
Ten Productivity Books You Won't Regret Reading - mokagio
https://www.mokacoding.com/blog/top-10-productivity-books/
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jshowa3
Is it odd that 30% of these books are by one author whose made a living
peddling self-help books?

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nelsonic
Cal Newport is not “peddling” anything. He’s a respected academic in computer
science and has written 3 books a lot of people find immensely helpful. The
beauty of a free economy is that you (and everyone else) has the choice to
buy/read anything, or not. Cal’s superbly insightful books are not forced or
“pedalled” upon anyone.

~~~
jshowa3
There are lots of respected academics in computer science. Apparently he chose
to spend his time writing 3 versions of the same book for money: How to Win at
College (2005), How to Become a Straight-A Student (2006), and How to Be a
High-School Superstar (2010). And he's by definition peddling. Not sure why
you took offense to that and not sure where the "free" economy has any
relevance to what I said. The irony is I could sum up in one page what all
those books combined contain.

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nelsonic
Dr. Calvin Newport is a tenured professor of computer science and has
written/published over a hundred well-cited academic papers.
[https://scholar.google.pt/citations?user=EhodjeAAAAAJ](https://scholar.google.pt/citations?user=EhodjeAAAAAJ)

In his _spare_ time he has written several highly rated books which a lot of
people find helpful/useful: [https://www.amazon.com/Cal-
Newport/e/B001IGNR0U](https://www.amazon.com/Cal-Newport/e/B001IGNR0U)

In his first 3 books Cal wrote about what he knew, "being a great student".
His PhD from MIT is a pretty good indication that he "won" at academia. You
_clearly_ haven't _read_ the books because they cover different topics. Sure
their is overlap but they are _definitely_ not "the same book", else his
publisher would not have released it. You wouldn't say the 7 Harry Potter
books are "all the same book" even though they are _similar_. It's the same
with Cal's books, similar but _definitely_ not the same.

For the record: I'm not "offended" by people hating on Cal, just disappointed
that haters are not _making_ anything better.

If you _can_ indeed sum up _all_ that is contained in Cal's 6 books in _one_
page, do it! I will _gladly_ read that page pay you $1000 for the condensed
wisdom. 100% seriously, do it!

The "free market" is _highly_ relevant because it means anyone can
make/sell/buy good/services as they choose. If you don't _want_ to buy/read a
book you are _free_ not to. But unless you _produce_ something better or offer
an alternative recommendation, don't be a hater on Cal's content.

How many New York Times bestsellers have you written in your spare time? ;-)

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jshowa3
That's nice. Here's a list of a ton of highly cited computer scientists, many
of them of which didn't spin a self-help career:
[http://www.guide2research.com/scientists/](http://www.guide2research.com/scientists/)

There's really no such thing as _spare_ time. He could've spent all that time
writing self-help by doing more research. Since there's a huge supply of self-
help and everyone being begged to be told what to do and it requires no real
sense of expertise other than anecdotes, its an easy, albeit time consuming,
income. There's not a huge supply of good research.

Highly rated books, especially on Amazon are a dime-a-dozen. For example,
Jordan Peterson's 12 rules for life has been on the amazon best-seller list
for 61 weeks and that book is poorly edited and contains incredibly bad
advice. If you'd like me to elaborate, I can but that would have to be in
another post.

The books may cover different topics, but the theme remains the same. In order
to be a great student, you have to do what your told, engage with the lessons,
do the assignments and study to pass the tests. It's that simple. It's all
about finding the time to do the work and doing it in the best way you can. A
plethora of strategies to achieve this can be found online from note taking
strategies, to reading papers, to reading books on specific topics, etc. with
most of it being free. However, the easiest way is to simply ignore all the
extra brain power needed to adhere to the systems and engage with the work.

You also have to come to the realization that even if you do the work, you may
reach limitations that you cannot overcome and you may need to accept some
hard truths about things you may not be able to achieve. For example, you may
not get into MIT, you may not build a successful, huge company, you may not
complete a degree. However, its the experiences that make you successful, not
the prestige. You also have to understand that certain socio-economic factors
that are completely out of your control can cause you not to reach these goals
as well.

Now that I've condensed half the contents of those 3 books into 2 paragraphs,
care to pay me $500 and call it good? You also mis-characterized my original
claim that I could sum all 6 books into 1 page, when I meant the 3 books about
being a great student.

 _The "free market" is highly relevant because it means anyone can
make/sell/buy good/services as they choose. If you don't want to buy/read a
book you are free not to. But unless you produce something better or offer an
alternative recommendation, don't be a hater on Cal's content._

It's not highly relevant, because you aren't required to produce anything
better or offer an alternative recommendation. One can simply critique the
current iteration and cause people to give pause for thought and look
elsewhere. Also, what if there is nothing better? What if its all crap and
people don't know it? What if people just read my two paragraphs, started
applying their own minds and didn't need a 224 page book to tell them some
truisms?

I could give a crap about what some arbitrary newspaper claims is a great book
via sales numbers and some "secret formula". How many people bought the book
and never read it? What if the book simply gamed the formula to get on the
list?

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nelsonic
Having read all ten of these books I can _agree_ with the sentiment that i
didn’t “regret” reading them, however describing them as “productivity” is a
poor classification. Personal Effectiveness is a much better description.
People often use “productive” and “effective” interchangeably but they
_really_ aren’t remotely the same thing. Productivity is related to quantity
of output, whereas Effectivness is the act of using ones creative energy for
the highest value. If in the same amount of time/effort you can make 100
worthless “widgets” or 1 excellently made product which should you pursue? One
sounds “productive” whereas the other is “effective”.

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ykevinator
Can anyone pick the best from the list? I read getting things done and its a
good pamphlet stretched into a book.

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itsdrewmiller
Thinking Fast and Slow is a good book that is not at all a cheesy self-help
pamphlet. It's a review of some of the more surprising findings of behavioral
economics, and a discussion of how we should and shouldn't rely on heuristics
in our decision making. It does suffer a little bit in that some of the topics
have failed replication, and it could be about half as long as it actually is.

