Nash
Quick easy read. If you have a feeling multitasking doesn't work, this book reinforces it. It gives you tips on how to monotask and how to monotask but most of the advice as you read it is obvious. I felt this could've been a blog post but you may need the additional push, stories and reinforcement considering how big an epidemic is multitasking.
I enjoyed this book. It takes a contrarian view to productivity. Think of this book that comes after you've read everything on motivation, productivity and mastery and you're still frustrated by all the things you expect of yourself and fail. Well, this books makes you face your mortality. It addressed the underlying reason for your discomfort: your limited time, your finite-ness. Till you embrace you can't do everything, you'll always feel inadequate. This books helps to reframe the human experience. Once you embrace your limitations... you are set free from angst.
great science fiction!
The author has a knack for great (and often hilarious) writing. It's surprising to read a great story that was written so recently. I did expect more from the story progression but then there's book 2 and 3 as well. This book is smart, has a number of interesting sci fi ideas and themes.
If there's only one book you read for building your startup, this is it. This book is the successor to the Four Steps to the Epiphany and walks you through with painstaking details everything you need to do at each step to be a successful startup. This book is also very complete, its prescriptive and full of great examples, checklists and other items to help you think through where you are. Several years ago, Dr. Blank's book changed my life in how I approach building startups and if you want to get a head start, get this book
great for early stage startups looking to implement metrics
OKRs can suck, they are usually overdesigned, and a pain of some wrong. This opinionated take on OKRs is exactly what an early stage startup needs. Should you have 10 OKRs? No, just one OKR set. Should you have individual OKRs? No. Should you cascade OKRs to reams? Maybe. The book is full of practical advice as well as supporting tooling for implementing OKRs such as the four square method, the start and end bookend meetings to drive weekly cadence, building a project pipeline and tools for grading OKRs. I especially love the first third of the book's story approach of a startup going through trouble. I find it much more engaging to learn through stories and relate to them.
could've been a blog post, but some useful nuggets
If you're early in your productivity journey, this can be a helpful primer. It can get very proscriptive, which works for a beginner. Not as great for someone mid way in their journey and they already know how to get things done. The key take away is to aim high and work constantly to achieve those goals.
great actionable and approachable book
Filled with anecdotes from the author's career in counseling people with various addictions, the book does a good job in contextualizing what went wrong, how to debug the problem and then how to solve it using various techniques. A lot of this is obvious but then again, the solution to most of our problems is obvious.
a good guide for “debugging” your emotions
This book does a decent job of summarizing contemporary books on emotions covering items like procrastination, resentment, jealousy and even depression. It's a quick read and refers to lots of other works but it's a good starting point on what is possible. You can dig into a topic or reference if there's something you like.
This was an entertaining read through the lens of a 20-something Jordan as he works on the classic Prince of Persia. It's an instructive read for anyone who is an entrepreneur or a maker. You sit in the mind of another maker and see first-hand the rollercoaster. There are weeks full of doubt and procrastination. Sometimes, the procrastination would last eight months. Then motivation would strike, and Jordan would work obsessively, sometimes leaving work by 3am.
The book is a collection of Jordan's own diaries written during this time period. They are augmented with modern-day notes from him on the sides. But I wish he had added more details. For example, one of the most innovative things Jordan did was use motion capture, probably one of the very first case of the use of mocap in a video game. How did he come to that, or why did he decide to do that? It wasn't covered in this book.
Or,when PoP launches, it feels like a flop. It doesn't catch on. It's frustrating for everyone. This is never addressed. It's only mentioned in passing that Jordan receives a sizable monthly check from loyalties one day. But it felt very anticlimactic. The book quickly starts to fizzle. Or maybe its Jordan maturing and being less fazed with the ups and down of life.
On the whole, its a very enjoyable read, highly recommended to fans of the game
Decent summary of what's trapping your potential
While our lifestyles have moved forward with nee cool things, science is decades behind in figuring out the consequences. We saw this with cigarettes, we're seeing this now with refined sugars and saturated fats and the complete chaos they play with our hormones and our bodies. But we're trapped. The food tastes too good. The social media posts are too fun. We can't seem to disengage. This book is a good eye opener on how far we've all fallen down the pleasure trap.
Good summary about breath throughout the ages
I had no idea you could do so much with your breath. From increasing body temperature to inducing hallucinations. In this fascinating read, you go through the journey with the author on how we've changed our breathing, and what are some of the breathing techniques you can do. This last part is however poorly written, the appendix has a list of exercises but they don't explain why should you do this particular exercise and what are the benefits. For that, you have to dig back into the text. But this is a great “gateway” book into the subject and to discover some very interesting people like Wim Hoff etc along the way.
A great, fun read
I really enjoyed reading this book both as an engineer, a product designer and a CEO. This is a great “view from below” of how an engineer's day was at Apple working on the next great thing and this has some great lessons. One striking thing about the way Apple worked (and maybe still does) was by assigning vast amounts of time and ownership to a feature. Ken worked on the iOS keyboard for years, same with the Safari browser. That kind of luxury is largely gone in the internet-time world where sprints are 2-weeks long, there's a major launch every quarter and so on. But this is only how you can create really deep, well-thought our products. There's a great lesson here about that, and I highly recommend you read it.
After reading this book, turns out, no one can teach you self-discipline
Jocko is the drill Sargent that wants the best out of you. But he doesn't want to enforce the discipline. He wants it to come from within you. But how can one cultivate self-discipline? Surprisingly, the book gives to direction in that other than “Just do it”. And I understand that. It's hard to explain how and where self-discipline comes from. What this book is good for is explaining the benefits of self-discipline. It's about busting down your excuses, about countering the self-love movement of do-what-you-love with bullshit,-you-do-this-because-you-need-to.
This book is a breath of fresh air during a time when exerting yourself, doing hardwork and doing tough things is frowned upon. If you want to get shit done, pick this up.
This is a good book on how a practitioner should run a product based agile team. Even though it heavily emphasizes their own tools and partly comes off as marketing material for base camp, the lessons here are widely applicable. There are some interesting techniques here which agile teams should think about from running larger 6-week sprint sizes to how scope discovery and task confidence builds during project. The best part is that this is a free book and a fast read.
Absolutely the most significant book I've read in 15 years and I wish I had read it 15 years ago. While books on Getting Things Done etc focus more on tactical and process; this book is about strategy. It focuses on what you want done and why they want done. This book dives deep in human phyche, your fears and what is holding you back. If you want to restructure your life, achieve what you want or just want to be happy, start with this book. Toby does a great job of talking to you and walking you through the tools you need to get what you want.
Essential reading for people entering their careers. This books rules against the ill given advice of “follow your passion” or the idea that somehow there's a built in passion and you just need to find it. Instead, this books argues that you need to be good at something first, and passion will follow. Essentially: if you're good at what you do, all else will follow.
Paul found out he had stage IV cancer at the same age as me. While his cancer was debilitating, he fought its ups and downs while grappling with the nature of death and treatment. It's well written and Paul had a gift with words. At the end, the book helps you question your morality and what it means to be alive, face death and love.