9 Steps to Work Less and Do More: tips from Stever Robbins

Pitched primarily at a business audience, Stever Robbins’s new book 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More is also highly applicable to political activists and public officials.

Stever Robbins’s book covers familiar ground for personal improvement and business books – how to do more and do it better in less time. Its light touch and emphasis on detailed practical advice raise it above the field – as long as you like the distinctive humour peppered with references to zombies, cats and tall tales about himself.

The book is split into nine steps, each getting a chapter of its own. The advice, as indicated by the choice of job titles in the examples, is heavily geared towards middle class professionals – particularly the ideas which are centred on office life and require you to have plenty of control over your working day. This makes the book less useful for people in jobs that do not fit that template, but very applicable to political activists and elected public officials.

Some of the tips are controversial – especially the emphasis Robbins gives to ignoring or deleting emails in order to reach email heaven. But with a breezy style and fast paced text, other advice is always along soon. Even if, as with the email advice, some advice may not fit in a political context, it does not hold you up for long.

A book written with people in politics in mind would have specific additional areas, particularly around organising groups of volunteers and campaign helpers. My own favourite on how best to organise canvassing sessions is very simple: print more than one version of the canvass cards. Give pairs of people their own complete set of cards for a street, block or hamlet and they can leapfrog along, so saving the time otherwise spent splitting cards between people, hanging round when you have finished your part but the other person is still on their section somewhere far away on the other side of the street, and so on. Sounds obvious, but even now I still get people amazed at the thought that they can print more than one set of cards when I mention it.

In the absence of such a book, 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More is a good primer with many individual tips (even if turn your chores into a computer game isn’t amongst them), placed within an overall approach and structure which makes them easier to prioritise and remember.

You can buy 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More by Stever Robbins here.