I really enjoyed the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. It talks a lot about his productivity system "GTD" and his rules on prioritizing. It contains a lot of fluff, so I'd recommend buying a hard copy (or going to a library) so you can skim it more easily.

I don't think it works for everyone, but I've read a lot of good from people religiously applying the GTD[0] method. Though it is a very strict method and a lot of people will get discouraged quickly when trying to apply it.

[0] Getting things done - David Allen https://gettingthingsdone.com/

After reading the 1 and 2 star reviews, is there any one particular point that differentiates this book from the others? (Getting Things Done, Eat the Frog, The Now Habit, etc.)

Deep Work, by Cal Newport : to focus on what matters.
The talent code, by Danie Coyle : to understand the value of deliberate practice.
Brain at work, astonishingly useful mixing practical neuroscience and concrete situations.
Getting things Done : to adopt a good time management system (you can tweak the method).
Good luck !

I personally really enjoy the world of GTD (Getting Things Done). I like reading about the best techniques, latest to-do apps and I tried a lot of them over the years.

But in practice, for whatever reason, the only to-do lists that I complete are the ones I quickly write down on a random piece of paper sitting on my desk.

Even though digital notes have many more advantages and I would like to use them, they just never work for me.
I forget to periodically check them and if they send me notifications I simply ignore them.

* Getting Things Done by David Allen

This book taught me so much about how to manage my life, and taught me how to review my own systems.

* SICP, On Lisp, and Let over Lambda

It's hard to pick one exactly, because really it's about opening your mind to radically different programming paradigms than what's popular.

Learning lisp well enough gives you confidence to attempt to create new programming languages, through code generation, or even mentally thinking about an API as a language rather than just a series of functions.

> Getting Things Done by David Allen

Agree. Despite being ubiquitous and universally recommended, I think this book is still somehow underrated.

Diagnosed as a child but haven’t been on meds since HS. Didn’t like how they made me feel. Now about 15 years into a career that’s going pretty well after some rough patches.

Listen to chill music without particularly complex lyrics.

Turn off notifications for EVERYTHING. You’ll be shocked how little you miss them or need them. Even slack with coworkers you can take relatively asynchronously.

Break tasks down into as small of a chunk as possible and tackle each one individually (Getting Things Done is a short good read on this)

Read a good detective book like Homicide: Life on the Streets to understand how people can successfully approach open ended, “no help” scenarios.

When you get overwhelmed about number of tasks or some such, defer to your boss to prioritize what you will work on, and use that as an excuse to focus 100% on one thing at a time.

Take care of yourself. Get plenty of sleep (8+ hours), eat healthy protein meals including breakfast, and do some kind of physical activity.

> The max I have got is around 200 tabs and even that was a considerable stress on my brain.

Here's the trick I think:

I and many others use tabs to offload the brain. For those who have read "Getting Things Done" I think this is similar.

We don't think about them, just look them up if and when we need them.

Kind of the same way as a journal or notebook: it doesn't stress me that I have hundreds of pages I might never get back to; it eases my mind that if I need to get back it is still there.

I use Tree Style Tabs and a couple of extensions on top of that so sometimes I'll copy a subtree as a nested markdown list and store it in Joplin, then close it.

But no: 600 tabs like I've had more than once was totally feasible years ago and should be no match for a moderns system.

That said as long as people don't try to force me to change the way I work they are free to do it their way.

Oh, just a few.

Time Management for System Administrators, by Thomas A. Limoncelli (2005) https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/time-management-for/059...

Getting Things Done by David Allen https://gettingthingsdone.com/ https://www.worldcat.org/title/getting-things-done/oclc/9347...

Cal Newport, generally: https://www.calnewport.com/

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