Do It Today Book Summary I Darius Foroux -

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Book – Do It Today, (Summary)

Author – Darius Foroux

Genre – Self-help Book

Published in – 2018

We all have been guilty of procrastinating, from small to big things and later regret not doing it on time. And no matter how much better we feel in the short term, we suffer in the long term by procrastinating.

Procrastination is often resulting from a lack of clarity of what matters and clear goals. As Darius puts it “Needless to say we all have a finite time here and one thing we can’t buy back in time.”

Do it today is the second book I read after Think straight from Darius Foroux. It suggests ways we can implement and get it done what matters on time.

Darius explains procrastination well with the example of compounding. All the small things we do consistently add up in long term to a big result. On the other hand, ignoring these small things daily also blows up big time eventually like not eating right, skipping exercise.

About the Author –

Darius Foroux, is an entrepreneur, author, and podcaster. He has been sharing actionable tips for optimizing life and work every week since 2015. His ideas have been featured in TIME, NBC, Fast Company, Inc., Observer, and other publications.

He is an author of books few more books Think Straight, Win your Inner Battle, What it takes to be free. You may consider visiting Darius Foroux Website for useful material and tips on productivity, Habit creation, Decision making, Wealth building.

About the Book –

Do It Today is one of the best books I have read on beating procrastinating, improving productivity and achieving more with the finite time we have.

Darius claims having clear goals is of big help when it comes to productivity, however later in the book he also puts across the point that it’s OK if one is not clear of a goal at all times. Things happen, life happens we don’t have to beat ourselves up.

The book is divided into three parts – 1) Overcome Procrastination, 2) How to Improve Productivity and 3) How to Achieve More.

Part I – Overcome Procrastination

As you identify what is important the next biggest work begins, which is to ACT on it. The moment we decide to move even a little away from our comfort zone or start to act on our dreams, goals, targets, we feel resistance and we fall into distraction.

Here are a few suggestions to deal with procrastination from the book –

1) Do It Today, Not Tomorrow –

We all escape at times from the work that is repetitive, tedious, new or hard and yet needs to be done to meet our goals. Darius has laid out various tips to keep us on track.

Keep a list of small tasks – whenever you feel you are drifting, take out that list get one small task done and boom you’re on track. As they say, nothing motivates more than sense of accomplishing things that leads us to our goals.

Exercise every day – Exercising as low as 10 minutes a day can have huge positive impact on our energy level and so on productivity.

2) Manage Your Focus, not Your Time –

Nicely put, distraction is not 21st century problem, distractions will keep showing up time to time. Hence, Darius suggests managing our attention, not time.

3) Create Routine, System –

If you follow any successful person, or ask any successful people about their journey, you will find one common thing. They have all have routine, system. As Darius put it ‘Willpower Doesn’t Work, Systems Do’.

Please have patience with change, take suggestions from the book and create your own system. No one knows you, your goals, and our responsibility better than yourself.

Freedom is not opposite of routine. In fact more streamline your day is, more relaxed you feel.

4) Focus on Personal Effectiveness –

I loved suggestions in this section of improving personal effectiveness. You may consider the suggestions offered here.

Keep a track of your time for a week in as many details as possible. Knowing how you spend your time is prerequisite to managing it well.

Once you get sense of how you spend your time, separate time spent on productive and non-productive activities.

Eliminate or reduce non-productive activities to bare minimum.

Part II – How to Improve Productivity

Darius suggests good ideas we can learn and inculcate for improving productivity. Here are a few from the list –

1) Eliminate Mindless Browsing –

This is one tactic I have been following lately and have found a drastic positive difference. Darius suggests following about the Internet.

Shift from Always Connected to Always disconnected (from the net on phone and laptop) and turn on when you need internet.

Log off from all social media and check them number of times in a day.

When on internet be vigilant about your usage and stick to what your looking for. With so much information and distraction on internet, it’s very easy to get sucked in to mindless browsing, end up watching, reading something not even related to what you came for initially.

2) Take a Vacation –

As, they say you can go fast or far. Being productive is finding balance between work and break. It is essential to take vacation time to rejuvenate and come back to work more energetic.

Vacation takes you out of routine, let loose, allows you to think, reflect, which is often missing in midst of daily life hustle.

I once read about living life from vacation to vacation. In which we plan next vacation while returning from one and have something to visualize, prepare itinerary, read about the place, when feel down at work.

3) 20 Things to Improve Productivity –

Darius offers 20 strategies he has followed to improve his productivity. Here are a few from the list –

Record All Your Thoughts and Ideas.
Say No more often.
Eliminate everything that distracts you.
Stop consuming so much information.
Create Routines.
Don’t Multitask.
Plan The Next Day.

Part III – Achieving More

We all want to achieve more, yet we all have the same amount of time and achieving more is about utilizing the finite time we have appropriately.

Here are a few ideas from the book for achieving more –

1) Consistency is the Key –

How many times it has happened with you in past you took up something big and got exhausted in few days and quit? Darius suggests taking baby step. Always make sure to begin small, take your time, don’t rush in to things.

Doing small things consistently is much better than doing big thing occasionally.

2) Thing about Comfort Zone –

Darius suggests contrasting theory to comfort zone and I loved it. Instead of jumping straight to some uncomfortable things and panic. It is much better to work on it step by step.

Comfort is our basic necessity and so is growth. He suggests that instead of going all out after watching some videos or read something. Take baby steps, plan well, but keep moving towards it. Read about it, try it along.

3) All Strength Comes From Repetition –

There is power in basics, and getting to heights is always being credited to strong basic and repetition of basics. It’s the basic stuff we ignore the moment we get little success.

We stop doing things that brought success in the first place and things crumbles down. Stay beginner – keep basics in mind and have strong hold on it.

I have also created video of few quotes from the book – Hope you like it. Please do subscribe to my You Tube channel – Myread4change

Conclusion –

As you finish reading the book, you will be equipped with tactics you can adopt to improve your productivity. As Darius mentions that life of happiness comes from the life of productivity.

I highly recommend this book, not only read once but make notes and use it. Like any habit, it does require work and commitment, not too much but one baby step at a time.

You may download “Do it Today” free E-book here.

If you like this book about productivity, you may also like The One Thing by Gary W. Keller & Jay Papasan.

Please share your thoughts on this summary in the comment. I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading.

Muzammil