Book Review: Make Time

So I was already trying to read more even before ew0k posted his reading challenge

ew0k throwing down the challenge

but this seemed like a really good opportunity to make myself continue reading more so I can disconnect from the bad parts of the internet, endless scrolling, and getting into deep dark moods about things I don't actually have any power over. If anyone reads my phlog on rawtext.club, which isn't super likely as I don't advertise it much, a theme of my daily personal writing is feeling like I'm always losing time.

My gopherhole on rawtext, for the record

So today the book I read, largely while walking to run errands today---a nice use of my old Kobo Clara, was Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

the authors site for the book

It was actually really good! I mean I don't know if it'd be absolutely life-changing for anyone who's read things in the lineage of David Allen, as this book is sorta reminiscent of other stripped down systems like Leo Babauta's zen-to-done but even moreso a loose set of guidelines and methods. On the other hand, there were a lot of little clever things this book has me chewing on.

First, that giving your mind rest does mean actually letting yourself having moments of real boredom. This is something that I'm absolutely terrible at because my chronic need for stimulation means that I sometimes will have two source of background sound going at once while I'm picking away at little projects and also skimming twitter at the same time. In other words, I don't give myself even a lick of actual brain rest or boredom.

About twitter: Look like I said last time I need my fix of anthro art and inconsolable anger [Okay maybe need is a strong word...]

Second, there's a lot of really practical advice about managing your todo list: finding ways to pick a main highlight to focus on each day---Babauta would call that a Big Rock---but not just so you're working on important things but so that the days *feel distinguishable*. That was an interesting insight to me as during these last couple of years I've been struggling a lot with having days feel interchangeable and unmemorable. Also about how to, politely, take as long as possible when answering email so it doesn't become a huge time sink of distracting back and forths.

An example of a clever little trick to cut down on distraction: have a place to write down random questions you want to look up so you don't stop what you're doing and google it or whatever when you're in the middle of something. To implement that I decided to make a capture template in org mode for random questions that pop into my head.

Really my biggest complaint about the book was actually about how the authors frame their work: they were both project leads at Google, one on gmail one on youtube, and they take some culpability for their part in creating what they call "infinity pools" that suck people down into noisy distraction but I'd almost rather they didn't talk about it at all with how glib I feel they are about it. Their attitude really struck me as "whoops, things didn't work out as well as we hoped but hey we were idealistic and tech is cool so that counts for something right?"

I know I'm kinda harsh on this topic so it's hard to say if I'm being mean or just wanting them to be as jaded as I am.

No matter what, though, this was a pretty light read, well written, with a lot more clever insights than I expected to find.

Sidenote on beeminder and the reading challenge

So since the reading challenge is numeric in nature I figured it wouldn't hurt to make a beeminder goal to track it and keep me accountable to actually staying on track.

my reading goal page

I can explain more about what beeminder is another time if anyone is curious but I know I've given the elevator pitch once before on the gemlog. Would talking more about committment devices actually be interesting?

Let me know at left_adjoint@rawtext.club