HN Books @HNBooksMonth

What works for me is a few things:

(1) Separate work from life, be able to walk away for a bit when work isn't going well. And do walk away if things aren't going well. If you haven't been able to write any code for the past few hours, odds are you won't be able to write any in the next few hours.

(2) Focus on process over results. IE have a good process to minimize the amount of time you spend thinking about what you should be doing, whether you did the right thing, etc. What honestly helps in these cases is just having a task list of "I need to get XYZ done today" and then blasting through it without leaving room for thinking about things too much. I like Getting Things Done (ie https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produ...) because it helps separate work from life.

(3) Take the long view of your life/career. The truth is that you are going to make mistakes, bugs will get into prod, you're going to get burned out, etc, so you need to accept that you will have "bad" days (or days, weeks, moths where you just don't care about what you're doing in which case it is obviously going to be crap) and focus on the process for improving them to minimize them over the long run. I think the important question here isn't "did I make mistakes" but rather "is my process resulting in a slower rate of mistakes/less severe mistakes.

(4) Never forget to eat, sleep, drink water, and exercise. Especially sleep. when things are bad we tend to sacrifice sleep, that almost always makes it worse.

Most of it I think is summarized as having a process you can trust so that when things do go poorly you can focus on the process in those moments. The process will get you out.

Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks [0]. Very informative series of essays on his experiences and lessons learned with IBM. If nothing else, helps to properly frame my expectations on projects with respect to resources needed to properly coordinate with others, and the pros and cons of adding people to projects at different stages (and in different roles).

Getting Things Done, David Allen [1]. Useful toolkit for getting things out of my head and onto paper (or org-mode or OmniFocus) so that I can properly focus and prioritize my time on the things I need to get done.

Communicating Sequential Processes, C.A.R. Hoare [2]. Strongly influenced the way I think about programs in general, but specifically in the embedded field where I work. (NB: I've not actually read or worked through the full text, but mainly taken what was needed to properly communicate ideas in my designs or to analyze designs and systems others have produced. This is a task for myself for early next year.)

Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer [3]. I've always had a good memory, I actually picked this up to give to a girlfriend who had a terrible memory and read it in a couple days before giving it to her (she was out of town when it arrived). Helped to explain methods that I'd somehow developed over the years, and gave me concepts and a better understanding of other methods of memory acquisition (for either short or long term purposes). If you really want to improve your memory, there are probably better resources to learn specific techniques, but this was an informative and entertaining overview. WRT work, we have to keep large systems in our minds all the time, and potentially dozens of different systems written in different languages. Memory is critical for this, even if it's just the memory of where to find the information and not the information itself.

Fluent Forever, Gabriel Wyner [4]. This one is my current read. Goes back to Moonwalking with Einstein. While the book is itself about language acquisition, it's actually given me quite a bit to think about with respect to general learning and memory acquisition (in this case, specifically for long term retention and recall). We have a couple training programs (we need more) for our new hires on development and testing. There are some concepts in here and in related readings that I think would greatly improve how we teach these folks what they need to know and in a way that would improve their retention of that information. We have a lot of people retiring in the next 1-3 years, so this is actually quite critical right now, though management is quite lackadaisical about it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineeri...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produ...

[2] http://usingcsp.com/cspbook.pdf

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Remember...

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget/...

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EDITS:

The Toyota Way, Jeffrey Liker [5]. I grokked Lean from this. Hardware focused, but the concepts can be (and have been) generalized to other process focused fields. This has helped with understanding what business processes really need to be codified, what feedback mechanisms need to be present for improvement, the criticality of bottom-up feedback and improvement (employee investment in the company/product cannot be overvalued if you want quality and good craftsmanship).

The Little Schemer, Friedman & Felleisen [6]. Going back to the comments on Fluent Forever. The structure of this is fantastic for conveying and helping students retain information. The Socratic method is very useful, and structuring courses and introductory material in this format is useful, this happened to be my introduction to it (well, I'd heard it before, but my first time really encountering it in practice). It's a useful tool for solo-study of a topic (pose your own questions and construct answers), and as a method of guiding someone to a conclusion or better understanding. Also useful in debugging software or decoding software you didn't write, after a fashion.

[5] https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manu...

[6] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-schemer

Over the years I've tried many planning methods, with very low success.

I tried GTD (https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produ...) for 7 years before declaring it a failure. It does have some good ideas that I still use, but the TODO management didn't work for me. I think it'll work only for people who have fewer goals than I do. It doesn't handle large lists very well.

