Deep Work - Cal Newport
Excellent book for people looking how to improve their focus on knowledge tasks and get things done.
The book is divided in two main parts, in the first one, the author justifies why it is important to be focus and having a well structured strategy to reach our objective. The second part presents a set of 4 rules to follow in order to improve our performance in the activities we are interested in.
Some ideas
I have extracted some ideas/phrases/principles/rules I found relevant for me and maybe are interested for you.
- Being a always-connected person is harmful for your focus and to accomplish your objectives, in general, any non-planned distraction affects negatively directly our performance
- Rule 1: Work deeply: Have a dedicated time to depth work, 4 hours is the maximum for continuous deep work. There a 4 types of deep work (check the book)
- Make a ritual to start your deep work journey. Have a dedicate space for your work (free of distractions). Maybe, go to a different place to get a deeper session.
- Share ideas & knowledge with colleagues
- Have metrics of your work. Take a rest (not just vacations)
- Rule 2: Embrace boredom. “Don’t take breaks from Distraction. Instead take breaks from Focus”
- Give priority to the more important task. Memorize a deck of cards
References to other books/articles
- The Intellectual Life [Sertillanges]
The Obstacle is the Way - Ryan Holiday
Seeing obstacles as challenges give us a different mindset to reach our objectives. This book presents excellent examples/hints to make things happen and do not die in the process
Some ideas
- We must try:
- To be objective
- To control emotions and keep an even keel
- To choose to see the good in a situation
- To steady our nerves
- To ignore what disturbs or limits others
- To place things in perspective
- To revert to the present moment
- To focus on what can be controlled
- Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead
- Think different. Our perceptions determine what we are and are not capable. We don’t control reality, our perceptions do influence it
- Obstacles are Opportunities to learn/improve/make it better
- Once you see the world as it is, you must act
- Try, try and try, but not doing the same, analyze results, think different and try something new. Be persistent
- Facing obstacles, look for weak points
- Even failing, your benefit from learning. Every fail is an opportunity to learn and be better
- Follow the process: face a problem/obstacle one step at a time
- Do your job, do it right. Do hard work, honestly, and helping others as best as we can
- Be pragmatic, if you have a mission, make the impossible to accomplish it. If following the rules you find obstacles, try other ways to reach your target.
- To overthrow an obstacle does not need a direct action always, you can wait to go back to see other options or make the obstacle smaller
- Focus is what really matters, that is, no necessarily in what the people thinks or waits, but what you need to reach your target
- Sometimes we cannot reach a target, we will fail. Manage your expectations
- Protect your inner self, submit to a greater cause
- Be prepared for obstacles by exercising yourself, physically and mentally. Do that before obstacles come
- Always be prepared for disruption. Think in all bad things could happen in your project or in the way to reach your target. Think in what you can do to overcome the problem and go ahead to your objective (Anticitpation)
- Accept the life as it is. Acquiescence. Accept the things you cannot change (situations, persons, rules, etc) and look for the way to accomplish your task. In a bad situacion, see the good before than the bad. The things could be worse.
- Love what you do, including the good and de bad things.
How Linux works - Brian Ward
I’ve worked in software development using Linux since university, but I never read a Linux book.
This book presents a good introduction-to-middle information about Linux, how this OS is composed and how its components interacts.
It starts from Basic to advanced in a good way that lets the reader to understand while advances in the reading.
- Chapter 1: Introduction to Kernel and basic concepts (memory management, processes, user space, exec, fork, syscalls, etc)
- Chapter 2: Shell, basic input/output, basic commands (cat, ls, cd, touch, cp, mv, rm, echo). Directory navigation, wildcard, intermediate commands (grep, less, pwd, diff, file, find, head, tail, sort), environment variables, command line editing
The magic story - Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey
Very short book about having success in the live. The book is a first-person story about how a man become rich, then poor and again rich, and gives six lessons to change the reader’s life.
“It is claimed that many who read or hear this story almost immediately begin to have good fortune so it is worth a few minutes of your time to find out if it works for you.”
The hard things about hard things
Theme: Management
Ideas
- There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all
- The simple existence of an alternate, pausible scenario is often all that’s needed to keep hope alive among a worried workforce
