Rick Pastoor worked as IT lead at Blendle and taught himself to work very efficient. He wrote about his working methods in Grip. Soon to be published in English. Pastoor combine various best practices for efficient working into a very practical and systematic working manner.

Put everything you are going to work on in your calendar. Not just appointments, also your focused work.

Select activities that go in your calendar on the basis of priority, urgency, focus.

Important things first.

Do not switch too much between creative work and things like meetings abnd calls. Do not do many things at the same time.

Drop all tasks you think of in a list. Use an app like Todoist or some other way to easily save things to do or reminders. Categorize the items in the list.

Execute bigger things in small steps. Set intermediate goals, so you get the satisfaction of achieving things.

Do not email all the time but block time for batch processing of email. Apply David Allen’s Getting Things Done method for handling your emails.

Block each week a half hour for cleaning your task list and agenda.Do a weekly review. Create a checklist for the review.

Part 2 of the book is called Grip on Your Year, and is about planning yearly goals and how to achieve these.

What drives you, what is your passion, mission, skills cycle.

Look for an accountability partner that help help you achieve goals and keep you an the right path.

Part 3 of the book goes even wider and is called Grip on your Life.

Set big goals, but little steps to achieve them. Develop habits.
Apply Seinfeld’s rule: don’t break the chain.

Listen and ask advice.

Have different advisors for different perspectives of your life (personal, business, specific issues, …).

Get better at strategic thinking:

• Understand the issue at hand.
• Analyse what other before you did.
• Think up alternatives.
• Don’t deceive yourself. Be aware of your prejudices, preoccupations and preferences.

Think even bigger than think big.

Where Cal Newport advocates productivity through refraining from the use of digital devices, Rick Pastoor puts the digital tools to his advantage and helps us finding out how to use the tools efficiently.