Page 124 - Harvard Business Review, Sep/Oct 2018

JOHN DOERR WHAT I’M READING…

Books are my friends. Favorites include I subscribe to lots of magazines (Science,
CHAIRMAN OF Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth; Yes, Nature, HBR, MIT Technology Review, Time,
Fortune, Macworld/MacUser, the Atlantic,
And, from the Second City improv group;
KLEINER PERKINS Meg Jay’s The Defining Decade, about and Runner’s World) and newspapers (the
AND AUTHOR OF the importance of your twenties; Andy New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,
Grove’s High Output Management; and
Financial Times, USA Today, and ones in
MEASURE WHAT Harold and the Purple Crayon, because the Bay Area). I read the Washington Post
MATTERS the protagonist really is an entrepreneur. online, because I can’t
Recently I’ve read Tom Friedman’s get the print edition in Silicon Valley. And
Thank You for Being Late and I check Axios and Politico and my Flipboard,
Elisabeth Rosenthal’s An Apple News, and Google News feeds. I’d say
American Sickness. I have a healthy addiction to news.

do, when you do it, and why. encouraging us to focus while her
But the reality for many of us is sibling’s business is predicated on
SYNTHESIS that this kind of focus is hard. Fret the neurological high of seeing a
little red notification. But I digress.
not, however; there’s a dizzying
The antidote to Zuckerberg’s
YOU VERSUS THE CLOCK array of advice promising to fluff might just be the updated
make it easier.
Randi Zuckerberg—the
version of The Pomodoro
TESTING THE LATEST TIME-MANAGEMENT entrepreneur, investor, and sister Technique, by Francesco Cirillo,
of Facebook founder Mark—
a longtime consultant to the
ADVICE BY GRETCHEN GAVETT suggests in Pick Three that we software industry whose focus
can live more-fulfilling lives by is efficiency and productivity.
abandoning the idea of doing it This book, first released in 2009,
all. Instead, we should choose gets us closer to Oliver’s idea of
three areas of focus each day, being aggressively attuned to
out of a total of five: work, sleep, every single thing we do. Cirillo
family, friends, and fitness. “Yes!” suggests that we divide all tasks
I exclaimed as I began to read, into 30-minute increments
having already started setting with built-in breaks, measured
up similar priorities in my own with a timer. (When he came
life. Unfortunately, Zuckerberg’s up with this idea, in college,
interesting argument becomes he used one shaped like a little
insufferable at book length, tomato—hence the name of his
padded heavily with profiles of technique.) If you want rules
semi-celebrities. And although and formulas without a lot of
she does make useful points—for excess language, this may be the
ooks on time example, offering a work expert’s approach for you. I was mostly
management almost conclusion that “you’re not on board until I started to feel
always quote Mary Oliver, going to feel perfectly balanced like I was being initiated into a
I’ve learned. In her poem every day,” but you should “aim time cult. “Rule: A Pomodoro
“Sometimes,” Oliver for a larger sense of balance in is indivisible,” Cirillo insists
Boffers “Instructions for your week or month”—they are repeatedly throughout. That
living a life: Pay attention. Be undermined by bubbly chatter said, the new edition includes
astonished. Tell about it.” Part that will make your eyes roll. (“All a section on applying the
of me wants to end this essay this work talk has me exhausted,” technique to teams, something
here, because this is what time she writes. “Guess that’s our cue worth trying. After all, a single
management really comes down to talk about sleep!”) It’s also hard interruption can bring the work
to: being conscious of what you to shake the irony of Zuckerberg’s of multiple people to a halt.

The Pomodoro PEOPLEIMAGES/ISTOCK; MICROSTOCKHUB/ISTOCK
Technique: The Acclaimed
Time-Management
Pick Three: You Can Have It System That Has
All (Just Not Every Day) Transformed How We Work
Randi Zuckerberg Francesco Cirillo
Dey Street Books, 2018 Currency, 2018

150 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2018