Getting Things Done: The productivity technique. If you read one book, read this one. You will learn how to deal with all the stuff around you without being overwhelmed.
Zettelkasten: A way of taking interconnected notes.
Atomic Habits set you up for success.
Pomodoro Technique: 25 minutes of uninterrupted work. Then a five minute break and back to work.
Envelope Budgeting to manage your finances.
How a password changed my life: How often do you type your password? What if it would remind you of your goal?
Take a Nap! Change your life: Taking a nap works better (and is healthier) than drinking coffee.
Use understandabe language (great Elon Musk mail).
Holacracy roles & governance meetings.
Checklists to reduce risks.
Shape Up for fast-feedback intertwined product and software development.
Actionable metrics to see where you’re standing and where you’re heading.
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) plus weekly alignment meetings.
Things for managing tasks and projects.
Obsidian for notes and reference material.
Groove for time-boxed focused productivity sessions.
Arc as a modern browser.
You Need A Budget to keep track of your money.
Hey to fix e-mail.
Fitbod for working out.
1Password to store sensitive data.
Kopia and a Hetzner Storage Box for backups.
Forfeit to overcome procrastination.
The Best Productivity Apps for Mac: My list of small but essential helpers.
Lights: The dashboard of your life (Notion template).
Basecamp as the operating system for your company.
Twist as a deep-work focused Slack alternative that supports you rather than distracting you.
Krisp to remove background noises so you can have a call next to a construction site without anyone noticing.
Notion as a beautiful, easy to use knowledge base, database and ticketing system.
Meeter to quickly join meetings across different accounts without having to manually switch them.
The authors of The Pragmatic Programmer about users not knowing what they need:
Dave Thomas: Tying in to what Andy said earlier about software having a Heisenberg effect, where delivering the software changes the user’s perception of the requirements, almost by definition, your target is moving. The sheer act of delivering the first release is going to make the user realize, “Oh, that’s not quite what I wanted.”
Andy Hunt: Or even worse yet, “Oh, that’s exactly what I wanted. But now having seen that, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve learned. I’d now like to do this instead, or this in addition.” Just by introducing the software, you’ve changed the rules of the game. Now the user can see more possibilities that they weren’t aware of before. The user will say, “Oh, if you can do that. What I’d really like is if you could do this.” And there is no way to predict that up front.
Cal Newport:
Between this newsletter, my podcast, my books, and my New Yorker journalism, I offer a lot of advice and propose a lot of ideas about how the modern digital environment impacts our lives, both professionally and personally, and how we should respond.
This techno-pontification covers everything from the nitty gritty details of producing good work in an office saturated with emails and Zoom, to heady decisions about shaping a meaningful life amid the nihilistic abstraction of an increasingly networked existence.
With the end of year rapidly approaching, and people finding themselves with some spare thinking time as work winds down for the holidays, I thought it might be fun to try to summarize essentially every major idea I discuss in one short primer.
He then shares his thoughts about knowledge work, personal technology use, deep life, and the internet and future technology.