Attack Your Day! Before It Attacks You by Mark Woods and Trapper Woods – A Book Review

My life is about to get a lot busier, for reasons I’ll explain in a few weeks.  I’ll have several important responsibilities to juggle, and I want to make sure that I do justice to all of my current roles.

Time management definitely isn’t my strength, as those of you who follow my monthly goals know because I can’t seem to kick my obsessive e-mail checking.

Total time suck.

Totally guilty of doing it every day!

Something needs to change.

I was excited to read Mark Woods & Trapper Woods’ book, Attack Your Day! Before It Attacks You, and the book did not disappoint.

I learned from the book that part of my problem is that I treat each event that comes my way with the same degree of urgency.  For instance, on my agenda, I might have writing tomorrow’s post, but I get sidetracked throughout the day by checking e-mail and social media.  Those are time sucks–the abyss of wasted time.

We each have a finite amount of time; there’s no point wasting it on activities that, in the grand scheme, aren’t important.

The authors suggest first assigning each activity on your to do list a color–red, green, yellow or gray.  Red are the urgent ones, green are ones that must be done but not as urgently, and yellow are the ones that you should do, but they can wait a few days or more.  Gray ones are the time sucks that you should avoid.

Then, the authors break time into six buckets.  This helps you organize your day, week, month and year.

I wish I had extra money in the budget this month because if I did, I would buy a planner to start implementing their strategies NOW.  However, I plan to use their techniques this summer so that I’m comfortable with the strategies in the fall when life gets busier.

Half of this book contains time management techniques.  The last half I see as more of a bonus section–it is 101 Productivity Strategies.

If you’re looking to become more organized, I highly recommend this book.  The authors understand that times are changing and many of us are connected 24/7.  They show readers how to handle and manage being connected like that while still finding time for family and fun.