Book Review: Get Your Sh*t Together

How to stop worrying about what you should do so you can finishing what you need to do and start doing what you want to do. Author: Sarah Knight.

Recommendation: A good read. Easy to get through, relatable, refreshing, and supported by pragmatic recommendations and real life anecdotes. 

This book is a very easy read and something you could easy polish off in one sitting. Although to get the most out of it, it would probably be wise to pace it and make sure the contents sink in. The author, Sarah takes you through her journey from a high stress corporate career to getting her sh*t together and finding happiness. The rawness and openness of her experience are entertaining and refreshing. The approaches she sets out are easy to apply. The book takes you on a journey of tips on how to prioritize things, provides exercises throughout to get you to see how you can improve, and finishes with the good stuff…. some pertinent self reflection.  As Sarah puts it, it's time to get going to get all judgy judgy. You are asked to reflect on "Wow, the way I’m doing things obviously is not working. I am losing the Game of Life and honestly it’s all my fault”.

The book reinforced that sometimes the best thing to do is start. As an avid to do list writer these quotes particularly resonated with me:

• You mistakenly view all the items on our to-do list as “must do” and you know you can’t possibly get them all done so are paralysed by inaction. 
• You also might get to F*ck overload because you did all of the low priority things and none of the high priority ones.  Or maybe you did a bunch of things that weren’t even on the list.

It is ironic that as I am writing this I literally need to get my sh*t together with a few things on the to do list before going on holidays. Lucky I have read this handy how to book to get me there. On second thought I don’t think it wouldn’t hurt to read it again!

Key points from the book:

• Be disciplined. If there is something you want to do, set time aside each day to work on it.
• “Big life changes are made in small manageable chunks".
• For those need to do things that are non negotiable, schedule them in.
• Focus pocus: do one thing at a time. Multitasking is a myth.
• Don’t set your standards too high initially – lower the bar. You need to start somewhere and once you have accomplished the first step you can then work towards the next. Sometimes setting the goal to high can causes unnecessary worry and stress and leave you feeling deflated.