Google’s Executive Productivity Advisor offers insights on how to make the “new way of work” work for you, providing actionable steps to optimize your productivity, accomplish more, prevent burnout, and cultivate a harmonious work-life balance.Every day, tens of thousands of Google employees, from executives to interns, rely on Laura Mae Martin’s tips and best practices for how to make the most of their time. Now, with Uptime, Laura brings her unique approach to productivity and well-being to anyone who wants to be more effective and experience “calm accomplishment,” whether at work, at school, or in their own personal lives.Laura began her Google career in sales but quickly carved out a niche for herself as a productivity expert. For more than a decade, she’s been coaching Google executives and employees on how to achieve a state of “productivity Zen”—a holistic approach to conquering everything from the avalanche of emails in their inboxes to becoming the master of their own calendars and running excellent meetings. Her strategies have been widely adopted by many, including entry-level employees looking to amplify their individual impact, middle managers, and top executives working across global teams.As many of us have moved to a hybrid environment blending work and home, managing our time efficiently and remaining productive is more important than ever. In Uptime, Laura shows how to thrive no matter where you’re working, giving concrete steps that help you focus on your priorities and keep good systems, routines, and tactics in place.Uptime explains how to make technology work for you and make “feeling on top of it” your new normal. It’s a blueprint for operating at the highest levels of productivity while enhancing your own personal well-being.

Full of stories of successful entrepreneurs, The Pumpkin Plan guides you through unconven­tional strategies to help you build a truly profitable blue-ribbon company that is the best in its fieldEach year Americans start one million new businesses, nearly 80 percent of which fail within the first five years. Under such pressure to stay alive—let alone grow—it’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of “sell it—do it, sell it—do it” that leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and unable to get ahead no matter how hard they try.This is the exact situation Mike Michalowicz found himself in when he was trying to grow his first company. But that’s when he discovered an unlikely source of inspiration—pumpkin farmers. After reading an article about a local farmer who had dedicated his life to growing giant pump­kins, Michalowicz realized the same process could apply to growing a business. He tested the Pumpkin Plan on his own company and transformed it into a remarkable, multimillion-dollar industry leader. First he did it for himself. Then for others. And now you.

The classic work on creativity and problem-solving techniques that “provide an alternative to just sitting around waiting for the Muse to appear” (Times Educational Supplement).The first practical explanation of how creativity works, this results-oriented classic reveals how to move beyond a “vertical” mode of thought—focused on following step-by-step logic in search of a single “correct” solution—to tap the potential of lateral thinking, which leads us to creatively generate multiple ideas. A prominent scholar of psychology, medicine, and physiology who taught at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and other world-renowned universities, Edward de Bono was the originator of the concept of lateral thinking, and in this book he explains this method that can benefit problem-solvers in any field.“This could be a very useful book for teachers and non-teachers alike. Dr. DeBono does not claim to be able to turn us all into Miltons, DaVincis, and Einsteins . . . but his techniques provide an alternative to just sitting around waiting for the Muse to appear. The Muse never appears to most of us—hence the value of this book.” — Times Educational Supplement