My 3 Favorite Productivity Books
The Amplified Impact Podcast
September 8th, 2023
Today, I’m sharing three books that have massively impacted my productivity, not just in business but in life.
First up, “The One Thing” by Gary Keller.
It’s all about finding that one key task that, when accomplished, makes everything else easier or irrelevant.
Next, we have “The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement” by Eliyahu Goldratt.
While it’s technically about manufacturing, it’s a gem for understanding constraints and continual improvement.
Lastly, “The Four Disciplines of Execution” offers a fantastic framework for goal-setting, accountability, and execution.
But remember, it’s not about the system…it’s about applying it consistently. Knowledge without action is just wasted potential.
So grab one of these books, apply the principles, and watch your productivity soar.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“…though we know we should be doing it, it’s so easy to get off track and more.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
So one of the questions I get most often from people sliding into the DMs is hey, what’s your book recommendation on such and such topic? It could be like, hey, what’s your, what’s your top three book recommendations on money or finance, investing, real estate? And in particular, one that people love to ask is what’s your top book recommendations for productivity? Truthfully, I don’t really read a lot of productivity books, not like in the strictest sense of books that are all about personal productivity. But I have read a lot of books that have helped me become more productive. So I thought I would just shoot a quick recording here, talking through three that have been very, very impactful for me, both my personal life but also in my businesses. Two of the three books that I’m going to talk about here today were specifically recommended to me as books that would help me scale my businesses. But one of the things that I’ve come to realize over the years is that if it works in my business, it probably also works in my personal life in a very real way. Business and entrepreneurship is the ultimate personal development. It took me many years to realize this, but when I was struggling all those years with my ADHD, I didn’t have systems and frameworks in place that would allow me to succeed. I was also rebelling against authority.
Anthony Vicino:
So like, other people couldn’t tell me what to do, they couldn’t hold me accountable. And then I also rebelled against my own internal authority, right? I’ve talked about this in previous podcasts but one of the things that really helped me get out of my way and start actually responding to my personal authority was entrepreneurship and building a business where I was the one responsible for the inputs and therefore the outputs. Like there was this corollary between if I put in the energy and the work, then the output was something that I could set a timer to and I knew that it was dependent on me in a way that when I was working for somebody else in a w two I could put in the work. But no matter how great the work was, if the output was 100 x or ten x, I was still getting paid the same amount for some reason. Entrepreneurship, the systems and processes that allow you to succeed in business, they just resonated with me on such a deep personal level that in a very real way, that was what really started helping me. Those were the systems that started helping me become a functioning member of society, not just in business, but just in my personal life, my relationships as well. So all that’s to say, these are three productivity books that maybe wouldn’t fall on a lot of people’s productivity book lists, but that have been immensely helpful for me. The first one is probably on most people’s productivity.
Anthony Vicino:
Like this is a fantastic book. It’s called The One Thing by Gary Keller. It’s a very short read, only a couple hundred pages, and the concept here is not super deep and profound in any meaningful way. It is really just one core idea, which is this if you determining what that one thing is, that one most important activity, that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or irrelevant, and figuring out what is that one thing and then doing that and ignoring everything else, ignoring every other distraction until you accomplish that one thing. Now, we know this. We know multitasking is just dilution of focus. And that if the quality of our results depends on the quality of our focus, we need to avoid diluting our focus. Otherwise we’re going to get diluted results, right? So multitasking is not the way to go.
Anthony Vicino:
We know this inherently intuitively, and yet sitting down and actually focusing on one singular thing is the big struggle that many of us have. I put together some resources and trainings on this, if you guys want to check it out. Beyond backslash hyperfocus, that is the Hyperfocus Masterclass, where I lay out exactly how I go through the process of clearing out my life. So I can just focus on that one thing. But this book, The One Thing by Gary Keller, is so interesting as a concept because it’s something that, though we know we should be doing it, it’s so easy to get off track and more. So it can be very difficult sometimes to determine what is that one thing? What is that lead domino that’s going to knock down everything else? Having a system for that is helpful. So that’s where this book has really been immensely helpful. Not so much in the system, the framework that it gives you, but more about the mindset of always thinking through every single morning.
Anthony Vicino:
What is the one thing that if I got this done, it was going to have the biggest impact on everything else, and then focusing on that to the exclusion of everything else until it’s complete. All right, the second book, and this is one that is probably not on anybody else’s productivity list, so you’re welcome. It is called The Goal, a process of ongoing improvement by a gentleman named Eliahu Goldrat. This book is kind of like an underground cult classic. The name The Goal a Process of Ongoing Improvement has nothing to do with personal development. It is all about the theory of constraints within the application of a manufacturing environment. What’s interesting about this book is it was written as a parable or as a narrative. So what that means is instead of like your typical personal development book or business book written through the lens of like, here’s the frameworks, here’s my personal experiences.