Some things I kept from it:

1. Filing cabinet - Instantly useful from day 1.

2. Calendars are only for hard deadlines. Don't put stuff in there that you merely want to do. I know this is the opposite of the submission here. For me, planning everything in the calendar, including things I could ignore, led to a mess. Keep it for things you really cannot ignore.

In general, any obsessive time based planning like this submission fails for me. GTD is not time based. I prefer planning my tasks for the week, not for the hour.

I like the idea behind Kanban, but I do not think it fits most of our personal lives. Very good for certain work environments, though.

Pomodoro technique: It's good, but not really for task management. It's just a good technique to stay focused. Worked for a few months until I got used to it. Now it does not keep me focused and I can easily get distracted by the web, etc.

These days I'm trying this:

https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Workday-Now-Strategies/dp...

I think it works better than GTD, and fills the gaps in it. If you do not want to buy the book, a condensed, down to Earth version is available as the 1 Minute Todo List:

http://www.michaellinenberger.com/TheOneMinuteTo-DoList-Eboo...

Personally, I feel the book is better than the PDF at explaining the rationale behind the 1 minute todo list. Reading it was very calming. It explained all the problems I had had with GTD and similar techniques.

Basic ideas:

1. If you cannot examine your todo list inside of a minute, it is too long. So spend a lot of effort ensuring your daily todo list is not long.

2. Urgency and importance are not the same. We're hard wired for focusing on urgency, so do not try to make a TODO list purely based on importance.

3. Every week, identify everything that must be done in the next 10 days and put it on your list that you'll examine daily. Things you decide not to do in the next 10 days, keep in your "list to examine weekly".

4. Every day, multiple times of the day, look at the short list and do tasks from among them. If new tasks come in, add them, but keep the list short (no more than 20-25 items). If your list is getting too long, identify things to move to the "list to examine weekly" and get them out of the way.

5. If something needs to be done today, put it on the top of your list!

6. You'll also have "the list to examine monthly" as well as quarterly.

Very simple idea - works a bit better than GTD.

I think my biggest problem is that I need to reduce the goals in my life and focus on only a few. I have more goals than time in my life, and I keep jumping from one to the other. No task management system will work until I do this. Tough decisions need to be made!

Here's what works for me:

1/

  - Intense workouts early in the day
  - A lot of water
  - Sunlight

2/

  - Airplane mode
  - Batching email, IM, SMS, ..
  - Automate payments
  - It's ok to be late with administration sometimes

Books that really helped me:

  - The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss [1]
  - Getting Things Done by David Allen [2]
  - Rework by Jason Fried [3]

[1] http://amzn.com/0307465357 [2] http://amzn.com/0142000280 [3] http://amzn.com/0307463745

edit: added Rework

⬐ peteretep

I have a lot of flexibility over my time, unlike the OP, but I've found shifting my workouts to 3pm has been much better than 6am, which is when I used to do them. I tend to now start work at 6am, run out of steam around 1pm, have some downtime, gym from 3pm to 5pm, and then I'm either in good form to see some friends or do some side projects... I had always assumed early morning worked best for me, until I tried something else.

+1 for GTD, too

⬐ zamalek

> Intense workouts early in the day

Solid advice. Your body learns from your habits and exercise is a great way to teach it when it needs to be awake.

Another trick is regularized sleeping patterns. I had sleeping issues when I was a teenager and had some "soft" sleeping therapy. The most important thing I learned is: don't aim for a certain amount of hours, aim for specific times. E.g. Go to bed at midnight sharp and wake up at 7AM, come hell or high water. If you do stay up late, wake up at your usual time so as to not throw your clock off any more than it already has been.

Finally, if you are sleep deprived you are stupid. You're doing everyone a disservice by being that "hero" that pulls an all-nighter. Get your regular sleep and carry on with the task tomorrow: you'll finish it faster and do a better job of it.

⬐ pc86

I've struggled for years with getting up at a respectable time. I can't overemphasize this. There are classes (yes, multiple) in college I failed because I just simply could not get myself up and to class at 8am three days a week. That was when I was 18-20.

I'm 28 now, almost 29. I go to the gym 5 days a week at 5:30am. I'm up at 4:45 whether I set an alarm or not. I'm sure part of it is circadian rhythms and the fact that I'm going to bed at 9pm instead of 1am now. And as a result, my most productive coding hours have shifted from 7-11pm to 9am-12pm (give or take). So I keep my morning schedule open for the real work, and pack my afternoons with meetings and administrative work.

