Assess-Decide-Do: Natural Productivity by Dragos Roua

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Assess-Decide-Do by Dragos Roua is a revolutionary way of approaching Life Management.  Dragos Roua is the creator of the very popular blog Dragos Roua – Brilliantly Better, which focuses on personal development and productivity.  He’s experimented with different methods of becoming more productive and one day he realized all the methods he had learned weren’t working.  What does one do when all the known methods don’t work?  If you are Dragos Roua, you create your own method.  That’s when ADD or Assess-Decide-Do was born.  He created this new method of organizing daily life.  He describes ADD as a Life Management Framework, and I think that’s the perfect description of this system.

Overview

Assess-Decide-Do, Natural Productivity is the eBook that describes this Life Management Framework.  In it, Dragos covers the entire process of making decisions and getting things done.  His framework for this is a completely new concept.  Many people will find this new process useful to increase productivity and the eBook is really the only way to learn it.

The eBook is divided into three sections.  The first section explains the basic concepts of Assess-Decide-Do.  The second section tells you how to apply these concepts.  The third section discusses the use of the iPhone/iPad/iPod application that will make it a little easier to put these concepts into practice.  You can still put this into practice without the app, but the app does make it a little easier.

Table of Contents

Part One: What Is ADD?

• A Life Management Framework
  • The Assess State
  • The Decide State
  • The Do State

• The 5 Elements Of ADD
  • Assess
  • Decide
  • Do
  • Focus
  • Flow

• ADD As An Object Oriented Paradigm
  • Just A Few Lines Of Code
  • Make Your Own ADD

• Life Imbalances Explained With ADD
  • Analysis Paralysis – Too Much Assess
  • Someday Syndrome – Too Much Decide
  • Productivity Obsession – Too Much Do
  • Assess – Decide – Do and Attention Deficit Disorder

Part Two: Applied ADD

• ADD for Relationships
  • Assess For Relationships
  • Decide For Relationships
  • Do For Relationships

• ADD for Dealing With Interruptions
  • Interruptions Are Not Toxic

• Personal Crisis Management With ADD
  • Itʼs Not A Crisis, Itʼs A Result
  • The Decision: Make A New Space/Time Projection Of Yourself
  • What Do You Do In A Personal Crisis?

• ADD and Inbox Zero
• The Death Of The Deadline As We Know It
  • The Word
  • For A Liveline Philosophy
  • Inject Some Life Into That Deadline

• ADD – Natural Productivity
  • 1. Eliminate The Deadline Guilt
  • 2. Incorporate Procrastination
  • 3. Endless Projects
  • 4. Learning By Doing

Part Three: iAdd – The iPhone / iPad App

• What Is iAdd For iPhone/iPad Good For?
• Framework Compliance
• iAdd For iPhone Versus iAdd For iPad
• Assess
  • Realm Definition And Allowed Activities
  • Adding Items
  • Single Tasks
  • Managing A Task
  • Task: Realm-Specific Actions
  • Events
  • Event Data
  • Managing An Event
  • Event: Realm-Specific Actions
  • Projects
  • Project Data
  • Managing A Project
  • Project: Realm-Specific Actions
  • Ideas
  • Idea Data
  • Managing An Idea
  • Idea: Assess-Specific Actions
  • Contexts
  • Collections

• Decide
  • Realm Definition And Allowed Activities
  • Single Tasks
  • Deciding On A Single Task
  • Single Tasks: Decide-Specific Actions
  • Events
  • Deciding On An Event
  • Events: Decide-Specific Actions
  • Projects
  • Deciding On A Task From A Project
  • Projects: Decide-Specific Actions

• Do
  • Realm Definition And Allowed Activities
  • Time Based Views
  • Context Based Views
  • Switching Between Tasks And Events
  • Project Based Views
  • Do-Specific Actions

• Settings & Syncing
  • Default Realm
  • Badge Count
  • Syncing

• iAdd Usage Scenarios
  • iAdd for Blogging
  • iAdd For Shopping
  • Single Tasks, Ideas and Projects – Which One To Use When?
  • Single Tasks And Tasks In Projects/Ideas
  • Events vs Tasks

• Where To From Here?

Price/Value

$27

What’s Included

Just the eBook

Pluses

• The author speaks from experience, he found something that wasn’t working and created something that does.
• Thorough explanations and many good examples.
• Easy to read and well organized.

Minuses

The last section of the Assess-Decide-Do describes the iPhone app that helps you put ADD into practice.  It looks so good that I really wish I had an iPhone.  So the only real minus here is that I don’t have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod to try this on.

Verdict

As I started reading Assess-Decide-Do, Natural Productivity, I felt a little lost.  It’s like I was starting a new fiction novel, and I had to get to know the characters.  This is because the concepts Dragos is teaching are completely new.  I had to slowly learn these new concepts, and Dragos did a great job introducing the concepts and then developing them as I read along.

In addition to the new concepts he slides in some great advice, which I really enjoyed.  Things like, “If the decision will not change something in your reality, it’s not a decision, it’s still an assessment.”  Another quote I liked is when he talks about typical task list style of project management as a continuous killing of tasks up until the day of your own death, “The ultimate project management victory: I solved my own death today.”

I give Assess-Decide-Do, Natural Productivity five stars.  The five stars is for the eBook, the content, the organization, and the way Dragos presents these new ideas.  As for the effectiveness of the ADD method, it will take me some time to practice before I could rate that, so I’ll leave that up to you.  If you are looking for a new method of organization and a better way to get things done, then this is definitely a must read for you.

Tagged as: eBooks, Productivity

This post was written by...

Eric West – who has written 195 posts on Eden Journal.

Eric is the founder of Eden Journal. He loves blogging about personal growth and desires to make a small difference in the world by providing a platform for bloggers to share ideas on a wide range of topics from personal development to spiritual and philosophical awakenings. Google