Time is not Infinite, by Paolo A Ruggeri
ISBN: Not available as a paperback (unsurprisingly, I think)
Amazon ID: B07RLQZ6CH
The full title of this book is "Time is not Infinite: 12 principles to make the best use of your time", and in this (thankfully short) book, the author presents 12 topics about being efficient, effective and (mostly) about being a successful business leader.
The book gets off to a disappointing start when the second sentence of the preface starts with "One criteria that …".
The introduction tells us that "these principles are derived from the work of my colleague, partner and most importantly, my friend, Paolo Ruggeri - CEO of OSM". So, the author as listed by Amazon is not the author at all.
The first topic is the Parkinson Principle. Nothing new there, and no amazing insights about it.
The second chapter contains two topics: make lists of things to do, and do things that take less than 5 minutes immediately. Unfortunately, the chapter ends with the phrase "doing such tasks and ticking them of your mind will make you feel more productive and will give you a sense of achievement."
Principle 3 may be true for some people in some situations, but there's no way I can agree in general with "when someone feels that they don't have time, it is because, at the psychological level, they have somehow stopped being themselves; they are led by others, by the material universe that surrounds them and they are trying to be someone else."
I seriously have to question principle 4 as well, especially as a blanket generalisation "if you have a small company or a professional business". Apparently, this means you should be spending 25% - 30% of your time on "research, development, innovation, staff training, staff motivation, marketing, planning, coordination, new alliances, financial management and reviewing your sales funnel". I have been running a professional business for 25+ years and I spend less than 5% of my time on all those things, and yet I have as much work as I want, and a perfectly satisfactory income from it.
I really do not understand the concept that "if your company is well structured", you should be spending 50% more than the "25% - 30%" recommended time on the above activities. This implies that an unstructured company requires less background administration and forward planning.
Principle 5 is complete bollocks about email, including the assertion that the author has "stopped replying to any email from my team and colleagues if it doesn't have one sentence, and one sentence only". I can only assume that this either engenders some appalling writing styles amongst his team, or else leads to the collapse of communications with their boss.
In chapter 6 we find the sentence "If you have hired someone new, do all what we have described above." The author may not be a native English speaker, but claims to be a successful serial entrepreneur and business management guru. I would expect better from such a person.
Chapter 6 also emphasises that the author seems to think all employees are male. All the pronouns used to refer to people are "he" or "him". This is not a good business writing style (and never has been).
Chapter 7 tells us that the author doesn't believe successful business people should have time off. In fact he goes further and suggest that if "you find yourself surfing on Facebook, Google or YouTube, wasting time wasting time checking what you old school friends are doing…" then "be aware that something has demotivated you." Never mind that fact that old school friends can be a very valuable source of contacts to build your business, I don't for a moment believe that I have become demotivated just because I choose to spend a few hours watching something I enjoy on YouTube.
Chapter 8 discusses "Loosing focus of our goals". Oh dear.
Chapter 9 is about planning ahead in order to achieve the goals you set in chapter 8. This should easily have been combined with chapter 2, about making lists. Chapter 9 contains 95 words, and although I don't claim that simple and succinct ideas are not important, it does give the impression that the author was starting think "how am I going to get to the 12 principles I wrote on the front cover?"
Chapter 10 is about planning for the future. I think this got covered in chapters 4, 8 and 9.
Principle 11 reminds us that "you are a precious human being", and likens running a successful business to the situation in an aeroplane when the cabin pressure drops and the oxygen masks appear.
Principle 12 is a good one - if you want to do something, start doing it now; if you put it off, you will end up putting for for far too long, and maybe for every.
At the end of the book, we are reminded that the author is not Paolo Ruggeri as listed by Amazon, but in fact Sadek El-Assaad, who is "a commercially-oriented Executive with 27+ years' experience delivering Organizational Development and Management services some of the world's largest organizations" and " a Business Advisor, Mentor and Coach" (who is clearly rather over-fond of Capital Letters in my opinion).
The book ends with an advertisement for the Zeder Group (which may or may not be run by Sadek El-Assaad, this is not made clear), which has recently bought the Open Source Management International Group (which gets its own advertising page, which completely fails to mention what is "Open Source" about their business).
In summary, it's good (although unsurprising) that Amazon is giving this book away for no payment (at least, at the time I write this), and it's good that it's a very short book, so you won't waste too much of your finite time in reading it.
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