Finished reading: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 📚

Finished reading: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman 📚

Finished reading: ⭐️⭐️ The Terminal List by Jack Carr 📚

Finished reading: Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers 📚

I don’t even know how this got to be a book. Pages and pages of words that say next to nothing, please don’t waste your time.

Finished reading: Lone Wolf by Gregg Hurwitz 📚

Finished reading: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport 📚

Currently reading: Filterworld by Kyle Chayka 📚

Finished reading: Jony Ive by Leander Kahney 📚

Finished reading: The Last Orphan by Gregg Hurwitz 📚

Currently reading: Jony Ive by Leander Kahney 📚

Finished reading: Private London by James Patterson 📚

📚 This is a very good problem to have, but I have too many books to read.

Finished reading: Private by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: The Golden Library by Scott Mariani 📚

Finished reading: Alex Cross Must Die by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Cross Down by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Unnatural Causes by Dr Richard Shepherd 📚

Finished reading: Digital Body Language by Erica Dhawan 📚

Got to admit I skipped whole sections of this book. Some useful points but over all reads like a guide on how to wrap people in cotton wool and stress yourself out doing it.

📚 I have almost finished all the Alex Cross books and need another non fiction series to start. Any recommendations?

Finished reading: The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter 📚

Finished reading: Deadly Cross by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Triple Cross by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Norman, Donald A. 📚

Finished reading: 10% Happier by Dan Harris 📚

Finished reading: Cross the Line by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal 📚

Finished reading: The People vs. Alex Cross by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Cross Justice by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal 📚

Do not waste your time. The book lacks any real substance and I ended up scanning at least half of it. It comes across as someone that wanted to write a book just to say they have done it.

Finished reading: Target: Alex Cross by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Fear No Evil by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Cross the Line by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp 📚

Finished reading: Breath by James Nestor 📚

Finished reading: Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp 📚

Finished reading: Cross Justice by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Hope to Die by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Essentialism by Greg McKeown 📚

Finished reading: Cross My Heart by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Deep Work by Cal Newport 📚

Can you tell I’m finishing off all the books I left unread. Polished off the last 30% - realised all the good things are in the first half.

Finished reading: The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World by Andy Crouch 📚

Another very strange book. Thankfully very short as I didn’t take much away from it.

Finished reading: Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just As You Are by J. Jennifer Matthews 📚

Not much of this book made sense. Not sure why I started it, nor why I finished it.

Finished reading: The Tudor Deception (Ben Hope, Book 28) by Scott Mariani 📚

Finished reading: The Shallows by Nicholas Carr 📚

Finished reading: Alex Cross, Run by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish 📚

Finished reading: Kill Alex Cross by James Patterson 📚

Currently reading: Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish 📚

Finished reading: Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz 📚

Didn’t enjoy much of this book. I went in not knowing what to expect and it took a lot of effort to get to the end. Full of forgettable information for the sake of it and doesn’t really say anything.

Currently reading: Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz 📚

Finished reading: Cross Fire by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Stolen Focus by Johann Hari 📚

Currently reading: Stolen Focus by Johann Hari 📚

Finished reading: Double Cross by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Alex Cross by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell 📚

Finished reading: The Sweet Spot by Paul Bloom 📚

Currently reading: Start With Why by Simon Sinek 📚

I only bought The Sweet Spot yesterday afternoon, but I’ve read more than half of it already. 📚

Such a fascinating walk through of the relationship between happiness, suffering and meaning.

Helps the sun is out and I’m enjoying a relaxed day too ☀️

Currently reading: The Sweet Spot by Paul Bloom 📚

Finished reading: Mental Fitness by Ant Middleton 📚

Finished reading: Mary, Mary by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: London Bridges by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: The Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: 道德经 by Lao Tsu 📚

Finished reading: Four Blind Mice by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Hooked by Nir Eyal 📚

Read through this again and made a lot more notes the second time around. Super interesting book, if most of it is more common knowledge now. A must read for anyone in marketing, design or just wants to understand the world better.

Finished reading: Violets are Blue by James Patterson 📚

That was a weird read, my least favourite of the series, but of course I’ll read the next one!

Finished reading: Roses are Red by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte 📚

Read for a second time and although I understand the ideas I still feel as if all this PKM stuff is a solution looking for a problem.

Finished reading: The White Knight (Ben Hope, Book 27) by Scott Mariani 📚

Finished reading: The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters 📚

Interesting enough to read through but thankfully not very long.

Finished reading: Pop Goes the Weasel by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday 📚

Skipped a lot of pages of this as it wasn’t enjoyable. Repetitive and could of very easily been a blog post.

Finished reading: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman 📚

This is one of the most life changing books I have read in a while. It has given me a new way of not just looking at my work, but also life itself.

Meaningful Highlights

good luck finding a time management system that makes any room for engaging productively with your fellow citizens, with current events, or with the fate of the environment.

