Saturday, February 8, 2020

9 books that stayed with me. 3

3. Cheaper by the dozen

I was asked in an interview at my first job, which book influenced you the most? And this was the book I said influenced me the most and the weird thing is even after reading so many books from then and now this book still remains the one that has influenced me the most. 

It is a true story of Frank Gilbreth who brought the idea of time management into industries, he was a time and motion expert. He always thought of a more efficient process that can be followed to take care of any given task or chore, be at work or at home. He also brought the idea of parallel tasking in industries.

For example, Gilbreth used to play German language learning cassettes when his youngest kid (who would be 4 at the time) took shower, that would be 15 minutes every day and by the time the kid was 16, he was fluent in German without spending any extra minute over it.

Till today I try to form an efficient process for everything that I do and parallel task all the time. I can not work in an atmosphere where availability is more important than efficiency. 

Anyway, the book is called Cheaper by the dozen because Frank had a dozen kids. Frank was asked in an interview ‘what you do with so much time that you save by doing everything efficiently and faster?’ He said in that time I do things that I like, drink wine and listen to music (and apparently make kids too ;-) ).

If it was not for this book then I would never have been able to do the 100 things that I want to achieve every day.



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