GRIP: The Art of Working Smart (and Getting to What Matters Most), reviewed

In this review we look at the English translation of Grip by Rick Pastoor, a book initially published in the Netherlands in 2019. You can see more about it, and buy it here.

GRIP: The Art of Working Smart (and Getting to What Matters Most), reviewed

When this book came in to our offices it was immediately picked up and taken away for perusing by several team members. This would suggest that the title resonates and appeals to a wide variety of people. On one hand this makes sense, as who doesn’t wan to ‘work smart’. Email is definitely something to be both tackled and managed. Pastoor does make the good point that if you are too efficient and quick to reply to emails this can just result in replies coming back to you just as quickly.

His solution is to time slice, and just deal with them in batches. We would definitely agree that no one needs to get instant notifications or updates every time a new email comes in. They may all consider themselves to be urgent, but they are rarely important.

The book is written in an accessible and engaging way. Pastoor also tackles challenges within the contexts of work, both short term and long term, and also life goals. This is refreshing and aims to ensure that you are looking at things from a variety of perspectives, including trying to remember and focus on whatever your own personal big picture is. We enjoyed reading this book, in the brief moments we had in between other team members quietly sneaking it away for their own time to read it too.

More about the book

A flexible collection of tools and insights, GRIP was honed and crafted during Rick’s sharp ascension – in the space of the year – from fresh engineering hire to leading a team of 30 at Blendle, the New York Times-backed journalism start-up. A fresh and forgiving (tired and tested) guide that will help anyone and everyone get things done and free up time for what’s important to them, GRIP is the book for everyone who has too much to do.

Since GRIP’s publication in 2019, and in the wake of the Covid pandemic forever changing how we operate as employees and employers (from your everyday office worker to your remote start-up founder), it’s universal, flexible and digestible teachings are more relevant than ever before.

Whilst Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute Ann Francke argues that with hybrid (and remote) working becoming the norm ‘work should be output-focused – about what you do, not where you do it’ and experts such as Kent University’s Dr Heejung Chung assure us that “fitting your schedule into your work-life balance demands will enhance performance outcomes’, it’s undeniable – as President of the Charted Institute of Personnel and Development Professor Cary Cooper puts it: “If you’re not a good organiser of yourself and your time, you’re in trouble’ and – according to data from The Health and Safety Executive – with stress, depression and anxiety accounting for 51% of all work-related sickness and 55% of all sick day; it’s clear that over half of us feel like we’re in serious trouble.

Which is where GRIP comes in. Breaking down everything you need to regain control and helping you learn. However, you don’t need to take our word on this. Given – according to data from the Radicati Group – 269bn emails are sent a day (that’s 2.4m emails every second) and with a study from Wake Forest University’s Professors Baumeister and Masicampo, showing once and for all that ‘simply writing the tasks down will make you more effective’ and ‘just making a plan to get them done can free us from anxiety’; with 2022 just around corner, please find attached an exclusive chapter on ‘Planning Your Year Ahead’.

See more book reviews here.