My Favourite Tip: Eric Barker - How the “Book of Me” stops you from fooling yourself

Published Dec 5, 2022, 7:00 PM

When it comes to productivity, you are your own worst enemy. Nobody knows how to trick you into procrastinating or cutting corners quite like you do. You know all of your own strengths, weaknesses and thought patterns. 

But if you know yourself better than anyone else does, that also means you are your own best resource for productivity tools, hacks, tips and tactics. 

Writer Eric Barker knows how important specificity is, especially when it comes to productivity. So while he loves poring over productivity books, courses, videos and articles, he knows that ultimately, it’s all down to him. 

Enter the “Book of Me.” Eric wants you to write your own productivity “bible”, specific to your needs and habits. If you know you don’t work well when you’re hungry, put it in the book. If you know you’re easily distracted by your phone, put it in the book. 

Eric details exactly how he approaches his own “Book of Me”, and how you can write your own. 

Connect with Eric on Twitter or LinkedIn

Pick up a copy of Plays Well With Others

You can find the full interview here: Eric Barker on his Five-Hour Rule and deliberate work-life imbalance

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If you’re looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

 

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

When it comes to productivity, you are your own worst enemy. Nobody knows how to trick you into procrastinating or cutting corners quite like you do. You know all of your own strengths, weaknesses, and thought patterns. But if you know yourself better than anyone else does, that also means that you are your own best resource for productivity tools, hacks, tips and tactics. New York Times best selling author and ex Hollywood screenwriter Eric Barker knows how important specificity is, especially when it comes to productivity. So while he loves pouring over productivity books, courses, videos, and articles, he knows that ultimately it's all down to him, which is why Eric wrote his own productivity bible called the Book of Me. So what is the Book of Me? And how can it help help you? My name is doctor amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. On today's My Favorite Tip episode, we go back to an interview from the past and I pick out my favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with Eric about his Book of Me.

I call it kind of like the Book of Me, where basically it's like, instead of these all purpose, generally good sort of advice tips, these are like specific to me where it's like, you, Eric, you are going to tell yourself that you will get to this later and you never do, so, do not fool yoursel. It's like it's like it's like Doctor Jekyl like chaining himself when he knows that mister Hyde is coming, where it's like, okay, how do you lie to yourself? What other rationalizations you usually tell? Oh, you know what, today, I'll start off with something simple. I can do that really hard work. Late. No, you can't, and you know it, and we have. If you look in the notebook here, you've written this down four times that you thought you could do it and you never did it. And I think that's the advice that no book can ever ever ever give you, no guru can ever give you, no blog post can ever give you, is your own idiosyncrasies. You know nobody can kind of maybe a spouse might have some clue or something, or a partner you live with, but overall, really that's there is an enormous amount of good advice that can only come from you to you, and you need to write it down. You need to write it down, You need to review it because otherwise you will rationalize and you will tell yourself things and to have answers to those questions to be able to say, you know what taking you know, an extra day off? Is that the kind of thing that you come back and you are energized and ready to go, and it's such a good idea. Or you take a day off and all of a sudden, you just took three days off and you did, like which kind of person are you? That can have different effects on people? If you start writing down I know that this happens. I know if I wake up after this hour, you know, stuff doesn't get done. If I go to bed this night, Eric, that third drink is not a good idea, you know, just like having that list is so powerful and like I said, it's it's advice that only you can give you. And then reading a lot of productivity stuff like, all of a sudden, there becomes an easy way to implement it. Because once you start having these personal rules and you and you, like I said, you real man, today went really badly? What did I do and then you can say, oh, I did X. You make a note, and all of a sudden, the structure creates itself because like it or not, you're kind of ab testing. You know, maybe you woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. Okay, you're going to learn something today. Maybe you overslept today. Okay, you're going to learn something today. And every time I get a tip, I can now, all of a sudden, it can slot right in like, oh, they say break should be this long. I let me try that. Oh that didn't work, And you can like all of a sudden, and then what you find is it just kind of all comes together like Voltron, Like you got all the pieces and they're just kind of clicking, because all of a sudden, you have these rules and you sort of know, you sort of know what works. And as long as you read the Bible of you, then your productivity religion will stay sacred.

If you enjoyed this tip from Eric, you might want to go and listen to the full interview. You can find a link to that in the show notes. If you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot com. That's how I Work dot co. How I Work is produced by Inventing, with production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you to Matt Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.