Hacker News Books

Everyone is in charge of ONE thing at a time. That thing being the most important thing that will make everything else easier.
The One Thing is a good book.

These two books are must reads for sure (Or must listens, both are well narrated in audio book form)

* The One Thing By Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

* Soft Skills By John Sonmez

I just started to read more and more, that's why some classics are in my list:

- The Power of Habit - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-hab...

- The Greatest Salesman in the World http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/356896.The_Greatest_Sales...

- Originals http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25614523-originals

- The One Thing http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16256798-the-one-thing

Single 4K ftw. If you feel like you need more, I recommend "The ONE Thing" by Gary Keller.

I read a book once called "The One Thing", written by Gary Keller (of Keller Williams Realty). Essentially what he says in the book is every day, identify your most important task, and do that. Everything and everyone else gets "no" until you finish that one task. Then you move on to the second most important thing, and so on.

I don't know how well all of his concepts translate to an IT environment, but it was, for me, a good read with a lot of insights.

This past summer I read the book "The ONE Thing." If this article resonates with you that book is worth looking into.

I had an epiphany of sorts about this when working on a freelance project with a client who was particularly organized. They had a kanban board split up into Inbox (ideas and incoming features and bugs), Backlog (accepted tasks), In Progress (doing right now), Review (for others to look at), and Complete columns.

At the beginning of a sprint, the project manager sat down for about 10 minutes and looked at all the cards in the inbox and decided if any should be moved to the backlog. He then rearranged the cards from most to least important.

This prevented the need to think at all when working on the project - I just took the top card from the backlog and put it into in progress until it was done.

I realized, why don't I do this for my own projects too? Since my own projects aren't paid, I for some reason think they should just be able to be done without organization. I've implemented this same system in Trello for arbitrary projects and it seems to work well when I use it. Also nice that it makes it easy to collaborate if relevant but that isn't required.

It's a hard problem though - figuring out how to "Just Get Things DoneTM" is a skill that requires trial and error to figure out what you'll actually stick to, but in some ways is the most important thing to figure out.

I also highly recommend the book The One Thing - my coach recommended it to me and though it started a little fluffy the second and third sections were solid. In short, doing less helps a lot.

The Twelve Week Year is another book with some good ideas - instead of planning long into the future, plan only on a quarterly basis, and have that quarter align with your grand vision for the future.

Happy to chat more about this, as it's a problem I've wrasseled with a lot too as a self-employed freelancer. My email's in my profile.

1. The One Thing. ~ Gary Keller
2. Mini Habits. ~ Stephen Guise
3. Learned Optimism. ~ Martin Seligman
4. Spark. ~ John Ratey
5. Miracle of Mindfulness. ~ Thich nhat hanh

Breathe, I was where you were a couple of months ago literally when I was 26. It's intimidating reading hn and seeing everyone's accomplishments in summation. I read 2 books that helped place things in perspective "The Growth Mindset" and "The One Thing". They'll help you be more focused, productive, and stop beating yourself up.

I didn't start coding in earnest till 25. I don't count my cs degree. I lamented my choice to go to architecture school after graduation. I COULD have gone to CMU or MIT most likely on scholarship. I regretted my choice deeply until recently when I realized I use the thought processes learned in my design lab more than anything I learned from my cs degree.

Recently I ve been hyper productive and am slowly marching towards my first product.

Meditate a bit, take stock of what you want to work on, and come up with a reasonable plan to get there. Take the time to figure out how you best work.

It's all going to be ok.

The One Thing is good. It was free to read on Kindle for Prime members recently. The OP should check if it's still there.

The hard part is figuring out the one thing. Tim Ferris talks about this a lot - finding the one thing that makes other things you want to do either irrelevant or so much easier. This concept has lots of names. Jocko Willinks books Extreme Ownership puts it simply as "prioritize and execute".

Anytime I feel overwhelmed with the amount I have to do what I have really done is not prioritize.

And yes, it is not easy and requires daily discipline.

I utilize a similar system to "reverse engineer the year".

