I picked up most of these books after hearing them mentioned in various podcast interviews that I listened to while walking my dog or working out. The irony is that most of them are aimed at improving personal productivity and reduce time waste, but reading through them appears to be a rather significant time waste in itself (the new and insightful information is few and far between, to be honest). So because I loathe to dedicate time to reading about how to spend less time, I try to get the books of this type in an audio format and listen to them just like I do to podcasts – as a background to some relatively mindless activities. There are some exceptions, though. Certain non-fiction books are really quite excellent and would certainly deserve to be read rather than listened to, like the first one in the list below.
9. “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo
. The main concept behind deciding whether to keep an item or to throw it away is asking the question of whether it “sparks joy” for you. My personal main takeaway was that it’s worth physically picking up and paying close attention to each item that you are evaluating as a potential candidate to be discarded. Kondo-san argues that the things that we accumulate take on some features of live beings, because we invest our emotions in them. Even the stuff that was an impulse purchase and has been long forgotten since then had served its purpose of sparking joy in you at some point. Therefore it deserves to be thanked for it by being mentally acknowledged for its service. I find that taking time to go through my old stuff in this mindful, unrushed way actually saves time in the long run by clarifying the degree of my emotional attachment to various things and making the decisions of whether to keep them or not easier. Oh, and by reading this book I learned the therapeutic value of talking to my socks (and, as my daughter would say, “this is a compliment” for the book) and a practical virtue of not to rolling them up in balls in the drawer.
10. ”Make Time” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
(audiobook). I liked the idea of having one “highlight” activity during each day. It could be anything, from making progress on a work project to eating a delicious meal. The key concept is to plan for it beforehand and to be aware of it when it’s happening. This avoids the feeling that the day has slipped through your fingers without leaving anything to show for it.
11. “Tiny Habits” by B.J. Fogg
(audiobook). The title is almost self-explanatory: small changes are easy to make, and they compound into significant results over time. I am a fan of the idea of evolutionary progress, rather than revolutionary one. I don’t recall whom to attribute the quote to, but one of my favourite expressions is that we tend to over-estimate what can be done in a day and under-estimate what can be done in a year.
12. “12 Rules for Life” by Jordan B. Peterson
(audiobook). A rather obnoxious title and a controversial text that is just what you’d expect from a controversial author. I think it’s an inevitable pushback on the recent trend of taking political correctness to ridiculous extremes. All this to say that I enjoyed the book. It reminded me of Jocko Willink’s way of giving advice (see his excellent “Extreme Ownership”
, for example): “if you want to do more pull-ups – do more pull-ups!” This might not be an exact quote, but the gist of it is hard to miss. Makes matter seem simple, which is quite refreshing.
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