Anthony Vicino:
The author creates a character and then puts that character into these hypothetical tells a hypothetical story of this gentleman living his life, going in to fix a business, and all the different issues that he occurs along the way. So it’s told in the form of a parable, which is very interesting. But the whole book is really around the idea of the theory of constraints, which is that a system will only grow until it reaches the limit of its constraints. And so you’ve heard the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. That is this idea. And I read this book when we were building our manufacturing company, escape Climbing, and it came at a very pivotal time because manufacturing is an environment all about efficiencies and processes and trying to get everything dialed in. And it can be very easy to get your focus in on one particular thing that you perceive to be the limitation, when in reality you might be focusing on the thing that’s just easiest to move out of the way. And so this book was really a reframing to help us understand that continual improvement is an act of continually identifying and then alleviating the blockages, what are those constraints at any given moment? What is the biggest constraint? Put all your time and energy, solve that thing, and then by consequence, when it’s no longer the constraint, now you need to pivot and identify the new constraint, because that’s what happens, right? It’s not suddenly all of the things are firing in equal measure.
Anthony Vicino:
It’s never like that. It’s like you solve this one thing. Like for us, for a long time, it was the post production process of our climbing holes took a really long time. So we refined those systems, dialed it in, so that the amount of motion and movement that the person having to do the work was reduced. And then the quality control was very high, so the likelihood of them making a mistake was very low. So that no longer became the constraint. Now the constraint became how much plastic could the people inside the production room actually pour inside of an hour? And so then we had to go in there and start working through the processes. And then once we got to the point where we can’t physically move any faster, now the thing that’s slowing us down is how long it takes for the plastic to cure.
Anthony Vicino:
Now we started saying, okay, how can we accelerate this process? We could put the hold inside of a baking oven for 12 hours and accelerate the catalytic process within the polyurethane. Anyway, I’m getting into the weeds. So you can see the constraint continually moves. So the goal as an individual is to identify where in your life you are being constrained. In a lot of cases, for me in my life, it was in the beginning at least it was money. Money was my constraint. And when I really got down to, I identified I didn’t have the skills necessary to go out there and make more money. And so I had plenty of time, I had plenty of ambition and hustle, but I did not have the skills necessary.
Anthony Vicino:
And so that was the constraint. And once I had the skills, then it was a matter of applying those skills. And then once I was applying those skills, it was a matter of applying them to higher and higher leverage activities. So you can see the constraints just kind of keep expanding. This book is a great way of reframing what productivity really even is. It’s not trying to move open the flow of the thing that’s already flowing freely. It’s trying to figure out where are you constrained in life and then alleviating that. All right, the next book, and this again, is guaranteed not to be on anybody’s productivity list, but it was very, very helpful for me and our businesses.
Anthony Vicino:
And we built escape climbing, actually off the back of this book in many, many ways. It’s called the Four Disciplines of Execution, and it’s really a framework for understanding how to run team meetings, how to run a company in terms of, like, how do we set our quarterly and our monthly and our weekly goals, how do we have our cadence of accountabilities, how do we think through the prioritization of our tasks? And then how do we actually execute those in a way where the team is communicating and moving forward? But this book, I still use it in my personal life, which is so interesting because it’s about running a bigger team. But really, at the end of the day, you are a person of multiple personalities. Like, there’s a lot going on inside of you. And so a book like this is, I find very helpful. For nighttime Anthony to communicate with, daytime Anthony to communicate with, ambitious Anthony to communicate with lazy Anthony as to what he should be doing at any given moment. And so I find this book very, very helpful. It’s called the Four Disciplines of execution.
Anthony Vicino:
It’s very, very good. But at the end of the day, all of these books, they’re just ideas or concepts or frameworks that are helpful if you actually apply them. And in my estimation, any book, any system, any framework can be successful if you apply it with excellence. The problem is most people just go and consume and consume and consume. They read hundreds of books, they feel smarter, but then they never actually apply anything. And so knowledge without application is a complete waste of time. So don’t get so hyper focused in on what the actual system is that you’re using and is it the absolute perfect system. Instead, just commit to using a system and it’ll probably get you pretty damn far.
Anthony Vicino:
So those are my top three productivity books. I hope you guys enjoy them. Let me know. Have you checked these out? Have you read any of these three? Shoot me a message, shoot me a review. Give a comment down below if you’re watching this on YouTube. And as always, thank you for being here. I’ll catch you in the next episode. But until then, stay up or focus, my friend.
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