Reviewed by : Connor Blackard
Google’s Executive Productivity Advisor offers insights on how to make the “new way of work” work for you, providing actionable steps to optimize your productivity, accomplish more, prevent burnout, and cultivate a harmonious work-life balance. Every day, tens of thousands of Google employees, from executives to interns, rely on Laura Mae Martin’s tips and best practices for how to make the most of their time. Now, with Uptime, Laura brings her unique approach to productivity and well-being to anyone who wants to be more effective and experience “calm accomplishment,” whether at work, at school, or in their own personal lives.
Laura began her Google career in sales but quickly carved out a niche for herself as a productivity expert. For more than a decade, she’s been coaching Google executives and employees on how to achieve a state of “productivity Zen”—a holistic approach to conquering everything from the avalanche of emails in their inboxes to becoming the master of their own calendars and running excellent meetings. Her strategies have been widely adopted by many, including entry-level employees looking to amplify their individual impact, middle managers, and top executives working across global teams.
As many of us have moved to a hybrid environment blending work and home, managing our time efficiently and remaining productive is more important than ever. In Uptime, Laura shows how to thrive no matter where you’re working, giving concrete steps that help you focus on your priorities and keep good systems, routines, and tactics in place.
Uptime explains how to make technology work for you and make “feeling on top of it” your new normal. It’s a blueprint for operating at the highest levels of productivity while enhancing your own personal well-being.1
I got an email several week ago that I saw as I was catching up on messages I got during paternity leave. I got this email from the Productivity@Google list that always shows handy tricks and tips for utilizing tools to the fullest extent possible. The email was that this Googler had written a book on productivity and said "My promise is for every minute you spend reading this book, you will gain that minute back somewhere else with time and energy savings tactics from the text". Now that is a bold claim but since I hadn't read a non technical book in a while and I was willing to drink the Google KoolAid, I decided to buy it.
The book was has an introduction and twenty chapters. It wasn't a long book and was only 200 pages. According to Amazon, I received the book on April 16th and finished the book May 7th however I wasn't reading this heavily, It was more of a chapter or two at night if there was nothing good on TV. Total time I think I spent on it was ten hours but that includes taking notes to make the cheatsheet and implementing some of the things I read about in my daily routine.
I have never felt truly unproductive in my personal or professional life but deep down I have felt that I could be more intentional and organized in my process, meetings, and things I am doing. I feel that this book was a great primer for how to increase productivity without having to burn yourself out with a ton of additional effort to make it happen. Being the first productivity book I have read in a long time (I think the last one was 7 Habits of a Highly Effective Teen in Middle School) this one really knocked it out of the park and far exceeded my expectations.
What I Gained From This Book
- Insight into the creativity process
- Tips for identifying my key priorities
- Strategies to review my calendar and commitments to ensure my priorities are in alignment with my time
- Ideas on how to identify and use high and low productivities time
- Organization using daily, weekly, and capture lists
- Scheduling tips and a method to create an ideal calendar template
- Methods to increase motivation to finish procrastinated tasks
- Understanding the value of quiet time to generate new ideas and process information
- Hybrid work tips
- Identifying hot spots for maximum productivity
- Meeting agenda best practices
- Value of tool customization and workflow optimization
- Tips for mitigating distractions
- Email bucketing and inbox zero strategy
- When:Then triggers to solidify new habits
- Strategies for improving mindfulness such as No Tech Tuesday and Wake Up Wednesday
As usual, while reading this book, I noted key areas and decided to turn that into a cheatsheet for further use. This is not meant to replace the book but instead meant to reinforce long term retention and aide me in not having to fully reread this book the next time I need to jog my memory.
- Making Lists: I now have daily and weekly lists as part of my schedule. At the end of my day I make my list for the next morning and in the morning I check email and then take a look at my list all prepared for my day.
- Being My Own Assistant: This has been a huge help for me overcoming procrastination. I have used this multiple times a week and am easily able to tackle things I other wise would have indefinitely put off.
- Inbox Zero: Every once in a while I see someone sharing their screen and their mail client shows and they have zero emails in their inbox. I thought they were deleting them and I worried that they would miss something. Turns out they were doing this and keeping this secret all to themselves. This is a big adjustment to make but well worth it. Looking at my inbox has never been more refreshing because its organized, empty, and I don't have to worry about anything falling through the cracks.
With a recent career discussion, I think I am going to continue to work on some soft skills development before getting back to technical content.
- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
- How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie (This will be a reread but I think everyone should be reading this every 3-5 years)
In conclusion, I have no doubt that Laura was right on her initial claim that I would save an equal amount of time that I spent reading the book. The more important part I think is that I am in control of my productivity and feel I have so much more bandwidth to do things now and less stress about it all.