Breaking down the major outcomes I want for the year into quarters which each having a specific focus and theme. At the end of each quarter I have a 90 day review to reflect on how I'm doing, where I'm heading and if there is any recalibration that needs to happen from changing priorities.

Each month I is essentially 3 "Acts" that play out the goals of that quarter and those in turn have weekly sprints.

With all that said the day is the most important of it all. What I choose to do each day reverberates across the year. This is where deep investment in intentionally building habits and focusing on systems over goals come into play.

I write more about that system here:
https://juvoni.com/you-are-a-rocketship/

A great book that talks about that system is The One Thing by Gary Keller

As for time management tools I’ve focus on four categories

- Tracking

- Quotas

- Blocking

- Scheduling & Task Management

I talk about the tools I use here:
https://juvoni.com/tools-of-the-time-manager/

Big highlights are:

- Rescuetime

- Freedom

- TickTick

Yes, I agree that GTD isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

David Allen, in GTD, recommends an alphabetized system. Something that I don't do because all of my reference material is digitized and easily searchable.

Search-ability is the primary reason I avoid keeping a large physical file system.

I take inspiration from multiple books written about productivity and organization. Other books that have been highly influential in my systems are:

- Principles (Dalio)

- The ONE Thing (Keller)

- Organize Tomorrow Today (Selk, Bartow)

- Productivity Planner (more of a journal than a book)

Checkout this book called The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

Sleep better, regular exercise, learn the skill of focusing on a single task with no distractions for at least 45 mins. Eat your frog every morning - i.e. do your most difficult task first.

Most of your questions can be answered with the usually productity space answers. If you want resources try Chris Bailey’s Productivity Project and the book The One Thing.

"I was wondering if the community here, such as it is, has any tips for daily exercises or practices that can help me get back on track in a kaizen or incremental way a little bit every day."

I recommend the book The ONE Thing, Gary Keller: https://www.amazon.com/ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordinary-...

The short of it is exactly what you asked for - working incrementally on one small thing. The core of it is a domino effect, where a small thing pushes over a bigger domino. Most of the advice is on how to pick the next dominos. You pick a large epic goal, as a purpose, and a smaller one, which is your priority, and then line them up.

A lot of people were made in a few years, so really, you just need about 10 years to achieve your dream whatever it is. It sounds like you have more skills than most people your age; don't compare yourself too harshly with HN in general.

I do something similar.

It's similar to reverse engineering the year starting from the year end goals, although I personally think more in terms of building personal systems instead of setting annual goals.

The book "The One Thing" talks a bit more about that concept of breaking down the year into, quarters, then from quarters into months and then into weekly sprints and daily tasks.

I also wrote a little bit about my high level process here:
https://juvoni.com/you-are-a-rocketship/

As an ADHD I just skim through this I see the write down 'The One Thing' part I'm not sure if it will work well, but most of these rituals don't work for me usually.

But what did really work for me:

1. Read the book as soon as I just found it and was interested in it. If it is short I would finish it directly. If it is long I'll eventually fail halfway and it's okay.

2. Top-down reading. Skim through books quickly, multiple rounds, each round goes deeper. In this way, I can stop anytime and still get some insights, instead of stuck in chapter 2 failed and time wasted. I can also always come back later.

3. No additional overheads, no notes, no plan, no to-do lists, or write down 'The One Things'. Try to use the brain instead of tools, tools usually give me leading I hate everything and gave up earlier. Also, practice this way you'll also find brains are better than people perceive them - people used to recite phone numbers.

4. Read when I feel like, at least don't read the same book when I started to struggle - try switch to another book, or else just go out and do anything you want.

In essence: 1) read when you feel like 2) read incrementally so you can stop anytime 3) avoid negative feedback loop

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Principle by Ray Dalio.

When Coffee and Kale Compete by Alan Klement.

Spark by Dr John J. Ratey, Eric Hagerman, John Ratey.

The One Thing by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan.

The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks.

A Dozen Lessons for Entrepreneurs by Tren Griffin.

Software Project Survival Guide by Steve Mcconnell.

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis.

I Wonder What I'm Thinking About? by Moose Allain.

Truth, Lies & Statistics by Lee Baker.

On shortness of life by Seneca.