The Chris Evans Breakfast Show
Launch week kicks off in front of a million people
I’ll send a dedicated please-buy-the-book note tomorrow too. But for right now, the pre-order price is reduced at a ‘Pre-order Price Guarantee’ on Amazon UK at £13.59 (RRP is £16.99) so…please buy the book!
It’s publication week. In fact, Timeboxing — The Power of Doing One Thing at a Time is out tomorrow in the UK. That will mark 428 days since Karolina from Penguin Random House (PRH) first got in touch with me.
A lot of activity surrounds the launch of a PRH publication.
The week began with a bang in the form of a 25-minute interview with Chris Evans of Virgin Radio. It was my first radio broadcast for the book and in front of a million listeners. I felt plenty of pressure. But I had prepared what to say (as described last week). I also was prepared with branded merch, as you’ll see in the video.
Speaking to Chris Evans about timeboxing was a joy. He was very well prepared: his copy of the book had dozens of pages folded down, post-it notes sticking out and notes on the cover and inside. Just before we went on-air he kindly gave me the heads-up that ‘we would start with Daniel Markovitz’ and we were off. Here it is:
And they wrote up the interview on their site, here.
There were many points I’d like to have made more smoothly, and several points worth making that I meant to make and didn’t. But that’s live radio and conversation. I’m happy with one of the messages I did get across: that a day filled with implemented intentions (a timeboxed day) is perfect. Those special days in which we fall in love or see a double rainbow or bump into a dear old friend are wonderful, of course, but when they happen it’s pure, fickle, serendipitous chance. Timeboxed days enjoy a perfection which we can control and repeat, each and every day, if we choose to.
That afternoon, after the interview, I thought of Lou Reed’s Perfect Day. The repeated lyrics of the final verse are at once sobering and empowering: ‘You're going to reap just what you sow’. To me, this goes hand in hand with a line from near the end of the book: ‘Choosing what we do with our time is all there is’.
I should have requested the song from Mr Evans, the radio DJ, while I was there.
