the fundamental principles you need to understand to not only get things done yourself, but get other people to get things done, and design systems to make that happen. It’s simultaneously simple (environnent, not willpower) and complex (people conform to each other’s goals more than their actions). I needed it badly, and I loved it!

Especially to kick off the new year.

I wanted this book when I saw a podcast on utube and reading the book had been a pleasure.... I love the questions at the end of the chapter but I do reccomend that you read through it twice..

This book is heavily packed with information about goals from the perspectives of motivation, goal systems, social relationships, and others. The trouble for me was that I found the writing style too difficult to follow. I would stumble across a highly intriguing finding from a study or research but then I could not imagine how to practically use that. This happened too often and become frustrating. But I kept reading because the findings are interesting.There’s a small relief in the summary sections at the end of each chapter. But given how information packed this is, the summary covered the points from the chapter at a very high level. I think this book needs a highly abridged version that focuses more on practical uses of findings from the research collected here.

The book itself is a very interesting read, with some useful insights into the individual motivations and how to get more done. However, the biggest thing I took away from this book was the very abrupt ending.I was reading a chapter, finished it off… and then suddenly I was in the acknowledgements. It made for a really jarring end to the book and I didn’t feel like I was left satisfied even though the rest of the book had been really interesting. It almost felt half finished or rushed to be completed.It’s definitely worth a read, but expect to be left wanting at the end as the last concept was very interesting but the book was not concluded.