Just listing books that have had a big impact on me:

* The Now Habit - http://www.amazon.com/dp/1585425524

* Getting Things Done - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0142000280

* Simply Christian - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061920622

* Surprised by Hope - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061551821

* The Great Divorce - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060652950

* Mere Christianity - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060652926

* The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - http://www.amazon.com/dp/048629823X

* Tao Te Ching - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060812451

Books from the Bible that I like:

* Genesis

* Judges

* Ruth

* Tobit

* Job

* Psalms

* Ecclesiastes

* Sirach/Ecclesiasticus

* Everything written by John

This is the problem that GTD tries to solve. Omnifocus is a great piece of software that's built on this methodology

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produc...

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus/

⬐ tedmiston

I read GTD and practiced it for a few years. I always felt on top of my tasks, but gradually seemed to fork off my own system, although, I definitely still track tasks in a list* wrt context, due date, and time estimation.

One cautionary note with GTD is that it's easy to get caught up feeling like you're cranking widgets and lose sight of the forest in favor of the trees. I welcome suggestions for this.

With respect to BJ's talk / the Fogg model:

- Triggers: The GTD system helps you capture all your task triggers in one place. This is a great idea that works well in practice.

- Ability: The most common behaviors for interacting with your GTD system are adding new tasks, deferring tasks, and reviewing. The concept of a universal inbox accomplishes task insertion very easily, but one must build the habit of processing the inbox into their own GTD system __daily__ to really trust it. That was difficult for me in practice.

- Motivation: The weekly review system provides a renewal and closure based on what you've done recently and have upcoming. The higher-level reviews "20,000 to 50,000 feet" are a harder habit to form since practiced so infrequently. I never really became great at this.

* I use one plain text file for tasks. I group with headers based on the date I plan to work on each task. Some items have hard due dates, but most don't.

  # TODAY
  x completed task
  - uncompleted task 0.5h /* estimate of how long it'll take */
  - another task (due 9/8)
  - ...

  # TOMORROW
  - ...

  # NEXT WEEK
  - ...

  # NEXT
  - ...

  # SOMEDAY / MAYBE
  - ...

And 3 separate lists for errands, groceries, and calls:

  # @GROCERY
  - ramen
  - gatorade
  - etc.

⬐ nreece

I built a very simple todo list + week planner based on a similar concept, that I use every single day now. Check it out sometime - http://weekis.com

⬐ tedmiston

Nifty. I'd love to see your iOS concept. The pain of editing my text file on the iPhone causes me to glance, but rarely update on mobile.

Listary ($0.99) has a nice synced list implementation that works well if you don't mind dividing the lists into separate files, but it doesn't support due dates. I didn't consider separate files a realistic option for my purpose.

Getting Things Done

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produc...

So that I can read more and do other things :)

⬐ swcharl

I'm also reading Getting Things Done.

⬐ johnfelix

me too :)

⬐ olalonde

You guys should stop reading and get something done already!

Good article. I think it would be better if he used a counter-example or two, to make sure readers knew what he meant by "Business Books". For example, according to Amazon, "Getting Things Done" is a business book (two of the three categories it's in are subcategories of "Business"), but has specific actions that could help many startup founders.

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produc...

I would be wary of self improvement programs that charge money. I'm not sure what exactly you've looked into, but there's a lot of information out there for free or cheap.

I've spent a decent amount of time reading self-improvement books/blogs, and for me the stuff that made the most impact were things that were tailored to the problems I was having at the time.

Here's an overview of what I've read over the years that have helped me to some extent:

I Can Do Anything if I Only Knew What it Was: http://www.amazon.com/Could-Anything-Only-Knew-What/dp/04405...

Paul Graham's Essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

How to Win Friends and Influence People: http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/14...

Four Hour Work Week: http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/d...

Randy Pausch, Time Management: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0

GTD: http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produc...

Steve Pavlina: http://www.stevepavlina.com/

7 Habits of Highly Effective People (reading this now): http://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People/dp/0671...

So I would say "it depends" on what you want out of life and where you are now. Self improvement is a life-long task and you will need advice that changes as you progress.

Try GTD, aka David Allen's "Getting Things Done".

Book: http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produc...

Read the book, then get a tool like "Things" (for OSX) or try web software like http://vitalist.com/ that works cross platform and supports some group collaboration too.

And about those software project management books -- the guy who evangelized software engineering for the past three decades just published an article saying he was wrong: http://bit.ly/pRrkd (links to PDF).