Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters.

Michael Bungay Stanier

Workman Publishing, Feb 13, 2010 - Body, Mind & Spirit - 200 pages

A program of 15 simple exercises to help readers stop doing merely good work and start doing great work. No more busy work—just the work that really matters.

You work hard. You put in the hours. Yet you feel like you are constantly treading water with "Good Work" that keeps you going but never quite moves you ahead. Or worse, you are mired in "Bad Work"—endless meetings and energy-draining bureaucratic traps.

Do More Great Work gets to the heart of the problem: Even the best performers are spending less than a fraction of their time doing "Great Work"—the kind of innovative work that pushes us forward, stretches our creativity, and truly satisfies us. Michael Bungay Stanier, Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006, is a business consultant who’s found a way to move us away from bad work (and even good work), and toward more time spent doing great work.

When you’re up to your eyeballs answering e-mail, returning phone calls, attending meetings and scrambling to get that project done, you can turn to this inspirational, motivating, and at times playful book for invaluable guidance. In fifteen exercises, Do More Great Work shows how you can finally do more of the work that engages and challenges you, that has a real impact, that plays to your strengths—and that matters.

The exercises are "maps"—brilliantly simple visual tools that help you find, start and sustain Great Work, revealing how to:

• Find clues to your own Great Work—they’re all around you
• Locate the sweet spot between what you want to do and what your organization wants you to do
• Generate new ideas and possibilities quickly
• Best manage your overwhelming workload
• Double the likelihood that you’ll do what you want to do

All it takes is ten minutes a day, a pencil and a willingness to change. Do More Great Work will not only help you identify what the Great Work of your life is, it will tell you how to do it.
 

Contents

• Laying the Foundation: 1
• Seeds of Your Great Work: 27
• Uncovering Your Great Work: 63
• Pick a Project: 93
• Create New Possibilities: 107
• Your Great Work Plan: 143
• Continuing Your Great Work Journey: 175
• More Wisdom and Inspiration: 191

About the author

Michael Bungay Stanier is the founder and senior partner of Box of Crayons, a company that works with organizations, ranging from AstraZeneca to Xerox, to help them do more great work. A Rhodes scholar who earned both arts and law degrees with highest honors from Australian National University and an MPhil from Oxford, he is a popular speaker at business and coaching conferences, and was named Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006. He lives in Toronto.

SETH GODIN is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. His book Permission Marketing was an Amazon.com Top 100 bestseller for a year, a Fortune Best Business Book and it spent four months on the Business Week bestseller list. It also appeared on The New York Times business book bestseller list. He lives in Westchester County, New York.
Leo Babauta has been a reporter, editor, speechwriter, and freelance writer for the last 17 years. He founded ZenHabits.net with no funding in January 2007, and one year later it is a top 50 blog with about a million unique visitors per month. Using the methods he shares in THE POWER OF LESS over the last two years, he's trained and successfully completed a marathon, he's doubled his income, he's eliminated his debt, he's quit smoking, and he's written a novel.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters.
• Author: Michael Bungay Stanier
• Contributors: Seth Godin, Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau, Michael Port, Dave Ulrich
• Publisher: Workman Publishing, 2010
• ISBN: 0761158278, 9780761158271
• Length: 200 pages
• Subjects: Body, Mind & Spirit / Inspiration & Personal Growth