What We're Reading Now

Simple Instructions for Relaxing, Focusing, and Getting Things Done

27 December 2016

Allison read Do Breathe: Calm your mind. Find focus. Get stuff done. It’s an easy, fast read about some very important topics.

Tags: allison read, balance, breathing, courage, david allen, mindfulness, time management and prioritization

This week in between Christmas and the New Year, I like to write about something meaningful but delivered in a concise package. In 2014, I wrote about one of my favorite little books, The Gift of Nothing. Today, I picked Michael Townsend Williams' book, Do Breathe: Calm your mind. Find focus. Get stuff done. It’s not quite as short a read as The Gift of Nothing, but in this day and age of so many books about mindfulness, focus, and better work habits, it’s one of the fastest reads I’ve enjoyed in quite some time.

What I appreciate most about Williams’ approach is that he makes some tools that often overwhelm my clients (and me) more manageable. The book is divided into three sections: Prepare, Practice, and Perform. However, I think most people I know would experience a big improvement in their days if they just focused on the instructions in the opening section, Prepare, which provides foundational tools for how to Breathe, Organize, and find your Courage.

Williams provides all the reasons for improving your breathing and the supporting research, but he does it quickly without drowning the reader in facts. Then he shares the three keys to breathing well:

1. Breathe in and out from the belly.
2. Breathe in and out through the nose.
3. Breathe out a little more than you breathe in.

His instructions for Organize are similar to David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. If you’ve followed my own personal journey on this blog to improve my time management and prioritization practices, then you know that Allen’s approach helped me to create some important systems in my life especially for managing email. However, I regularly recommend his book with the warning that it can be a bit overwhelming but ultimately very helpful.

Williams presents a much more succinct version of Allen’s instructions for how to manage email. In fact, it’s so similar to Allen’s, that I kept looking for Williams to give credit to Allen. However, there are enough slight differences in the approach that I’m choosing to trust this is Williams’ original thinking. Regardless, I think either system for managing email, decluttering your work space, using your lists, working with your calendar, etc. can work quite well if you follow the system. While I’ll still recommend Allen’s book and supporting tools, I am glad to have Williams’ simpler approach for clients who struggle to get through Allen’s longer book.

In the Courage section, Williams explains why it’s important to feel fear rather than suppress it. Then he has a few paragraphs on how to expect less that I found to be quite helpful. We should certainly have dreams and goals and work towards those ideals, “…but once you have them focus on what you can do now. Expectation is the breeding ground of discontentment; it can disturb your attention and be detrimental to your ability to act skillfully.” Yes. Make a plan, but then focus on the moment you’re in and the things you can do today.

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