There is an ‘anti hustle culture’ uprising going on at the moment. All of a sudden people are realising that we do not need to hustle through the best years of our lives and not leave room for things that make us happy. After all what is the point in living if not enjoying it.

Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster.

There will always be more work. If you live in a capitalist society and you work for a company that holds the notion they are forced to grow, you are always screwed. Companies expect more and more from their workers, and getting towards the end of your list only leads to more tasks. It is only when you realise that you can only get done what you can the real freedom comes.

There is absolutely no point stressing about getting to the end because modern life is a treadmill you can never get off. Much like inbox zero only leads to more emails, all the modern productivity punchlines just lead to more work. By embracing the fact that the end will never arrive, you can relax, knock as many tasks off as you can and get some downtime.

in attempting to eliminate only the tedious experiences, we accidentally end up eliminating things we didn’t realise we valued until they were gone.

Many people must feel as I do that resting and doing atelic tasks are a ‘waste of time’. We are encouraged to squeeze every moment for the most return. A return on a later date that may never arrive.

Where’s the logic in constantly postponing fulfilment until some later point in time when soon enough you won’t have any ‘later’ left?

Using your time wisely is the best thing to do. But constantly using it for the benefit of the future is like a hoarder. Keeping everything just incase. The very definition of the word ‘purposiveness’ (using time well for future purposes) but never actually using it.

By trying too hard to make the most of his time, he misses his life.

there’s usually the unspoken fantasy that you might one day finally reach the state of having no problems whatsoever.

I find some peoples lives as if they are living a [[Provisional Life]] as if they are preparing for the one that comes next by doing all of these things. Confucius says “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one.”

Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck puts it, it’s only unbearable for as long as you’re under the impression that there might be a cure.

I like this a lot to our struggles with Luice care. There is not solution or magic bullet to fix it, so there is no point fooling ourselves that anything is ever going to change.

The original Latin word for ‘decide’, decidere, means ‘to cut off’, as in slicing away alternatives; it’s a close cousin of words like ‘homicide’ and ‘suicide’.

This is why deciding feels painful sometimes.

It didn’t take Brown long to figure out that their pulsing sense of urgency was a form of self-medication – something they were doing as a way not to feel something else.

This quote from psychotherapist Stephanie Brown who had a practice in Silicon Valley on the 90’s hit me hard. Not being able to sit still and rest or enjoy a basic activity is a defence mechanism against being alone with yourself. This is an addict self medicating by distracting instead of intoxicating themselves.

keep a ‘done list’,

There is no better example of this than my task list at work. It is constantly filled with things I need to do. Like the heads of a hydra, as soon as I check one off, there is at least another to take its place. Which is fine, until a certain point where you realise you’re on a treadmill with no escape. It starts to feel a bit overwhelming and often leads to a lack of motivation. Pretty quickly, life could become untenable.

So let’s flip the thinking here. Instead of looking at the outstanding tasks, let’s look at the ones already checked off. Focus on a done list rather than a to-do list. Any time I feel a bit overwhelmed by what’s on my plate, not only do I remember there will always be more work, but also flip through my Bullet Journal and look at all the crossed off items.

Finished reading: Graveyard of Empires (Ben Hope, Book 26) by Scott Mariani 📚

Finished reading: Happy Sexy Millionaire by Steven Bartlett 📚

Finished reading: The Radleys by Matt Haig 📚

Currently reading: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman 📚

Finished reading: The Revenge of Analog by David Sax 📚

That was annoyingly too short but pretty interesting book. Worth a read but you kinda get where it’s heading from the title of the book.

Currently reading: The Revenge of Analog by David Sax 📚

Finished reading: The Quantum Chain by Nick Jones 📚

Currently reading: The Quantum Chain by Nick Jones 📚

Finished reading: The Last Family in England by Matt Haig 📚

Finished reading: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card 📚

Finished reading: Checklist Manifesto, The (HB) by Atul Gawande 📚

This is a well thought after book in some circles but I really had to force myself to read it. It was full of stories ancestors medical anecdotes that felt forced.

Finished reading: The Humans by Matt Haig 📚

Currently reading: Checklist Manifesto, The (HB) by Atul Gawande 📚

Finished reading: Cat & Mouse by James Patterson 📚

Currently reading: Happy Sexy Millionaire by Steven Bartlett 📚

Finished reading: Kiss the Girls by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Along Came a Spider by James Patterson 📚

Finished reading: Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte 📚

It falls down the usual trope of telling you want they do and why you should, then giving you loads of cherry picked examples to prove their point.

There is a good system in there so it’s worth a read but you can get the point by just skimming or reading a few of his blog posts.

Currently reading: Along Came a Spider by James Patterson 📚

Currently reading: The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters 📚

Currently reading: The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters 📚

Currently reading: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 📚